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How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes | Adam Leipzig | TEDxMalibu
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Adam Leipzig has overseen more than 25 movies as a producer, executive and
distributor. and has produced more than 300 stage plays and live events, and he was
one of the founders of the Los Angeles Theatre Center.
AdamLeipzig.com

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Transcript

00:00
Transcriber: Yulia Kallistratova Reviewer: Denise RQ
00:36
On the last evening of my 25th college reunion,
00:41
there was a party in a tent
00:45
with dancing, and music, and noise.
00:48
So much noise that a lot of us started to drift out of the tent
00:52
so we could hear each other talk and catch up with classmates
00:55
that we had not seen in more than 2 decades.
00:59
As I talked with my friends I made an astounding discovery:
01:03
80% of them were unhappy with their lives.
01:09
"I feel as though I've wasted my life, and I'm half way through it," they said.
01:14
"I don't know what my life is all about."
01:18
I was privileged to go to Yale,
01:21
and we were standing on a summer evening in the middle of Yale's old campus,
01:26
and the people that I was speaking with were privileged, and highly educated,
01:32
and financially well off, and in positions of power.
01:35
And they had the first house, and the second house,
01:39
and they had the first spouse, and the second spouse.
01:43
(Laughter)
01:44
And 80% of them were unhappy with their lives.
01:49
Who was happy, the 20%?
01:52
Well, we had studied literature and Renaissance rhetoric,
01:57
and we were the theater people, and the history geeks.
02:01
We had studied classes for the joy of learning,
02:05
not because we thought they were going to put direct us to a specific job.
02:09
We still got jobs,
02:11
we were living our lives expansively,
02:14
with life's ups and downs,
02:16
and we did not feel that we had wasted a single minute.
02:21
And as I spoke with the 20%, the happier 20%,
02:26
I discovered that each of them knew
02:28
something about their life purpose
02:31
because they knew five things:
02:34
who they were, what they did,
02:38
who they did it for,
02:39
what those people wanted or needed,
02:42
and what they got out of it, how they changed as a result.
02:47
Does that sound hard?
02:48
It's not, it's actually really simple.
02:50
In fact it's so simple, that you can learn your life purpose now.
02:56
You're going to know your life purpose now, in the next five minutes.
03:00
Would you like to know your life purpose in the next five minutes?
03:03
(Audience) Yes.
03:04
Can you be a little bit louder?
03:05
Because they are making a lot of noise in the tent,
03:08
and there is just a silly little microphone next to my cheek to hear you.
03:11
Would you like to know your life purpose in the next five minutes?
03:15
(Audience) Yes!
03:16
Thank you. Actually, it's not even going to take five minutes.
03:19
So, can I share something else with you?
03:21
If you're like a lot of us,
03:23
you have wondered and worried about your life purpose for a long time,
03:27
and there are books, and magazines, and workshops, and seminars about it.
03:31
In fact, Amazon lists 151,928 books
03:37
that refer to how you can learn your life purpose.
03:41
(Laughter)
03:43
Well, I know some people who have spent their entire lives
03:46
trying to learn their life purpose.
03:48
Look, we can all agree that the unexamined life is not worth living,
03:52
but if all you're doing is examining, you're not living.
03:57
(Laughter)
03:58
So, let's figure out the life purpose right now together:
04:02
who you are, what you do, who you do it for,
04:06
what those people want and need, and how they change as a result.
04:10
Shall we do it? (Audience) Yes.
04:12
All right.
04:13
Everybody, on the count of five, shout out your first name.
04:16
One, two, three, four, five:
04:17
(Audience shouts)
04:19
Fabulous.
04:20
That was the first one, only four to go.
04:22
That's who you are. (Laughter)
04:24
Now, what do you do?
04:25
What do you love to do?
04:27
Do you love to write, cook, design,
04:31
create iOS apps, write code, crunch numbers, talk, teach?
04:38
What do you love to do?
04:39
And if there is a lot of things that come up for you
04:41
focus it down by asking yourselves this one question:
04:45
what is the one thing that right now
04:47
you feel supremely qualified to teach other people?
04:52
Think about that in one word.
04:54
Hold it. Don't release it yet. On the count of five.
04:56
What do you do?
04:58
One, two, three, four, five:
05:00
(Audience shouts)
05:02
Great. That's what you do.
05:04
Now, think about who you do it for, picture them in your mind,
05:07
be ready to say it on the count of five.
05:09
Hold it, don't release it yet.
05:11
One, two, three, four, five:
05:13
(Audience murmurs)
05:15
OK, who do you do it for, let's see it one more time.
05:17
A little bit louder, please, over the people in the tent.
05:20
Who do you do it for? Together:
05:22
(Audience shouts)
05:23
Thank you. That is the spirit that we need. OK, now.
05:26
What do all those people want or need?
05:28
What do they want or need that you have,
05:30
that they've come to you so you can give them this thing.
05:32
What do they want or need? In just one or two words.
05:35
Hold it, don't release it yet.
05:36
And on the count of five: one, two, three, four, five...
05:40
(Audience shouts)
05:41
Fantastic. Now, this is the best one.
05:43
How do they change?
05:45
How do they change or transform as a result of what you give them?
05:49
On the count of five,
05:51
how do they change or transform as a result of what you give them?
05:54
One, two, three, four, five:
05:57
(Audience shouts)
05:59
Terrific. Now we're going to put this all together kind of in a sentence, OK?
06:03
Everyone together, louder than the people in the tent:
06:06
who are you?
06:07
(Audience responds)
06:08
What do you do?
06:10
(Audience responds)
06:11
Who do you do it for?
06:13
(Audience responds)
06:14
What do they want or need?
06:16
(Audience responds)
06:17
How do they change as a result?
06:18
(Audience responds)
06:19
Fantastic.
06:20
You have all just done something
06:22
that people who went to Yale could not figure out for 25 years.
06:26
Congratulations. Give yourselves a hand. (Applause)
06:29
Now, why is that formulation so powerful?
06:33
Because of all of those five things that you need to know
06:36
to know what your life purpose is,
06:37
only two are about yourself.
06:40
The other three of them are about other people:
06:43
who they are, what they want or need,
06:46
and how they change as a result.
06:50
That formulation forces you to be outward facing.
06:53
And all the happier people that I met outside the tent
06:56
on that warm New Haven night
06:58
they were outward facing, they were not inward facing.
07:01
They knew very clearly whom they served, what those people needed,
07:05
and how those people changed as a result.
07:08
And you may have intuited this already
07:10
that the most successful people in any field always focus most
07:15
on the people that they serve than on how they are served themselves.
07:20
Happier people make it a point to make other people happy,
07:25
and do things that make them feel well taken care of and secure.
07:30
If you make other people happy, life teaches us,
07:33
we will be taken care of, too.
07:35
So since you all did so well, we have time for just a little bit of extra credit.
07:39
(Laughter)
07:41
One of the most difficult things
07:42
that happens when you meet people for the first time is
07:45
they ask you this question,
07:47
"So, what do you do?"
07:49
And, if you're like some of us,
07:51
that's a really challenging question sometimes.
07:53
Particularly, if you're in these moments where you're between things,
07:57
or you're feeling vulnerable, or it isn't defined.
08:00
Or, what you seem to do isn't what you really do,
08:04
or what you paid to do isn't how you define yourself.
08:08
So, when people ask you this question, "So, what do you do?"
08:10
and also, you've got this mental monologue going on,
08:13
"Why is he asking me? So, what do I do? Is it because..."
08:16
It's that transactional thing where it's like: "He wants to know
08:19
if he should really spend time talking to me?"
08:21
(Laughter)
08:22
Or, it's that other thing, so he can tell me what he does
08:25
because he's sure it's, "Oh, really, so much better than what I do?"
08:29
(Laughter)
08:29
Right?
08:30
So, when somebody asks you that question, here's what you do:
08:34
you just say the very last thing you called out,
08:37
how what you do changes the people you do it for.
08:40
So, for example, you might say, "I give kids awesome dreams."
08:48
If your life purpose is: "I write books for children,
08:52
so they can fall asleep at night, so they can have awesome dreams."
08:57
Or you might say: "I help people look and feel their best,"
09:02
if your life purpose is:
09:04
"I design apparel for men and women who need affordable choices,
09:08
so they can look and feel their best."
09:11
Or you might say: "I help people get great work into the world,"
09:17
if your life purpose is:
09:19
"I train entrepreneurs and creative people to take decisive actions,
09:24
so they can get their greatest work into the world."
09:28
And then,
09:30
that little snippet that you just said
09:33
becomes your personal elevator pitch.
09:35
And it will always start a conversation
09:37
because the person that you were just talking to
09:40
has to ask you a question,
09:41
"How do you give kids great dreams?"
09:44
"How do you help people look and feel their best?"
09:47
"Can people really get their greatest work into the world?"
09:51
And then you get to tell them,
09:54
and you get to share your life purpose.
09:58
And you get to share how they may come to learn theirs, too.
10:03
(Applause)

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