how to find your purpose in life: 6 tactics from robert greene, galloway, peterson and dalio

Greene calls a person's purpose their life's task. on the captions: "when you find what I call your life's task everything has a direction". his first clue sits in early childhood. at four or five you still hear your own likes and dislikes. Greene was obsessed with words; Einstein, at four, with a compass. then the noise comes in: "you're starting to not hear that voice anymore", because "you're hearing the voice of your teachers", then parents, then friends. if you lost the thread, Greene treats it like a dig: "we go through a process like archaeology we have to dig and dig and dig and find those bones from your childhood". he says you will know it in your body more than your head: "it's visceral it's emotional it's physical".

the tactic: look back before you look forward. the clue is in what you did when nobody was grading you.

try this week: write down three things you could not stop doing between ages four and ten. for each, note what exactly pulled you in (the words, the building, the people, the moving parts). circle the pull that still shows up in what you do today.

Greene found his direction partly by what he could not stand. he hated journalism, then "I hated working in Hollywood", and that shaped him because he already knew he wanted to write. on the captions he puts the lesson plainly: "levels of frustration or anxiety are definite signals that you must pay attention to". on Modern Wisdom he adds that every book has to feel new to him: "when I don't, I have that painful feeling like this doesn't fit me. This isn't who I am." the first version of his book with 50 Cent was cancelled, and later he saw why: "I realized it was canceled because I wasn't in it." he also says he was "pretty much a loser up until then", meaning until he wrote The 48 Laws of Power at 39.

the tactic: write down what drains you, then ask why. the reason behind the frustration points at what you actually want.

try this week: every evening, write one moment that frustrated you that day and one sentence on why. on sunday, read all seven. look for the reason that repeats, and write the opposite of it as one line.

the hosts open with his line: do not follow your passion, follow your talent. his story on the captions: "I wanted to be an athlete. That was my passion." at UCLA he saw he was not in the top 0.1% who live off sport. his rule: "the sexier the business, the lower return on investment", so unless you are clearly in the top tier, "try and make a living somewhere else and then do that on the weekends." the passion comes later: "if you become great at it, trust me, you'll become passionate about it." and the limit: "you can't become great at anything you hate." Hormozi, on The Diary Of A CEO, says ideas come from a pain, a past profession or a passion, and the profession route "is proven to work from an economic perspective".

the tactic: choose the thing you can get great at, and let passion follow the skill. keep the glamorous love as a hobby for now.

try this week: list five things people already ask you for help with, or have paid you for. next to each, write yes or no: could I be in the top 10% at this in five years? pick one yes and spend three hours on it this week.

finding the direction is the start, not the end. Greene says your twenties are for learning skills, and that following people online is not the same as having a mentor. on the captions: "a mentor relationship takes work it takes courage because you have to actually go up to somebody and physically ask for their help". and "you can't just follow someone you can't just watch their lectures you have to engage with them". his second point is urgency. he borrows the idea of death ground from Sun Tzu: an army with its back to the sea fights harder. without that pressure, "you think you have all the time in the world you get nothing done". his advice: "you need to put yourself on death ground". not a fake crisis, just the fact that time is limited.

the tactic: find one person who is ahead in your direction, and ask them for help. then give yourself a real deadline to learn the skill.

try this week: name one person who does what you want to do, two to ten years ahead of you. send them one specific question, with what you already tried. set a date, eight weeks out, by which you will have made one finished thing in that field.

when someone came to Peterson lost, he did not start with the meaning of life. on the captions: "I'm very practical I'd say to you okay well let's look at your life for a minute". then he runs through a list: do you have an intimate relationship, how is your family, do you have a job with some chance of advancement, "do you know how to use your time outside of work productively", do you look after your mental and physical health, do you manage temptations like drugs and alcohol, are you as educated as you are intelligent. he admits "it's mundane in some sense", and you can look further for meaning. but if you are overwhelmed and suffering, "that's a good place to start". his reason: "people need to search for meaning because they get corrupted by suffering if their life isn't meaningful".

the tactic: fix the floor first. a big purpose is hard to hear over a life that is falling apart in the basics.

try this week: score each of Peterson's areas from 1 to 5: relationship, family, work, free time, health, temptations, education. pick the lowest score and do one concrete thing for it before friday.

Dalio starts with money. on the captions: "Money doesn't have any intrinsic value, right? So you have to have a purpose." his definition of success: "Success is you knowing your nature and then finding the best path through that nature". one of the hosts then reads a list he wrote at 27: what he wants out of life, what matters in order (loved ones, health, work, being someone who lights up the room, learning) and what he is weak at. two lines make it a tool: "I want to reread this every year every morning so I never forget what each day is for." and "I want to rewrite the list every year so I see myself evolving." Dalio's view on change: "My nature really doesn't change. My phase of life changes."

the tactic: put your purpose in writing, short enough to reread. a list you see every morning steers more than a big idea you had once.

try this week: write one page: what I want out of life, the five things that matter in order and why, and two things I am weak at. put it where you see it in the morning. set a reminder to rewrite it a year from today.