The discussion on Facebook centered around whether FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire early) should come with a warning label. Based on my podcast episode with Vicki Robin and Douglas Tsoi, we had firmly planted ourselves in the “yes” camp. While focusing all your energy on money in the short term feels great, reaching your goal ultimately can become sort of…well…hollow.
“I have enough money…now what?”
We naturally then turn to purpose. Maybe in order to protect ourselves from the hollow mirage of worshipping wealth, we need to pivot to asking what purpose looks like in our lives and how we achieve it to maximize health and happiness. Which is exactly the point in which the paradox sets in. The purpose paradox.
Let’s look at a Facebook commenters (Patrick) response to my discussion with Vicki and Douglas:
Patrick succinctly states the quandary. Moving from big audacious money goals to big audacious purpose goals sets us on a path that I like to call the achievement treadmill. No matter how much money or success we accumulate, we generally habituate back to a baseline level of happiness. We are hedonically chasing an unreachable goal. Happiness must exist outside of a goal post.
It turns out, reaching the top of the mountain isn’t all that gratifying.
But here is where the paradox part comes in. Study after study shows that having a sense of purpose in life is associated with more longevity, health, and happiness. Here are just a few:
A 2019 study in the JAMA Network Open looked at the association of purpose in life and overall mortality among US adults over the age of 50. The study concluded that a stronger sense of purpose in life was associated with not only a decreased overall mortality but also less of a chance of dying of heart, circulatory, and blood disorders specifically.
A 2021 study, also using the US Health and Retirement data, showed that those in the top versus lowest quartile of purpose in life had a 24% lower chance of becoming physically inactive, 33% lower likelihood of developing sleep problems, and a 22% less chance of being overweight
Roback and Griffin studied 118 college students and had them fill out a series of purpose in life inventories, depression questionnaires, and happiness scales. They found a strong positive relationship between purpose in life and happiness.
Kaylin Ratner looked at adolescents’ daily sense of purposefulness and reported that on days when young people felt more purposeful, they had a greater measurable sense of wellbeing.
There is even data that suggests that employees benefit from managers who create a culture of purpose-driven work in the office.
Yet Larissa Rainey in her sentinel paper entitled, “The Search for Purpose in Life: An Exploration of Purpose, the Search Process, and Purpose Anxiety” came to a completely different conclusion. Her intention was to use the term, purpose anxiety, to encapsulate the negative feelings associated with struggling to find one’s purpose in life.
She found that the great majority of people crave a sense of purpose, and that roughly 91% of them encountered at least some anxiety in their search for it. This purpose anxiety “significantly hampers well-being”. Her intention was not to suggest that individuals should try to avoid pursuing the concept of purpose. But, of course, the associated anxiety that she identifies has actually done just that for many people.
So how do we explain this paradox? How can purpose be the most important thing in our life as well as the cause of so much distress and anxiety? How do we reconcile such disparate findings?
The answer, in my humble opinion, is that we totally get purpose wrong. We see it as a singular phenomenon instead of at least two. One of these types of purpose is associated with all the pain fear, and anxiety. The other is associated with happiness, longevity, and health.
Which type of purpose you choose will make all the difference. The key is to choose wisely.
Which, of course, we will delve more deeply into next week.
Some other Facebook Comments on the subject….
“I think midlife should come with a warning label. Like “warning, this isn’t going to look like more first stage of life achievement”. I wonder if it’s not a FI problem - perhaps a midlife awakening that happens sooner or later for most?”
“From my perspective, most people that come to the fire movement are in the place of needing to focus on their money. To possibly dig out of a bad space, to redefine their life and plan for the future.
“I think what is important is content people like yourself to remind people that money is a part of life, not all of it. I love the conversation, because when trying to meet a goal as big as fire you often have to have a laser focus.
I think we need to remember that for most of the population the rat race is all they know. Making it to their next paycheck is their focus. Solving the money problems is what allows us to come up for air and find true purpose. Fire is about the freedom to find that.”
“For those who have lived their life chasing and achieving goals and those who are optimizing addicts, they are inseparable. As Tara Brach joked in one of her podcast episodes, the first thing we ask our gurus is who currently holds the record for longest meditation . I am wondering whether we can live without a purpose and be peace with it. Living without purpose is easy but I will be constantly stressed that I don't have one.”
Excited for this Jordan! Love your podcast, and will of course be looking forward to your writing here!
P.S. Douglas was one of my first newsletters I subscribed to at Substack...such an underrated writer, so was happy to slhear him on your podcast!