 Today we're gonna be talking about what the hell do you want? Like what do you want in this life? What is it that is that's the thing that you want? And you know, I ask people this all the time. I'm like, what do you want? And most people are like, Oh, well, like, I want to like, I want to be like happy and I want to be able to have some more money and like it'd be nice to travel and stuff. And it's so crazy to me that so few people know what they want. Like they kind of have an idea, but there's no real like set. This is what I want. And it's funny because they're not really clear. And then they're mad that they don't have what they want. Even though they don't know what the fuck they want. Right? Like that's pretty crazy. If you think about it, like you need to know what it is that you want. And the more clear that you are and what is it you want, the more likely you are to get it because you can start saying yes to certain things and you can start saying no to certain things that don't line up with it. But the main reason why people don't get what they want in life is because they don't really even know what they want in life. You know, it's like, I always give the example on the podcast of it's like your mom calls you up before Christmas and she's like, honey, what do you want? You want for Christmas? And you're like, Oh, I don't really know. Just get me something, whatever you want. And then you open up your gift on Christmas and you're like, pissed that she didn't get you what you wanted. And she's like, well, you didn't tell me what you wanted. It's like the universe, God, whatever it is that you believe in is constantly asking you like, dude, what the hell do you want? And you don't know, but you're pissed that you don't have it, right? So like, what do you want? Like, what is the reason why you're on this planet? What is the like, when you die, how will you be remembered? Have you ever thought about that? Like, and it's not like just materialistic or traveling or a certain amount of money, but like, who do you want to be? Like, what kind of character traits and qualities? Like, when people are talking about you at your, your funeral and the eulogy, like, what do you want them to be saying about you? And, and can you figure out what traits and qualities and characteristics you want in yourself and be very clear on those and remind yourself of them every single morning so that you can start building yourself more into that person? Like, what do you want? Most people are saying they're like, I don't really know what I want. And because they've been told what they're supposed to want their entire lives and it's like a skill set, right? It's like, you're, maybe you're so numb to what you want and your desires that you don't even know what you want anymore. And it's like going into the gym. You haven't used that, that desire muscle in a long time. You haven't thought about your own vision a long time. So you're kind of like, I don't know what I want. Okay. Well, then let's try to figure out what it is that you want. And can we start to build that into you? Now, because when you're born, you're a baby, like, you know what you want. When you're hungry, you cry. When you're in pain, you cry. When you wanted affection, you cry, like you knew what you want and you were like, give it to me, right? So what happened? What happened to you? What happened to us? Somewhere along the way, we're told, Oh, don't be selfish. You know, you want to be, you want to be president? Oh, that's dumb. No one in this family's ever even graduated college when you don't come from a good part of town. Nobody likes us. You know, we're not educated enough. There's not, that's dumb for you to think that you could do that. And you know, somewhere along the way, we go from believing we can do anything and we can get anything that we want in life to it's not even realistic to get anything that we want in life. So somewhere along the way, somebody or many people smash our dreams and tell us to be realistic. And just because somebody else had their dreams and their goals destroyed, doesn't mean that they have the right to do the same to you. And it's up to us to rediscover why we're here and what it is that we truly want. You know, people say, Oh, yeah, you want to do that. No, you want to run your own business? No, no, no, get a, get a real job. That's dumb. You, you don't want to run your own business. Maybe you're, you know, going to go to school and you want to do something cool, like you want to be a musician and your mom's like, No, no, no, you have to go and you have to be an engineer. And so you go and you be an engineer because your parents told you to, or you're a doctor because your parents told you to the amount of people that I know that reach out to me on Instagram and they're like, Rob, I feel so lost. I'm 37 years old. I went to school for engineering or went to school for nursing or I went to school to be a doctor. And it's not what I truly want. And I feel lost because my parents told me that's the thing I had to go to school for and I don't want to do it. And it's so crazy to me and so sad that so many people, I don't want to say wasted because that's not the right word. You don't really waste years. You just learn what you don't want, but they followed other people's vision for their own future versus building their own vision. And so they wanted to be an artist or they wanted to be a musician or they wanted to, you know, breed horses or they wanted to make jewelry or they wanted to do something completely different. Maybe they wanted to be on TV, but they followed the quote unquote realistic secure route. If there's one thing that we've realized over the past few years, since COVID hit is that the least secure thing that you could do is work for somebody else. Like what we thought was secure within a couple weeks became very unsecure, right? And so if secure is going to college and getting a job, the past few years have shown us that is actually the least secure thing that you could do. The most secure thing that you could do is work for yourself. Now I'm not saying everyone has to work for themself, but if you are out there and you're like, man, I really wanted to start that business, but I decided to go the safe route and ended up not being the safest route because I work for myself. And guess what? My boss is pretty awesome. I can't fire myself, right? I can't get fired. That's pretty awesome. And so it comes back to like what do you want? If money were no object, and this is the thing that I found with a lot of people, most people throw away their hopes and their desires because of money. They do. They throw it away. And so like if I always like to say, it's like, you know, Alan Watts always says, what would you be doing if money were no object? Like if money did not exist, or you had all the money in the world, you know, the example I always give is like, say you wake up tomorrow morning and there's $500 in your bank account, some amazing person makes a generous donation of $500 million, you're going to buy a bunch of stuff and have some fun and buy some clothes and watches and travel and some cars and some houses and some planes, but eventually you're going to spend $100 million and you're going to be like, well, what the hell do I do now? Right? Like what would then be fulfilling to you in your life? Because so many people just give away their hopes and their dreams and their desires to simply chase money. So it's like Alan Watts always says, he says, if you work just to make money and you don't like your job and you're following money, then you'll just continue to be doing things that you don't like doing in order to keep living, which is to be doing things that you don't like doing. So it's better to have a short life doing things that you love than to live a long life in a miserable way. And so what did you want to be as a kid? What do you love to do now? What interests you? What's your passion? What's your hobbies? You know, when you're a kid, you could be a, you know, you wanted to be a fireman or a fire woman and you want to be the first female president and you want to be a pilot and you want to be an astronaut or something cool. And sometimes you want to be all of those things in one day and you bleed with every single fiber of your body that you could be all of those things in one day. But along the way, that is not quote unquote realistic and somebody tells us we can't do that. And so we end up going the safe route. And so there's a part of you that still wants to do that, that wants to do something. There's, there's something in this world. There's a few things in this world that you're probably made to do that you have ultimate passion for that. It's what you're made for your brain, your body, your life circumstances perfectly line up to make you this person. What is it? What would you love to be doing? Because there's a lot of unhappy people out there that go to safe route and they think that's what they're supposed to do and they wake up 10, 20 years down the road and they're like, where the hell am I? How the hell did I get here? And that is really what the reason why they call it a midlife crisis is because you wake up and you think, what the fuck did I do with my life? Like, why did I do this? So if money were no object, how would you fill your time? What do you love? What do you want to learn? What do you want? What skill set do you want to get better at? Like, is there a hobby or something that you want to do? What is your passion? And the important thing to realize is this is maybe you do find your passion, your passion can make you money. Sometimes your passion can become your paycheck. And that's awesome if it is possible. But for a lot of people, your passion isn't your paycheck. And that's okay as well. So can you make a paycheck? Can you make the money? However you're going to make the money, but then spend the majority of your time doing something that you truly love. You know, like if you if you live inside of the city right now and you live in the city because you're trying to make money, but you just love mountain biking and you don't get enough time to go mountain biking and you don't get out of the city enough. Is there a way that you could figure out whether it's with this job or another job or working remote or building your own business to be able to move to a place that would allow you to have the maximum amount of time mountain biking? Now will you make money mountain biking? Probably not. You'll probably lose money because you'll spend money on all of the supplies. But if you live in the city right now and you really love mountain biking, you have been mountain biking in three months, the hell are you doing? Figure out a way to go out to places where you could spend the majority of your waking hours outside of work, outside of with your family to be able to do the thing that makes you feel the most alive. How do you know what your purpose and your passion is? Well, there's a couple different ways, but one of the ways is like what gives you the most energy? Like when you get done, if mountain biking is your thing, right? When you get done mountain biking after a long day, you could be exhausted, but you have so much energy from it. Like you feel alive. What are the things that make you feel alive? Those are the things that you should be following. And so it goes back to like Ikigai. You've heard me talk about Ikigai before. It's a Japanese concept where there's four questions that you should answer. And you should just write down all of the answers of anything that pops up. Number one is what are you good at? And you write down everything that you're good at. Number two is what do you love? You write down every single thing that you love. Number three, what can you be paid for? You write down everything you became paid for. And number four, what does the world need? And you write down everything that you feel the world needs. And if you can find the overlap of all four of those, that is what they call Ikigai is your reason for being. It is your reason why you're on this planet. The fifth question that I think is important, that is never really asked is what is something or what are all of the things that just really you're interested in? Like what are you really interested in? And so like for me, like I just love learning about people about humans and all of this stuff. And so like a few episodes ago, I did an episode on like trusting your gut and I spent hours researching like a nerd. Like I'm just, I nerd out on these things of like, what is, what is this? There's 500 million neurons in the gut. Holy crap. This is amazing. Like I'm researching about the gut, the second brain. Most people don't want to do that. For me, it's just something that makes me super excited. I want to learn more about. And so like, are there certain things that just kind of lights you up? And can you figure out a way to make those things your profession? Maybe, maybe not. But you know, it's the way I like to think about it is this is there's a phrase that talks about the hummingbird and the jackhammer, right? Like for me, what I do now, making this podcast, making videos on Instagram and YouTube and coaching people and doing what I do now, I'm going to be doing forever. Like I have a pretty good feeling this is writing books, all of this stuff is what I'm going to be doing forever. For some people, their passion might be something they do for three years, five years, and then they go do another thing for three years and five years. And so that the jackhammer versus the hummingbird, this will give a lot of you guys some, some relaxation into life is like the jackhammer is a person that knows what they want. They know what it is they're going to be doing forever. That's what I feel like I am. A hummingbird is somebody where you can, you know, hummingbird will go from one flower to another to another to another. And they just kind of bounce around flowers. Some people, they have a passion, they're very passionate about something for three years and then they just decide to go to the next thing and that's fine. And then they go to the next thing and they go to the next thing and they just get really passionate about a couple things for a couple of years. And then that's just what they do. Neither one is right, neither one is wrong. It's just really about what makes you feel the most alive. And so what do you want? You want to travel? Do you want to quit your job in backpack Europe? If you have a feeling that you want to quit your job in backpack Europe, I'm telling you right now, do that as soon as possible. In 2012, I backpacked Europe. I quit my job. You know, I was 2012, I was 26 years old. I was making really good money for a 26 year old, making like $150, $175,000 a year. I saved up all of my money for a year, the cheapest I possibly could quit that job and went to Europe. And what was crazy about it was that I thought like I had planned it for six months and I had so many people were like, so what do you do for work? And we talked for a while and I was like, yeah, but you know, in three months I'm going to be leaving and going to Europe. I talked to so many people and told them that I'm talking like 30, 40, 50, 60 people over six months told them I was going to be doing that older than me 40s, 50s, 60s, not one person told me it was a bad idea to leave my job at 26 years old where I was making a bunch of money. Now one person told me is a bad idea. Everyone was like, oh my gosh, I wish that there was two things that I would that I heard all the time. Number one was, oh my gosh, that's an amazing idea. I wish that I would have done that when I was your age. That was the first thing I heard a lot. The second thing was I did that and it was the best thing I ever did. Now one person over months and months and months told me it was a bad idea. I went and did it still some of the best months of my entire life, right? And I don't think I'd be doing what I do now if I didn't do that because I realized on that trip like I can't work a normal job. I can't work for someone else. I have to be location independent. I have to be able to travel. I have to be able to move. I have to be able to do whatever it is that I want. And I realized that on that trip. Then five years later, I ended up, you know, a couple of years later, I ended up getting a girlfriend. And then my girlfriend, I five years later in 2017 backpack for six months together. And we were able to do it because we built businesses that we could make money online. And so what is the most sensible or reasonable or secure route is never actually that route. It's like, what do you want? What is the thing that makes you feel the most alive? And that's what we really have to listen to deep within ourselves. Because if you don't follow it, it's going to bug you for the rest of your life. Like if you wanted to go and travel and back out here for three months, and you fast forward 20 years and don't do it now, and you fast forward 20 years, it's going to eat you up inside that you didn't do it. It is never a bad idea to do something like that. And so it's different for every single person that says podcast. There's hundreds of thousands of you that are listening to this podcast right now. There are hundreds of thousands of different desires and hopes and dreams and passions and purposes. I'm going to tell you what I tell you all of the time is it's okay not to know what your passion or purpose is right now, but it is not okay to not be in constant pursuit to find that. And so why are you alive? Why the hell are you here? What the hell do you want? You've got to figure it out. You've got to decide what you want and you've got to put every ounce of energy into it because the last thing you want to do is not do it and then find out too late that you should have done it. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on the Instagram stories and tag me at Rob Dowl Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Once again, the only way that we grow is from you guys sharing this podcast. And so if you would share it, I would love it and appreciate you from the bottom of my heart so we can continue to keep growing. And with that, I'm leaving the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission, make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.