The Power of Purpose💪🏾
The Power of Purpose💪🏾
How to find meaning and motivation playing the infinite game of life 🔥
This week I’m breaking down a couple of misconceptions about purpose, the neuroscience behind it, and how it can expedite your transition.
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The Power of Purpose 💪🏾
OK..I already know what you’re thinking…
Purpose is one of the many buzzwords of today. And when I first heard it in reference to peak performance, I rolled my eyes also.
But trust me, the neuroscience and peak performance strategies that breakdown purpose can truly benefit student-athletes. So much so, I think this one thing can completely prevent a negative experience while navigating a life after sports transition.
Now let’s recap a couple of things from last week’s edition before we dive into this one.
Curiosity/Passion/Purpose Triad
If you’re up to date on this lifeletter, you remember that the curiosity/passion/purpose triad is one of the 12 flow triggers on the individual side. And they double as 3/5 of the big 5 intrinsic motivators that drive us automatically.
Triad is the key word here.
When all three motivators are perfectly stacked—especially once purpose is included—their power increases considerably.
Stacked atop one another, their combined neurochemical surge is typically powerful enough to tighten focus and start to shift consciousness toward flow.
Neurochemical Cocktail of Flow 🍸
Flow may be the biggest neurochemical cocktail of all. The state appears to blend all six of the brain’s major pleasure chemicals and may be one of the few times you get all six at once:
Dopamine - brain’s primary reward chemical
Oxytocin - a close second to dopamine
Serotonin - calming, peaceful chemical that provides a gentle lift in mood
Endorphins - pain-killing bliss producer
Norepinephrine - brain’s version of adrenaline, produces huge increase in energy & alertness
Anandamide - heavy-duty stress reliever, replacing the weight of the everyday with a euphoric sense of relaxed happiness.
This potent mix explains why people describe flow as their “favorite experience,” while psychologists refer to it as “the source code of intrinsic motivation.”
Now it makes sense how, neurobiologically, on their own, each of these motivations has the potential to drive dopamine and norepinephrine into our system.
But let’s take a second to cover a couple of misconceptions that come with this triad—talk about what it isn’t before we dive into what it is.
3 Misconceptions About Curiosity/Passion/Purpose 🫢
I recently listened to a podcast that my mentor, Steven Kotler, was a guest on. He mentioned these 3 misconceptions and I had to include them in today’s edition:
1️⃣We only envision the back end…
When we think about passion; we think of Lebron coming down the lane for a dunk, or Serena Williams screaming after serving an ace. But this is matured passion. But on the front end, it shows up as a little kid, hoopin’ in the driveway until midnight—curious if they can get better.
2️⃣We expect it to hit us like a bolt of lightning…
Passion isn’t something we stumble upon or discover. It’s something we earn. It’s a little bit of interest at a time. We need patience while cultivating our passions. It’s not all-consuming on the front end. It’s just not how our biology works.
3️⃣We expect it to be easy…
Our purpose is more of a burden than a blessing. Steven Kotler has a purpose to make the world a better place for animals. He and his wife run a hospice care dog sanctuary. In 20 years, 800 animals have been to their facility. The U.S. government euthanizes (kills) 10-20 million dogs a year in America. In 20 years, their sanctuary hasn’t dented what the government does on a Tuesday. That’s purpose! And in his words, “It’s an endless heartbreak treadmill.”
He also mentions how he always hears people say, “I want passion/pupose in my life”, but what he really hears them say is, “I want to get laid on a Saturday night.”
Purpose is heavy! It takes a lot of sacrifice and it’s something you may never fulfill. That’s the reality of it. And although it’s a burden, it won’t make you bitter. The alternative—living a life empty of passion and purpose—is far more painful.
And this is why clarifying your purpose is so valuable for student-athletes!
Proper goal setting requires three sets of goals:
MTP - stands for Massively Transformative Purpose. Massively means large and audacious. Transformative means being able to bring significant change to an industry, community, or planet. And purpose? A clear why behind the work being done.
HHG - stands for High Hard Goals, technical term for big goals. They’re a major step along the path toward your MTP.
Clear Goals - all the daily sub-sets required to accomplish those high, hard
goals
MTPs last a lifetime; high, hard, goals, can take years; clear goals are accomplished one minute at a time.
Purpose is about playing the long game, the infinite game, the game that’s technically unwinnable.
Figuring out this one thing can eliminate most of the depression and anxiety student-athletes experience post-graduation—while transitioning from the finite game of their sport to the infinite game of life.
Thanks to my mentor, Steven Kotler, we now have an exercise to take this recipe for an identity crisis disaster to cookin up our passions and clarifying our purpose.
The Passion Recipe 👨🏾🍳
MAKE A LIST - start by writing down 25 things you’re curious about.
HUNT FOR INTERSECTIONS - after your list is complete, look for the places where these 25 ideas intersect.
PLAY IN THE INTERSECTIONS - now that you’ve identified the spots where curiosity overlaps, play in those intersections for a little while. Devote 20-30 minutes a day to listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading articles, books, whatever, on any aspect of that overlap.
GO PUBLIC - it’s time to make friends. But walk before you run. Taking things public doesn’t require giving a TED Talk. Simple conversations with strangers will get things going.
TURNING PASSION INTO PURPOSE - passion is a potent driver. Yet, for all of its upside, passion can be a fairly selfish experience. Being all consumed means you’re all consumed. There’s not much room for other people. But if you’re going to tackle the impossible, sooner or later, you’re going to need some outside assistance. Write down a list of 15 massive problems that you would love to see solved. Look for spots where your core passion intersects with one of these grand global challenges—a place where your personal obsession might be a solution to some collective problem. The overlap between passion and purpose, that’s what we’re hunting.
This is how you craft your MTP and clarify your purpose.
In a later edition, I'll go into detail with the passion recipe and share my personal answers along the way. But I wanted to briefly cover it here to show the power, mechanism, and science of purpose.
It’s not just a buzzword.
Last Words…
Passion produces ego-driven focus, where issues of pride and identity often get involved. Why does this matter? When the ego is engaged, the prefrontal cortex is active. This makes it nearly impossible to achieve transient hypofrontality.
The Ten Percent Brain myth is an old high-performance idea that suggests that we only use 10% of our brains, so flow must be our brain on overdrive—hyperactivity, right? Turns out this was backward the entire time. In flow, we’re not using more of the brain, we’re using less. Technical term: Transient Hypofrontaltiy. Transient means temporary. Hypo- meaning to slow down, shut down, or deactivate. Frontality refers to the prefrontal cortex—the portion of the brain that has a lot of executive functions. It controls things like cognitive functions, complex logical decision-making, sense of morality, sense of will, long term planning. All of this turns off in flow.
And this truly leads us to why purpose is so powerful:
Your MTP isn’t inspirational or aspirational…it’s filtrational: it weeds out the work that doesn’t matter.
Purpose shifts our lens, putting attention outside ourselves, on the task at hand. Once we’re focused on something outside ourselves, it’s a lot easier to get out of our heads and into the zone.
It’s an efficiency exchange. More energy to feel our best, perform our best, and focus on the task at hand.
Hope this added the fuel to ferociously launch your week! ♾️🔥🚀
See you next Monday! 😎
And when it comes to the infinite game of life…
Choose Flow.
Be Brilliant.
Ball Out.
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