Lean Out Podcast

Purpose with Jordan Grumet

• Dawn Baker • Season 3 • Episode 1

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In this kickoff to Season 3 of the Lean Out Podcast, Dawn Baker talks with Jordan Grumet. Jordan is a physician, financial independence writer and podcast host, and author of the book Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. His newest book is titled The Purpose Code: How to Unlock Meaning, Maximize Happiness, and Leave a Lasting Legacy, and it’s out in stores this month.

Jordan shares his journey from burned out doctor to dedicated student of what it truly means to have purpose. He discusses the differences between audacious, achievement-oriented, anxiety-riddled purpose, and the kind of quiet purpose that comes only from doing the little things that light us up. This episode will resonate deeply with anyone seeking a more balanced, meaningful life.

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Welcome to the lean out podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Don baker. Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance? You've come to the right. Place. For inspiration. information. and a community. community. of like-minded. Professionals. Let's get to the show. Hello? Hello. Thanks for being here. This is the official start to season three of the lean out podcast. I hope you all had a really nice holiday. And in the new year, I'm going to continue to bring you a mix of inspiring professionals on Lena journeys, solo casts with just me talking about mindset and helpful other helpful subjects. And I'll be adding in some more expert interviews. Like the one I have for you today. I'd love it. If you would give me a little belated Christmas present today. Could you pause this episode right now? Or if you can't pause because you're driving do it when you're able and go leave a review for the show on iTunes or Spotify. I'd really appreciate this small free gift. That you could give me to help boost the podcast in searches and help more people find it when they're searching for similar content. Thank you again so much. So as the kickoff to season three, I have a very special guest for you. His name is Jordan Gromit. Jordan earned his medical degree from Northwestern university and completed his residency in internal medicine in Northbrook, Illinois. Presently he serves as an associate medical director at unity hospice. At unity hospice. Jordan is many things. Uh, physician financial independence, writer and podcast host keynote speaker and author of the book taking stock. Uh, hospice doctor's advice on financial independence, building wealth and living a regret free life. His new book is titled the purpose code and it's out in stores this month. Jordan's journey, intertwines, medical insight, and financial wisdom. Resonating deeply with those seeking a balanced, meaningful life. I'm so excited for this episode, if you're like. MI. You're probably in a period of reflection after the holidays with the start of the new year. So this conversation is definitely for you. Today, we're going to discuss Jordan's personal journey of purpose, the differences between the right kind of purpose and the kind that leaves you feeling empty, or maybe even a little anxious. We'll also talk about specific tools you can use to find your purpose and how we can leave a legacy and live a regret free life. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jordan.

JG-Dawn

Jordan Grumet, welcome to the Lean Out podcast. I'm really happy to see you again.

JG-Jordan

I am really happy to have a great conversation.

JG-Dawn

So you're a doctor, a podcaster in the financial space, and now you're an author. Tell me about you and your journey getting to where you are today.

JG-Jordan

Well, it really started as a kid. I was a seven year old looking up to my father and he had a brain aneurysm and died suddenly. And my father was an oncologist, a cancer doctor. So I cosmically decided that somehow his death was my fault. Cause I was seven years old and most little kids see things through the lens of they are responsible for everything. It's a very self centered time in our lives. And so I decided that the way to make up for this cosmic problem was to become a physician like him. And actually that. Really became the backbone of my sense of purpose throughout my childhood. It became my identity and it was joyful. I was very excited about this. I went into medicine with gusto and eventually went to medical school residency and I started practicing as a doctor and I found that it wasn't as joyful as I thought it would be. And in fact, I burned out within a bunch of years and I was looking for a way out. I was like, how do I leave medicine? And yet still have enough money to survive because of that. I discovered the financial independence retire early movement. Basically this idea, you could accumulate enough money so that you didn't have to work in that money could support you. And I eventually got to that vaunted place where my net worth was enough. I could finally leave medicine. And instead of being so excited and ready, I was. I actually found myself having panic attacks because I had identified as a doctor so long my sense of purpose was being a doctor for so long I didn't know what else to do with my life. So what I decided is I slowly subtracted out what I didn't like about medicine. I made my practice better and better and got rid of things I didn't like. But in the meantime, I started pursuing things that felt purposeful, one of which was personal finance. I started a blog and then a podcast. And I was having these conversations in my podcast about not just how to make money or how to be a great entrepreneur or businessman, but we started talking about the, why, like, why do we do what we do and what does enough money look like? And we were having all sorts of problems really answering that question. It's a question that's difficult, but the one part of medicine I was still practicing was hospice medicine. That's taking care of the terminally ill and dying. And I found that while taking care of my patients, they were answering some of those subtle questions that I couldn't answer with my financial podcast. Why are we accumulating money? What does it serve us? What will we regret when we're on our deathbed? I started getting a much better feeling for how we integrate things like purpose, identity, and connections. Into our financial journey. And so I wrote a book called taking stock all about that. And as I was marketing that book back in August of 2022, I kept getting the same question over and over again. Your book says, find a sense of purpose, identity, and connections and build a financial framework around it. But I've been looking for purpose my whole life and I'm frustrated. I don't know what purpose is. I can't find it. And in fact, I'm getting kind of angry that people like you keep on telling me I have to find my purpose. After getting this response multiple times, I started doing a bunch of research into it and I found two things that seemed to be amazingly contradictory. One is purpose is associated with health, longevity, and happiness. It was clearly associated tons of scientific studies. On the other hand, other studies showed that 91 percent or more of people get something called purpose anxiety. This idea that purpose makes them anxious and depressed. That was a paradox. How do we solve that paradox? It became my next book, the purpose code.

JG-Dawn

Yeah, and this book is coming out in January of 2025. So, with purpose anxiety, it sounds like a lot of people have talked to you about having this and you may have experienced this yourself. With the high octane professions that we're in, the medicine, law, tech, finance, those kinds of things, I imagine that this can interplay with Burnout and imposter syndrome and some of the things that really get people stuck. So how do you see that interplay?

JG-Jordan

Well, it's interesting. And what I found in this book is that one of the reasons we get purpose wrong is we think it's one thing, and it's probably two things at least. And one of those things is associated with disappointment and burnout and fatigue and purpose, anxiety. And then the other is probably more likely associated with health, longevity, and happiness. So let me talk about the more common type of purpose that we've almost been indoctrinated to believe by society. This is what I call big P purpose. This is this idea that we have this one big audacious sense of purpose that we are supposed to follow our whole lives. And it's supposed to change the world. It's very goal oriented things like I should become president, or I should become a major league baseball star, or I should become an astronaut. These are these really big dreams and goals that everyone tells us that we should try to reach. Here's the problem with those often get to become president. Or to become an astronaut or to become a major league baseball player, you need to be the right person at the right time, doing the right things with the right genetics, and most likely having a good deal of luck. So these are all or nothing propositions. You either make it to that goal or you don't make it to that goal. And so. Often we don't have nearly as much agency as we think we should to get to these goals. And it leads to disappointment and burnout because we are hitting our head against the wall, bashing up against it, trying as hard as we can. But because only a very few people can reach these huge goals, most likely we're going to fail that leads to disappointment. It leads to burnout. It generally leads to us feeling anxious. Like there's this thing we're supposed to be doing and we're not doing it appropriately. That I think is what's associated with purpose anxiety. What I suggest is there's something called little P purpose now, little P purpose, as opposed to this bigger purpose is more associated with the process as opposed to the goal. So instead of focusing on whether we meet a goal or not, we're focusing on the process of doing things that we enjoy doing as opposed to being all or nothing or scarce, the way becoming president is. Has big P purpose. It's very, very abundant. There are a million things we could enjoy doing, and instead of being all or nothing, it's all or all. And so instead of feeling disappointed, we actually feel like we have a huge amount of agency to look into those things We enjoy doing, spend more time doing those and deciding that if we reach a goal, great, but if we don't reach that goal, if we enjoyed the process of doing what we're doing. We're going to be excited either way. And let me give you a perfect example. I can give you my medical career. It's the perfect example. I thought that I was going to change the world by becoming a doctor. I was going to save all these people. I was going to do something which made me famous. Maybe I was going to be this big academic physician. I was going to lead the department. I was going to do all these really huge, big things. And what I found over time is that I got more and more burnt out and I wasn't reaching these huge goals. I was doing a great job. I was being a good doctor. I was making enough money, but it felt like the goals were always too far away. Interestingly enough, in my first week of medical school, I volunteered. In the inpatient hospice program, and I love doing hospice work, especially with that history of my father dying when I was young, I felt connected to these people who are dealing with death. Now at some point in my career, I decided that being a hospice physician wasn't enough, like it wasn't prestigious enough, I couldn't reach these big goals doing it, maybe I couldn't make enough money doing it. So I left hospice to do all these other things I didn't like. Like, and in fact, as I finally got to be financially independent, I paired away everything I didn't like about medicine. What I was left with was hospice medicine. So let's say instead of going for the big P purpose of changing the world, saving lots of lives, becoming this major academic physician, let's say instead I went for the little P purposes. I feel really connected to doing hospice work. I'm not worried about the goal. It's just showing up every day and being with people and helping them. If I had done that, and started my career in hospice and never did all these other things, I probably never would have burned out. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten to financial independence as fast because I wouldn't have made as much money, but I would have been enjoying my career. So it wouldn't have mattered. I would have done really well. And so when it comes down to it, even if in the first place, I had reached some of those goals, let's say I had found a cure for cancer. I had become lead physician at Harvard medical school or something really awesome. If I wasn't enjoying the process, it means that 95 percent of my time, I would have been doing something. I didn't like all to get to that goal, which I probably would have enjoyed for a few days, weeks, or months. But then I would be goal setting towards something bigger and then getting in the midst of a process. I didn't enjoy again. So when we. Really set ourselves on these goals. We're really sacrificing 95 percent of our time for that joy. We think we're going to feel in the 5%. And so I found that if we instead take joy in the doing and the process in the little P purpose, we end up enjoying ourselves more in our career as well as in life.

JG-Dawn

Yeah, and it's interesting that you brought up the idea that, well, if I had just gone into that and hadn't been worried about this whole big P thing and the accolades and the achievements, then maybe I wouldn't have burned out and my life would have been different. In preparation for this interview, I was talking to my husband about this, because you bring up the idea of regrets in your book, too, regret of inaction, regret of action. And I was thinking, back to times when I might have had regret, and I'm like, you know what, but at the same time, when you have a regret, you learned from it. So there's always a way to, reframe that. You know, as a learning experience. And so if you hadn't gone through your path the way that you did, you wouldn't have come to all these realizations and gone through all this research. So in a way, it's you know, it's a good thing. But it's just an interesting thing to think about.

JG-Jordan

What you're doing is actually something I described in the book. It's the difference between meaning and purpose. And what you've just done is you've ascribed meaning to my journey. And so I talk about meaning as being our cognitive way of looking at our past. It's the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And happy people do exactly what you just did is we take our stories and we remold and retell them in such a way that we were a hero, not a victim. So I could look at this story and said, woe is me. I burned out. I spent my whole career doing something horrible. And of course, if that was my sense of meaning, it'd be hard to move forward in the present and future because purpose is all about action and present future. It'd be hard for me to move into the present and future and take action. If my conception of my past. Was that a victimhood? Instead, I choose to think just the way you described is, yes, I probably took some wrong turns, but look at the depth of knowledge and understanding I now have to take into my present and future. So this is ascribing a better sense of meaning so that we can walk into the present and future, walk into our purpose more intentionally and feeling. Better about things. And I think that's what we really, really need to do. It's that connection between having a good sense of meaning, telling yourself that hero story, which allows you to be a lot more purposeful in the present, because here's the real message. A lot of the reason why people really go after big audacious purposes, because they feel like they're not enough inside. And the way I'm going to feel enough is I'm going to do something amazing. And so you're trying to purpose your way to enough, but the real secret is the key to enough has nothing to do with purpose. It actually has to do with meaning when we ascribe a better sense of our past and tell ourselves a hero story We realize we were always enough and that we can go into our present and future not have to prove that anymore And so we can let go of this kind of big audacious I need to change the world thing and can really focus more in what feels really meaningful today What feels like a good use of my time now We can talk about this fact. I actually believe that through little p purpose, we actually have a more lasting legacy and impact than you would through big P purpose. That's kind of beside the point. But I think Once you feel enough on the inside, once you have a really good sense of meaning, you're much more likely to enjoy little P Purpose in the present and future.

JG-Dawn

That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Actually, you have this quote in the book that says, the best way to create a legacy is by investing more in purpose. And a lot of us want to leave a legacy in some way. And it reminds me of the concept that I have in my book, Lean Out, about being an authentic leader. So explain how you leave a legacy by focusing on your little p purpose.

JG-Jordan

I'd love to. And let's start with a story actually told at the beginning of my book. When I was little, I met a very special person who deeply impacted my life. But they did so without trying. In fact, I would say that they were just pursuing their little P Purpose, and by a side effect, by an accident, it happened to really change my life. There was an antique store down the road from my house, and the guy who ran it, his name was Roman, And he would fix up furniture and sell it to people in his antique store. And one day he was in the midst of fixing up a piece of furniture and armoire and found a bunch of baseball cards in one of the drawers. So he called the guy who owned the armoire, who sold it to him. And he said, look, Do you want these baseball cards? What should I do with them? The guy said, no, keep them, do whatever you want. Roman took the baseball cards. He put them on his counter. Didn't even think about it. Well, a few days later, a teenager came in with his mom who was looking around and the teenager looked at the baseball cards and said, how much for those cards? My Roman had no idea what they were worth. So he said, you know, a 10 bucks and the kid happily gave him 10. He spread the cards out right in front of Roman. It said this one, this one and this one are worth 100 put together. And so Roman wasn't pissed off. He actually was enthralled and something clicked in his mind. He's like, I like this. This feels important to me. And so he had an inkling that this could be a version of Purpose for him, so he hired the kid. He went and taught himself about the baseball card market, and now he started selling baseball cards next to his antiques. And in fact, he did such a good job of it that eventually, a few years into it, he was selling more baseball cards than he was antiques. But that's not what's important. He did this thing because he loved it, not because he thought it was going to make him money. He just, he had the inkling that this was important for him. This was Little P Purpose. But he also created a community in his baseball card store that brought in young kids, especially people like me. My father died when I was seven. I had a learning disability. I had very few friends. I was, I had no sense of confidence, but I go to this baseball card store and we'd have our mentor Roman who would bring us together. He would help us when we were having a bad day. He'd give us a free pack of cards and we'd open up together. And eventually there's this big Group of kids like me, the nerds, the geeks, the people who didn't have friends. All of us would get together and we formed a community over those years. I changed. I became more confident. I felt like I belonged. I actually connected with some people and became friends that had a profound effect on my life. I went into the world, a much stronger, smarter, more connected kid. And so did dozens of other kids who found their way. At Roman's antique shops, collecting baseball cards. Roman eventually got cancer. He had to close his baseball card shop and died a few years later. But 30 years later, now I'm still talking about Roman, who all he did was pursue his little P purpose. But you know who I don't talk about at all. I almost never talk about Mickey Mantle. Now, Mickey Mantle was one of the best baseball players ever. won all sorts of awards. And as a little kid, I loved to collect his baseball cards. I don't really think about Mickey Mantle that much because if I had decided a sense of big P purpose, I wanted to be like Mickey Mantle. I wanted to be a major league baseball player. I wanted to be one of the greatest. There have been millions of people who made Mickey Mantle their big P purpose and 999, 999 of them all. fail. Because they weren't the right person at the right time with the right skills and the right genetics and the right amount of luck. And they didn't have agency to become that good because only a very few people can. 30 years later, Mickey Mantle didn't affect my life at all, but Roman had a profound effect on it. So that's where I think impact really lies. Impact lies in the people we touch when we become intentional and do the things that light us up. Because when we do those things, like a moth to the flame, we attract people with similar interests, and we form bonds and community around that. And I think that's what changes the world. Like a stone dropped into the ocean, it forms a little wave. But over time, that wave connects with other waves and gets bigger at some times and then dissipates to smaller at other times. But eventually it lands on a beach, hundreds of miles away, many, many years later, and it's still there. And that's what little P Purpose is.

JG-Dawn

I love that example of Roman versus Mickey. And it's bringing up for me some other issues that I think are really common in parenting today, which are, uh, and you talk about this a little bit in the book too, having your purpose be somebody else and how that is misguided. Parents sometimes will have their purpose be their children. And They want their child to become the next Tiger Woods or the next Mickey Mantle, if you will, and it's easy to see all of those things nowadays because there's social media and because there's internet and there's all this TV and multiple channels and so, people get caught up in the idea that their kid can be a prodigy. And they push for that, and it leads to the kids being burned out, the kids being resentful, you know, occasionally. Sometimes it works out, like you said, but it's like, 0. 1%. Of the time.

JG-Jordan

Here's my take on that. If you feel like it's your purpose to turn your kids into the next Tiger Woods, I would argue that that actually felt like your purpose and not theirs. And so you're co opting their purpose. Primal sense of internal purpose and trying to replace it with yours. Your kids would be better served for you to say, okay, I have this purpose anchor. I love golf. I loved watching tiger woods. I could go for big audacious purpose by trying to become tiger woods myself, but probably that's unlikely. I'm already have kids. I haven't been practicing for the last few decades. But I couldn't build or create a sense of purpose around golf or around watching golf or around tiger woods. So I could start a fan club. I could start a golf league with my friends. I could start a podcast or a blog about golfing. I could develop a product that golfers could use. If I went after my own sense of little P purpose, I could create some real happiness for myself. By doing some of these things that light me up, because I know what this purpose anchor in my life is, it's Tiger Woods and golf. And instead of trying to force my kid to become what I want them to be or what feels like purpose to me, I could give my kid a great example of what living a life full of little p purpose looks like and give them permission to start looking for things in their life that light them up. Because ultimately our kids are going to most likely model us and And I want my kid to have permission when they turn 25 and 30 to actually go after the life that they want a life full of purpose. And the best way to do that is not to show them that I invested in them, but better to show them that I invested in myself. And that they're then allowed to do the same thing. And that's why I think people can't be your purpose because ultimately, if you really want to serve those people in your life, they want to see you most intentional and lit up doing the things that you love and you become that template. I often talk about my maternal grandfather who loved math. And so he was a CPA and back in the 1950s, he would sit my mom on his lap and back then they didn't have computers, right? So there were these big spreadsheets and he would show her as he filled in all the different bubbles in the spreadsheets. And he was showing her his sense of little p purpose. Now as a little girl, then she could try on that sense of purpose, try on that identity and see if it fit her or not. In this case, it happened to, and so she became a CPA herself. That's what we're looking for. It's not just investing in the person it's investing in yourself and giving them the permission to do the same.

JG-Dawn

I love that you've said permission because that is really the essence of leaning out is giving yourself permission to take a different path than what everyone else is doing and not necessarily go with the status quo and expect that that is supposed to be your purpose. That, whatever your path, everybody else is taking in the traditional, way that you look at the profession of medicine or law or something else that you need to do that to be good, to be enough, to be successful. So yes, that is just such a great way of putting it. One thing I would also like to ask you about is the nuts and bolts, because this is called the Purpose Code, so Cracking the Code, the tools, the nuts and bolts of how you can find little p purpose, such as the life review, the subtraction exercise, and those kind of things.

JG-Jordan

So what I always say is you don't find purpose, you create it, but it is true that we have to create purpose around an idea, an inkling, a beckoning. I call these purpose anchors. And so when we say we're trying to find purpose, what I think more we're really meaning is we're trying to find these anchors of purpose so that we can then build a life of purpose around them because it's a very active thing. Remember, purpose is action oriented. And so the big question for a lot of people is, well, how do I find these purpose anchors? And in the book, I talk of a number of ways we can do this. From my first book, Taking Stock, I talked a lot about the life review. Now, this is a structured series of questions that we as hospice professionals sometimes go through with our patients to review their lives and talk about what was important to them. What were their biggest, what were their biggest accomplishments? What were their biggest failures? Who are the people that were important in their lives? And what were some of their regrets? So the life review in a living person who doesn't have a terminal illness is a great way to start thinking about what are some of those anchors of purpose. And I love to talk about regrets specifically because regrets in a dying person is really disappointing because we don't have agency usually when we're dying to fix these things. But regrets in a young and healthy person, it's just another term for purpose. If you're regretting something, it's time to build a life around that anchor and build some purpose around it to not regret it any longer. So the life review is a really good way to start. Another is to do something that a lot of people never think about, but People often they're like, I have no sense of purpose. I don't like my job. I'm just making money. What am I doing? So I often tell people, well, look at work and use the art of subtraction. Get rid of everything you hate about work. Is there anything you like or love? Now I experienced this with my job. I hated a lot about my work life, but I love the little piece, those few hours I spent every week doing hospice. So by subtracting out what I didn't like, I found there were some things about work I did like. So if you use the art of subtraction, Is there a day that's better than the rest of your work week? Are there moments when you're leading a meeting or doing a specific activity that lights you up more than others? That could be the inkling of a purpose anchor that you can then build more purpose around. Another way is to look at the joys of childhood. I think a lot about what purpose looks like for me. I have tons of purposeful things in my life. If I ever ran out, I could always go back to my joy of baseball cards in childhood. I loved baseball cards. Every time I see a news article about baseball or baseball cards, it catches my eye. Even though I haven't watched a baseball game in 30 years, I know that that's an inkling for me. And it's just waiting. If I ever want to build a life of purpose around that. So look at your childhood. What did you love? Did you love horse riding? Did you love collecting things? Did you love building things? A lot of times those are our real purpose anchors. But as we get older, society tells us we don't focus on those things. We have to get a job and we have to become serious and we have to become adults, but often purpose. surrounds these things that we loved as children because children innately know what they like doing. So we mentioned the life review. We mentioned subtraction. We mentioned the joys of childhood. Last but not least, I mentioned just another one. Let's say you do all that and you can't find anything you like. There's always the spaghetti method. Throw a bunch of things against the wall and see what sticks. In other words, say yes to activities you don't normally say yes to. Hang out with people you don't normally hang out with. There's always Think about things that doing them makes you anxious and maybe sign up for a few of those to see what happens. If any of that sparks joy while you're doing it, think about whether you can use that as an anchor to build a life of purpose around. The key here when you're looking at these purpose anchors to is. We have to let go of this idea that purpose has to be lifelong, that it has to change the world. We have to let go of this idea that we can have only one sense of purpose. You can have multiple senses of purpose. You can do multiple purposeful activities at a time. A purposeful activity can last a month. It can last a year. It can last 10 years. It doesn't matter. And the minute something isn't feeling joyful doing it anymore, You can leave that sense of purpose and start building or creating a new sense of purpose around something else. And so I want to leave people with this idea that purpose is exceedingly abundant. These anchors are abundant. You just have to have the courage to find them, think about them, identify them, and then build a life of purpose around them. I call them climes. So I use the term the clime in the book and climes are just building purposeful activities around a purpose anchor. And we can have multiple climes in our life. And like I said, climes can last a day, a week, a year. It doesn't matter.

JG-Dawn

Thank you for pointing out that there is an abundance of things we can explore and that purpose is everywhere. And also the idea of the spaghetti method, because I think that is a good fallback. Because when I was thinking about talking to you about this book, I, again, was talking to my husband about my childhood. And I was like, You know, I am interested in completely different things now, and I feel like I'm pretty self aware, and I have a sense of my purpose, but as a child, I was completely different, and I think a lot of it had to do with the kind of experience I had with my parents and the way that they parented me and what I was exposed to because I was a very tall child, but my parents weren't, and they're very tall, but they weren't very athletic. And now I'm into health and athletics, but back then they didn't really give me those opportunities because they weren't that interested in it. And it was something that I kind of always had in the back of my mind, like, maybe I want to try this, but I was a little too scared, and I just, didn't have a lot of role models in that sense, and so I did music, and there was a little bit of like a fixed mindset in my parents where it was like, well, you're good at school, you're good at art, you're good at music, so keep doing those. But I don't really do those in my life. And so I just want to caution people to also think when they think back to their childhood at the elements of the things you were doing. So like, not just like horses or art, but it's also like creation or being outside. So think to the small elements that make up the activity that you were doing, because maybe that is also part of the purpose anchor that you're looking for now.

JG-Jordan

Yeah. And I think you're a perfect example. If I remember your story, correct. For you, it wasn't that. Being a doctor became a purpose anchor. It was actually that realization that to be a more joyful doctor, you had to create more time and space for yourself. You had to lean out. And so that brings in parts of the art of subtraction because you subtracted what you didn't like about your job, but yet you still speak to physicians and speak about this process of leaning out to physicians. So you found that counseling other physicians, helping them live the life that fit their lifestyle more. All of that came from your work too. So it is true, like it doesn't have to be the exact thing that you've experienced, but it can be some variation of that thing. We can build purpose around almost anything. You just have to have some type of anchor to tie it to.

JG-Dawn

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I love that you have lots of different options for people in the book. Lots of different exercises. It seems like at the end of each chapter, there's some sort of exercise that you can do. And each time you start it with, okay, put your phone away, put all your stuff away, take some deep breaths, relax, because a lot of us don't do that. We don't build that stillness in. And when I have clients come to me and they are lost, They don't know what they want, but they know they want something different than what they're doing now. A lot of times the answer is in first taking some time to be with yourself and to be still and then to reflect. So those exercises really go with that.

JG-Jordan

Yeah, and I, you know, one of the hardest things that I've experienced in coaching people, and I'm sure you have, but also in being coached myself, is if you want a different. outcome, you've got to do something differently. And so sometimes that process of Leaning out, turning off all the electronics, stepping away from your busy life and just decompressing is that different thing you need to start doing in order to have a different and hopefully better outcome.

JG-Dawn

Definitely agree with that. So Jordan, are you practicing hospice medicine anymore?

JG-Jordan

I still do a very part time hospice practice. So I run a single team, which takes care of about 80 to a hundred patients. And I run the weekly meetings and I answer texts specifically from the nurses, chaplains and social workers, especially when it comes to clinical issues. But I actually don't see patients themselves anymore. Um, and the joy for me there is that. The hospice nurses, CNAs, and social workers, and chaplains are going into people's homes and providing the most difficult hands on care, and they're basically doing, you know, I'm not a majorly religious person, but they're doing God's work right there in the house with the dying patients, cleaning them up, giving them baths, doing this hard, difficult stuff. And I don't do all that stuff. I mean, bless them for doing those things. I don't do that. But I get to be there on the other side of the phone, making sure they have everything they need. Like they call me and I answer immediately and I make sure that they have all the tools, all the things they need so that they can do the work that really changes the world. And so to me, that's really, really joyful. It allowed me to get rid of the long hours and the nights on call and all that I didn't like about medicine, and yet still feel like I'm helping people and changing the world.

JG-Dawn

It's really a great example of the joy of subtraction that you talk about in the book and in my practice of coaching, a lot of times what the way that I frame it is trying to manage your energy and what are the things that are the way really draining your energy, since a lot of people come to me and say I have no energy to do the things I actually want to do. And so energy management is very important, and I really like that you figured that out for yourself and that you're still involved in the profession in the way that really brings you the most joy.

JG-Jordan

Yeah, I didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So as I think more about life philosophically, you know, I think winning the game Is using our time wisely. And so time passes, no matter what we do, we have zero control over it. The only thing we can control is what activities we spend as that time passes. So we really want to do as many things that we love that feel purposeful during that time and get rid of as many things. That we loathe as possible, right? And so that's that calculus that we're continually trying to refine as we go further and further on in life. Being financially wise gives us one tool to do that. Being intuitive and understanding ourselves is another tool. Having a strong community. Being frugal, all of these things are tools we then can use to improve that calculus of what we do as time passes. So the art of subtraction is a great way to get rid of things you don't like and narrow, for instance, your work life down to what you love. But then with that extra free time, we have the joy of addition. You know, what can we add in that feels purposeful, that nourishes us, that really allows us to be our best selves. And if you can't subtract, and if you can't add, then how can we substitute? If you hate your job, maybe you need to work for a different boss at the same company. Maybe you want to do the same thing, but in a different company. Maybe you want to work for the same company for the same boss, but do a different role. Like, how do we substitute? So. We subtract, we add, we substitute. Those are our levers. And then we have all sorts of tools, like our finances, our community, our joys, our passions, our youth, our time. So we have tools that help us use these levers to maximize time management. And to me, that's as close as we get to winning the game. I don't know any other version of what I'd call happiness, other than filling your time as wisely as possible with purposeful things that fill you up and get, getting rid of all those things. You don't like

JG-Dawn

I love that framework. It's just perfect. And I really want to say that I think this book, just like Taking Stock, it has a very unique perspective from your hospice background. It's something that we don't get to see, people who aren't in that, you know, Area of medicine or aren't in medicine at all. And so it really gives a glimpse of that. It's an important concept, the idea of making sure that you're living a regret free life, that you are, doing the things that you really want to do and being your authentic self. And not getting to that point at the end of your life where you, you wish a bunch of other things. It's really, really a great book. Um, tell us when the book comes out and how people can connect with you and get more information about what you do as well.

JG-Jordan

The book drops January 7th, 2025. And the best way to learn about my book, my podcast, my blog, or any of the ways that I create content is to go to Jordan Grumman. com that's J O R D A N G R U M E T. com. And there you can connect with me about everything.

JG-Dawn

Great. Jordan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a really special episode. I really appreciate all that you've offered us.

JG-Jordan

so much for having me on the show.

I have to say, when I read the purpose code, it really stuck with me. For me. It was one of those books, the kind that sparks deep conversations with your favorite person. I highly recommend everyone listening, go out and order a copy of this book. Of course, I will link it in the show notes for you as well. So you can easily find it. Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Jordan. Number one. We've all had struggles at some point we've all done or not done things that we might look upon later with some regret. But you don't have to be the victim of your circumstances whether past or present. The purpose code has many juxtaposed examples of people viewing their past from a victim lens versus viewing it from a hero lens. Choose the hero. If you want to have authentic lasting happiness. Number two. We all want to have an impact and possibly leave a legacy. But it doesn't have to look like doing something that will get you in history books. As Jordan says, quote, impact lies in the people we touch when we become intentional and do the things that light us up. End quote. When we have the confidence to lean out and live authentically, we draw like-minded people to us and form communities just like we've done with this podcast, the stories, the guests, and so on. Number three. In work-life balance. We have levers available to us. We can subtract things. We don't like. We can add things that bring us joy and purpose. And we can also substitute. There are so many ways you can tweak your balance to be more purposeful and find more of whatever it is you're looking for. Sometimes you might need a little help seeing the options available or knowing what you're actually looking for. And I'm here to help you in that way. Make sure to contact me through my website. If you want to talk about working with me, one-on-one. So, what are you waiting for? As Jordan said, near the end of our conversation, quote. Winning the game is using our time wisely and quote. Time is a non-renewable resource, but we can control the way we're spending our time. My parting question for you today is can you identify at least one purpose anchor that might get you closer to realizing your little P purpose? Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast. If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services. You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker. Have a great day and we'll see you next time