Hundreds of millions of people have viewed my videos, read my books, and interacted with me at my events. By far, the number one question that people ask is some variation of, “What is my purpose?” or “How do I find my passion?”   

I’ve had people who were at rock bottom and homeless ask me this question. I’ve also met millionaires stuck on the same problem. Finding your purpose isn’t something that discriminates. Everyone wants to find it. It’s a human need.  

Think about your five closest friends. Are they happy? Do they live their lives with purpose? Do you? We put on a fake front for what we want people to see and think about us, but the reality is most people aren’t happy. We’re lost. We settle. You can’t be happy if you don’t know your purpose. It’s not possible. You want more, but you don’t even know where to start. You know there is more out there. You see others having success, and you want it too; there is nothing wrong with that. You just need help finding your purpose so you can find the success you see all around you. You can be productive, crush your goals, and pretend that all the things you’ve acquired actually mean something…but at the end of the day, if you don’t know your purpose you’ll always feel like there’s something missing. You’ll know that you’re capable of more and that you’re not living the life you should be. You might be fooling the world, but you’re not fooling the person looking back at you in the mirror. You need to find your actual power source. 

Once you find your purpose, it’ll fuel you for life. You’ll do things that you never thought you were capable of. Achieving your purpose will force you to morph into a stronger version of yourself. You’ll have to push through the fears, insecurities, and doubts that have held you back. But somehow, it’ll all feel possible and necessary because you’re purpose driven now…and that’s the only thing you’ll ever need. 

They don’t want to stick with one company forever. It doesn’t make sense to them. And the people in my middle-aged audience also don’t want to end up like their parents. They want to escape the confines of the job they took out of college. We all are feeling held back, stuck in complacency.  

We could depend on them to know the answers and steer us in the right direction. But in the past two decades, the world has transformed completely. The rules people lived by no longer apply. The opportunities open to you were not available when your parents were your age. Staying in the job you got out of college until you retire doesn’t make sense anymore. Technology has changed how we live, buy, work, and even raise families. Generations of people are looking for answers—the very answers that are in this book.  

Some people are built to serve the world. Others want to serve the twenty-five closest people to them. But in either case, humans are built to serve. If you’re not happy right now, it’s because you’re not serving enough people, or you’re not serving the people in your life deeply enough. But whom do you serve? How do you serve? And once you’ve found the answers to these questions, how can you make money serving so you can help even more people? That’s what we’re going to figure out together in this book.  

Anyone, at any stage in their life, can apply it to their own lives. You are currently three steps away from true fulfillment. I’ve been helping people for twenty years in my work with entrepreneurs, and that work has built this process from the ground up. It’s a method that has helped my content reach hundreds of millions of people around the world and led to institutions like Forbes and Inc. magazine calling me one of the best speakers on the planet. It’s a simple, repeatable, foolproof method that helps people who come in feeling lost leave feeling transformed. I know that these three steps work. They worked for me, and I’ve seen them help thousands of people. Now, they can work for you too. 

You just haven’t found it yet, or you have and you don’t #Believe in yourself enough to go all in on it. You’re a genius. You’re amazing. You were not meant to live a photocopy of someone else’s life. You were not created to wake up and do work that is below your capabilities. You have Michael Jordan level talent at something and need to uncover exactly what your purpose is and how you can serve. 

What do you stand for? What is your single most important core value? Most people have no idea. They’ve never been asked that question before. So I’ll ask probing questions like, “Who was your favorite teacher growing up? What is your favorite movie of all time? What is your favorite song?”  

For example, you don’t love Mrs. Jones because she taught you eighth-grade math. You love her because she was the only teacher who didn’t make you feel like an outsider. She made you feel like you belonged. Now it makes sense why your favorite movie is Hercules, because he was half god, half human and never felt like he belonged in either the land of the gods or the humans. Now it makes sense why “Go the Distance” by Michael Bolton is your favorite song, because that line, “When I go the distance, I'll be right where I belong,” always hits you emotionally. Your most important core value is belonging.  

When I do this live with people, at this point they’re usually stunned. How did this stranger break them down so quickly in five minutes, when they’ve lived their entire life without knowing what they stand for? How does so much of their life now suddenly make sense, when they felt lost only moments before? 

It’s finding who you are. And knowing that you stand for belonging allows you to set a course for your life. You now know that being in a business, a job, a relationship where you don’t feel like you belong is going to be toxic for you, no matter how much money you make or how much you look like you’re winning by any other metric. It’s a life-changing experience for people.  

When I do this in my workshops, it requires courage from people. They’re standing up in a room full of strangers, being asked to share their most intimate, private, painful moment of all time. They’re afraid to share it, but for some reason they want to, because in those five minutes we’ve built up enough rapport where they feel safe. Some people know exactly what their most painful moment was. Others have no idea. They’ve never been asked this question before and they’ve buried the pain so deep that they don’t want to live it again. But eventually it comes out. For example, you moved to America from overseas as a young child and were bullied for your accent and for being different. You felt like an outsider and that you never belonged. There’s that word again! I explain that your purpose comes from your pain—that your greatest joy in life will come from helping others who currently are going through the pain that you went through. In this example, your purpose is to help outsiders feel like they belong. 

Many people start crying. It’s like I just looked into their soul and touched them at the core of who they are. Their entire life, they had no idea what they should do, and they suffered in silence. In ten minutes together, we just figured everything out. They realize that they have worth, that their struggle could actually be helpful, and that maybe, for the first time in their life, they could feel empowered and important. This is what I call your Why. Your purpose comes from your pain, and we’ll find it together in this book. 

They’re with you for life. When you’re ninety-five years old, you won’t stop caring about belonging. In fact, it’ll likely only become stronger as you gain more confidence with it. You also won’t stop wanting to help outsiders feel like they belong. You’ll only double down on it as you gain more wisdom and strength with time. Your Who and your Why tell you who you are and your purpose for the rest of your life. They are incredibly powerful, and they give you more self-awareness than 99 percent of the world has right now.  

You were an outsider with an accent who didn’t fit in and were bullied. How did you get through it? How did you cope? You’re so much stronger now than you were. You have a thicker skin, more self-confidence, massive resilience. How? What did you do? You might say that it was hard. That you weren’t always like this. But through meditation you fixed it. Amazing! This is the start of what I call your How. How you got through that terrible situation is teachable. You can show others how to do it as well. Maybe you sell meditation videos, create a meditation center, teach at a meditation school, host meditation retreats, or any number of options. But the exact meditation that pulled you out is a recipe to pull others out too. And as you continue to find new ways to make outsiders feel like they belong, you can teach, sell, and help more people. Your How is your passion. It’s what you will love to do everyday to help others. Your How will evolve. In 2020, maybe it’s selling meditation retreats. In 2030, maybe it’s virtual reality and holographic versions of you beaming into people’s living rooms. Your Who and Why are constant. Your How will evolve as technology, markets, and you evolve. 

Lee from Atlanta was a college dropout who didn’t know what to do next in his life. He had a job as a car salesman but wasn’t fulfilled. We discovered that his Who (core value) was trust. His Why (most painful moment) was being held back in school and always feeling like he had something to prove. His How (passion) was studying success, which inspired him to become an achiever. He became the car salesman who sells to achievers who have something to prove and wins by building immediate trust with them. 

Ronni from Salt Lake City realized that her Who was joy. Her Why was that she was abused as a child and fell victim to abuse again in her first marriage. As a child, she would decorate her room like a fantasyland that she could escape to. She went on to study interior design, and I helped her find her How—a new business as the interior designer for children who are victims of abuse and are now healing. She could create fantasylands for them to find joy, just like she did for herself growing up. 

John from Tulsa was successful but not fulfilled. It looked like he had it all: a huge house, millions of dollars, a great family. But he couldn’t connect his work to a purpose. I found that his Who was peace. His Why was being an immigrant from a war-torn country who had to leave his family behind. His How has been to connect people on both sides of the war to make peace happen. Now he wants to spread a message of peace around the world. He has just started as a speaker and is taking stages to start to share his story. For the first time he feels like a real success.