Finding Purpose: Consuming “Happiness” in a Market Economy With Dr. Christine B. Whelan

Dr. Christine B. Whelan is an author, professor, speaker, and thought leader guiding organizations like the DeBruce Foundation and AARP’s Life Reimagined on self-improvement strategies. She is the best-selling author of the ten-lesson series Finding Your Purpose and five additional books, including The Big Picture and Generation WTF. As a Clinical Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Human Ecology, Dr. Whelan teaches classes on happiness, finance, and family and directs the MORE: Money, Relationships & Equality program.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:48] What is a professor of happiness?
[4:11] Dr. Christine B. Whelan talks about consuming happiness in a market economy
[11:42] Why happiness has declined in the US — and how to define it
[19:40] Strategies for identifying your purpose
[25:37] The premise of Leo Tolstoy’s The Three Questions
[37:26] How business owners can align their personal and professional values
[42:53] Reaching your destination by aligning actions with values
[49:20] Dr. Whelan explains the concept of thriftiness in business
[57:20] Dr. Whelan’s journey to happiness and purpose
[1:01:55] How Dr. Whelan became a radio star at eight years old
[1:11:24] Work-life balance and organization tips

In this episode…

We’re often told that money can’t buy happiness, yet companies market products to target our basic needs and desires. This consumption-driven economy teaches us that we can choose how to expend our resources to fulfill our innate purpose. How can business owners identify their purpose to allocate resources toward a meaningful outcome?

When surveyed on happiness levels, Americans often rank themselves lower than people from other countries, holding themselves to an unrealistic standard of happiness based on the false perception of others. Human ecology researcher Dr. Christine B. Whelan maintains that your journey to happiness and fulfillment should depend solely on your personal and professional core values, which determine your ultimate purpose. To identify these values, you can engage in a purpose statement exercise that involves identifying your unique strengths and leveraging them to make a positive impact personally and professionally. Accordingly, each action and decision should align with your core values and propel you toward your ultimate goal.

Tune in to this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as William Harris chats with Dr. Christine B. Whelan about harnessing your purpose to achieve authentic happiness in a consumption-driven economy. Dr. Whelan talks about the etymology of thrifting, the benefits of purposeful living, and how to balance your personal and professional endeavors.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"You can buy happiness if you know how to spend your money right."
"Life is a series of choices about how we want to spend our resources."
"Not all work is purposeful work, even if you’re just putting food on the table."
"Walking is actually the act of controlled falling."
"You might not know where you're going to end up, but if every step is rooted in your values, you're on the right path."

Action Steps

Establish your values. Identify and commit to core personal and business values that guide decision-making: Aligning decisions with core values ensures consistency and authenticity, fostering trust and a clear vision for progress.
Implement the daily purpose statement exercise for a focused and intentional approach to everyday tasks: Daily purpose statements help maintain alignment with values, driving meaningful action and preventing mission drift.
Conduct a time diary. Log activities into increments to evaluate the allocation of resources in practice: This retrospective analysis reveals where your efforts actually go, allowing you to recalibrate priorities effectively.
Foster a culture of practicing purpose and encourage personal purpose practices among team members: Cultivating purpose at an individual level contributes to a resilient and passionate organizational culture, enhancing collective success.
Embrace the concept of thrift and spend resources wisely, balancing well-being with social good: Understanding and practicing thrift aligns resource expenditures with broader objectives, facilitating sustainable growth and impact.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey

William Harris 0:15

everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I teach you the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond, as well as help you upbear your business and your personal life. We're going a little bit beyond e-commerce. You'll find out why in a second. The guest that I have here today is Dr. Christine B Whelan. Dr. Whelan is the purpose professor at Emory University and a fellow at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She's written five books, including the olive oil original, Associated Press bestseller, Finding Your Purpose gives big stage keynotes and guides corporations, nonprofits and startups as they build purpose focused tools and CO creates internal metrics of meaningful success with executives and their teams. Dr. Whelan is passionate about translating research into evidence based strategies for daily thriving. And I could not be more excited to have you on the show. Thank you very much.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:07

Hey, it's so good to be here. Yeah, and

William Harris 1:10

I have to give a shout out to Stephanie Pugliacy. She's a former guest of the Up Arrow Podcast here. She was the president of Under Armor, the CEO of Duluth Trading. She took them public a while back. She's the one who put me in touch with you as I was talking to her and saying, hey, who else do you think would be a good fit? And she said, I've got somebody this might be outside of, like, the e-commerce space, but what do you think? And I'm like, yes, because this is still very important stuff for founders and just business owners and executives alike, and even just everybody, but finding your purpose and figuring out what that is. And so I said, Yes, this looks great. I want to talk to her. Please make the intro. And so I'm very glad she did. Thank you very much, Stephanie, for making this introduction.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:52

Yeah, well, this is wonderful. Stephanie is fantastic. So I'm following in great, fabulous footsteps being on this podcast. So thanks for having me.

William Harris 2:00

Yeah, yeah, excited. I do want to announce our sponsor. Then we're going to dig into the good stuff here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that I killed recently. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com, which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N t.com. That said onto the good stuff, like I said, what I want to talk about here is we were trying to figure out the title. The one that I landed on here with you was this idea of finding purpose, consuming happiness in a market economy. First of all, what is a professor of happiness?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 2:48

Oh, I have, I have two favorite titles, right? So I'm the professor of happiness and the purpose professor. And these are, are both just awesome and completely made up titles. So as a happiness professor, I work with students for more than a decade, really asking these questions of what matters most to you. Why does it matter? How do you make it happen in your life? And so happiness is a little bit of a misnomer for what I teach. It's really more about flourishing and the good life. It's about it's about really more meaning and purpose based thriving. And that sounds a whole lot less sexy than happiness, which everybody is selling all the time, right? You know, if you just buy the right product, do the right thing, you can get happy. And so I decided to sort of tackle this head on with a class called consuming happiness at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and it was my students who nicknamed me the happy professor.

William Harris 3:57

I love it. It's such a it's such a great name, and like you said, it is very catchy, and you talked about this. So this is a class consuming happiness in a market economy. Break it down for me. What does this mean? So

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 4:11

my catch phrase for the class is that you can buy happiness if you know how to spend your money, right. And that attracts people, because, of course, we're always being sold the idea that if you buy this particular product, it's going to fill that aching need inside you and you will finally be happy. And what I want everybody to know who's listening to this is that I study this stuff, and I still fall into this on Instagram late at night, thinking maybe if I buy this thing, I will finally be happy. And this is because there's a lot of great marketing around various products targeting these core needs that we have. But what I teach my students in consuming happiness is that what we are really looking for is how to use a. Limited resources in keeping with our values to maximize not only our well being, but the well being of everybody that we care about. And so what that actually means is that you can use your money, you can use your time, you can use your emotional energy, because all of these are resources in a way that's going to maximize your thriving. It's not usually about buying a particular product, but more about spending on experiences, investing in the relationships with people that you love and who fill you with joy, and buying time when possible. So these are the kinds of things that we talk about. I used to teach this class in the consumer science department, so I would get a lot of folks who are going into finance, who are going into marketing, who are going into our behavior field. And this was really wonderful, because I'd get them one year in class, and then they'd go out into the professional world, and a couple years later, I'd hear back from a lot of them saying, you know, can you send me that slide? I'm using it in a presentation I'm giving at my company. This really seems to resonate. So I felt good about preparing folks for the business world by giving them the why it matters, in addition to the how to make it happen. I love it.

William Harris 6:24

It's it's such a, I don't know catchy phrase you can buy happiness, because it's very counter to what we're typically told. This comedian daniel tosh, I don't even know if he's around anymore. He's definitely not somebody. He's got a lot of really, you know, bad stuff, as most comedians do right things, you're just like, I can't support everything he says. But he's got one, one thing that is really funny where he talks about, I don't know if you've seen this one, stop me if you have where he's talking about, he was like, they've seen money can't buy happiness. He was like, Have you ever seen somebody frowning on a jet ski? It's like, it's impossible. Just try it. That's not the kind of buying happiness that you're talking about, though, right? Like you said, it's it's going beyond necessarily possessions and getting into experiences or even using your money for some type of a good in your community or something along those lines. But is there an element of buying things that can play into this too. Yeah. So

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 7:24

really, it's about spending and keeping with your values. And so this is where you've got to look inside yourself and figure out what you individually value, and what I value and what you value may be very different, and often when we buy the wrong thing or buy something that that is good for somebody else but not for us. It's because we are not spending in terms of our actual lived values. Maybe we're thinking about the shoulds like that. I should value this. I should value that. So maybe I should buy this thing that everybody else has. But really, when you spend in keeping with your values, you're spending your resources, again, not just money, but time and emotional energy, environmental resources, in a way that like that fills you up inside. So for example, it actually could be spending on on an item, on a thing, if it's really meaningful to you. So one of the things that I love is fashion, and I love the latest fashion, but what I do is I do the Rent the Runway subscription, and I, for seven years, I think, have done Rent the Runway Unlimited, which is a great way of spending my resources in keeping with my values, because I actually value personal presentation, and I feel more empowered and good when I'm wearing, like, really cool, fashionable, very expensive clothes. But I also value the idea of not overusing resources, of the sharing economy, of the rental system, and of not spending so much money on one piece of clothing. So doing it that way is a way that I can spend my money in a way that is meaningful to me, and I can get the happiness bonus of it, because it does bring me joy, because it's something I really like. Yeah,

William Harris 9:18

this is a tangent. And then I want to come back to that this is not the only fashion that you've been talking about on LinkedIn lately. I saw you talking about sneaks as well. Completely tangential. Tell me a little bit about sneaks and why you love it.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 9:33

I'm totally obsessed with this idea and and yet, I confess I ended up sending them back. I so the idea that there is a sneaker with a stiletto heel that comes from Sarah Blakely, who founded Spanx, which was all about sort of undergirding the feminist movement in so many ways, and then now we have these stilettos that are actually really quite comfortable. Comfortable. They are sneakers. They were comfortable. I put them on. The challenge is, though, that they're very expensive, and you would and most people think they're ugly. I think they're so ugly, they're fabulous. Personally, sure for that price, I wasn't sure that I was going to get, get all of the the joy out of them. I wasn't sure whether the expenditure was really in keeping with my values at this moment, but I gotta tell you, I tried. I loved the concept of them, that maybe we at this point in fashion, where really we can, we can meld this idea of a sneaker and a stiletto. I mean, what's next?

William Harris 10:44

No, I love melding things and taking one thing from another and blending that together. I think it creates some of the most interesting innovations that we see on our planet. The reason why I like this overall concept, though, coming back to the core here is, this is something that I feel like a lot of businesses can struggle with, is, is that finding the purpose? And so if you're listening in and you're wondering, wait, we're talking about happiness and how you can buy happiness, where does this fit with me as the e-commerce owner, I promise you, I'm going to get to that. Before I get into that piece of it, I want to start with more of the problem. What is this problem that we're identifying? And a couple of weeks ago, there was an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that talked about America falling behind in happiness rankings. You were quoted in this. But what does this mean that we're falling behind in happiness rankings? What rankings? How are we falling behind? Why does it matter?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 11:42

So there are these global happiness rankings that look at all sorts of elements, from GDP to to education level to all of these sort of markers of a well being in a society, and they rank countries, and they also ask a very, a very basic question around your happiness. And what they ask is, is a question on something called the Cantrell ladder of of happiness. This is just to nerd out a little bit on it, because this is interesting. It's an interesting survey technique. What it does is it asks you to think about a ladder from zero to 10, where each rung is a number, and then it asks you, what, what? Then think of it in terms of your happiness, how. What rung Are you on? On this on this ladder? Now this is a really interesting question for a whole variety of reasons. The one that I focus on, though, is the fact that when you when you think about something as a ladder, you then think about yourself in relationship to others. So there's going to be somebody who's higher on the ladder, and there's going to be someone who's lower on the ladder. So really, what it's asking, in a sense, and whether it means to or not, is, where do you want to place yourself on the ladder, in addition to where you think you actually are? So for example, if I said, you know, I have a very, very happy life, but if I then put myself as a 10, is that kind of a flex? I mean, like, really, am I as happy as I could ever be? Am I like, the happiest person in the world? Gosh, probably not sure I need to move myself down. Am I a 9am? I an 8am? I a seven? And what we find is that is that is that what Americans are increasingly ranking themselves lower down on this Cantrell ladder of happiness, and they are saying, comparatively speaking, I think I'm on a lower rung. And what that means is that we're falling in the happiness rankings in the world because other nations, individuals are putting themselves higher up on that rung of happiness. Now these first of all, no survey question is without fault. No survey question is going to really give you a perfect indication, but the collective element and the cultural narrative around happiness and well being greatly impacts the score that a nation is going to give. So for example, among the happiest countries in the world are the Nordic countries. Well, that's not because each individual is says that I have the best life ever. That's because they define happiness as as the idea of having enough, as having enough of something. And if you define happiness, not as like I've got everything in the world that I could possibly want, but I have enough, well, then you are more likely to be higher up on that ladder. So this problem that America. That might be facing may not necessarily be a problem of individual well being, but it also may be a problem of our perception that others may be happier than we are. At the same time any of us who think about the stress that we feel, the overwhelm that we feel, the anxiety that we feel about the future. Knows that we do have a well being problem in this country and in many other countries. The solutions to that, of course, depend on who you're going to ask, but what I like to do is not give people a sort of Pat solution, a pat answer that's one size fits all, but really more to ask people to think about what matters to you, what matters what are those core values that you want to drive you, because your values guide your choices, and life is A series of choices that we make about how we want to spend our resources. So are you making the choices that matter to you? And if you say you are but then also feel unhappy, then you got to go back and and see where the disconnect is, if you realize that you're unhappy because in fact, you are not following through and making choices in keeping with your values, then which way do you want to go? Do you need to rethink your values, or do you need to rethink your actions? But all of these are different turning points that people can take. So rather than a, you know, we need to have this policy change or or do this particular global thing within our workplaces, really thinking about what matters to you as an individual. I think a better place to start. Yeah,

William Harris 16:51

I going back to the Nordic thing that you mentioned about them. You know, where they value that. It reminds me of the song Jack Johnson, where he goes you've got everything you need. With everything you need is enough, right? It's like, oh, that's a good as a good line. But I can see where you know the different ways that we perceive happiness can make a difference. One of the reasons why this particularly struck me as a conversation that I enjoy is there was a previous guest on here, Matt bertuli, and he talked about on Twitter. I don't think we talked about this on his podcast, but on Twitter, one of the biggest reasons why a lot of businesses and business owners are looking to sell is not because they're necessarily trying to make those millions of dollars. That's part of it. But they're, they're actually just miserable doing their job. They've, they've worked themselves into a place where they're they're miserable being being the owner. And so to your point, it's like, are they spending the right time on the things that they value or not, and if not, how do they realign their values and their times? And so I'm excited to dig into that before I go too far down the path of solutions. Though, there were a couple other things that you brought up that were that were that were good, that I want to talk about. What we're still talking about, the problem. You said, happiness is a meaningless word. What are we really seeking?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 18:17

We're really seeking thriving. We're really seeking the good life. And at the core of all of those things is, are we making purposeful life choices? Are we living on purpose? And that I introduced the concept of purpose, knowing that half your listeners just put their head in their hands because they said, Great. We've moved from one big, amorphous, terrifying topic of happiness to another, even more amorphous, even scarier topic. But like with happiness, the idea of purpose is when you really kind of look at it and drill it down, it is a series of choices that you can make in keeping with your values on a day to day basis. And so much of what I do, in my teaching and in my work with companies is trying to demystify this big idea that we have all heard about for years and put it into small steps, actionable programs that we can use in our individual lives, in our professional lives, in our family lives, and in our larger communities.

William Harris 19:29

Yeah, and so what is that solution? So, like we're here now, so we've got this problem. What is this, this tool that you use to help us identify and put this together?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 19:40

So years ago, I came up with this idea of a Mad Libs, purpose statement exercise. Love Mad Libs. Love Mad Libs, right? By the way, one of the very scary things is that a lot of my students have never heard of Mad Libs, so we really, oh no, Mad Libs alive for the next generation. Um. So this Mad Libs purpose statement exercise, and I define purpose as using your gifts in keeping with your values to make a positive impact on the world around you. So I took those three things and I put them into a Mad Libs purpose statement. I asked people think about their gifts, the things that they were good at their strengths, their core values, what they wanted to what to drive them in their lives and their and who they wanted to make an impact on whether it was an individual, whether it was a cause, a community, a company. And so I created this purpose statement exercise where I would take people through it. I did a couple TED Talks based on this, where we said, you know, because I value, and then you filled in your values, I'll use my gifts for and then you fill in your gifts to positively impact, and you fill in your impact groups. Awesome. So this worked really well, I thought. And until, oh, I don't know, maybe it was about seven or eight years ago. I myself was going through a very difficult period. I was going through it, or I was I just didn't know where my life was going. It was really tough. And I thought none of this has any meaning. If this is like, I don't even know what the purpose of any of this is. And I said, Now, this is really bad. First of all, I'm the happiness professor, and I study purpose, and so I'm sitting here crying in my bed, neither happy nor feeling like I have purpose. What do I do? And this is a totally true story. I actually pulled out my own book. I don't know why. I pulled out my own workbook that I had written for college students the big picture. And I was like, All right, I'm gonna figure this out. And when I was looking at that Mad Libs purpose statement exercise, I realized that it was a good big picture. Start that, yes, using your gifts in keeping with your values to make a positive impact. That's like, totally the big idea. But what it didn't do was tell people how to do it and what to do when times got tough. So as I worked through my own stuff, I added a second sentence around really kind of embracing and understanding the fears and anxieties that come along for the ride. Anytime you try to do something, make a change or put something into action, we all have those fears and anxieties. And then, what were the purpose based commitments? What were the purpose based practices? What are the goals, the specific things that you are going to do to really instantiate these ideas in your life. So then my Mad Libs purpose statement turned into these five questions of, what are your values, what are your gifts? Who do you want to impact? What are the fears and anxieties that come along for the ride? And then, what are you going to do about it? What are the purpose based commitments? And the final evolution of this, well, so far, is, was during the pandemic, when as I was talking people through all of this stuff, and I realized, are you kidding me? We don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. How can I be talking to people about this grand life purpose? And I realized actually, why don't we just talk about our purpose for today? What do you want to do today? And when I did that, I thought that this was a pandemic solution, a sort of band aid for these uncertain times. But to me, that's really been the biggest breakthrough of all, because when we think about purpose, we tend to get lost in the big picture abstractions. But when you think about the small actions, the purpose based practices, the specific things that you are going to do on a daily basis, all of a sudden, you take the stuff that you very well might have done anyway, but you remind yourself why these actions are in keeping with your values, why these actions are positively impacting the people you care about, and how you are using your gifts to make it happen. And I can tell you, first of all, I have a very long track record of never putting out anything that I do not do myself. I think that is a really terrible thing of self help people to be like writing all these aspirational bits of advice that no human can actually do right. I will tell you that I do this daily purpose statement exercise, and it is so great because the stuff that I put on my my my actions list for the day can be as simple as making dinner for my family, but when I do that, which, again, I would have done anyway, whether I put it on a purpose statement or not, when I do that at the end of the day, I know, yeah, I actually really did something. Impactful. I did something that matters to me, and I feel that much more purposeful and meaningful, and thus that much happier at the end of the day.

William Harris 25:11

There's so much there that I want to impact. If you saw me over here, like writing down notes,

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 25:16

I do my little soliloquy on you, I get so jazzed up about this.

William Harris 25:21

So what was that's a good thing, right? It's a happy thing. Are you familiar with the Leo Tolstoy, the three questions, I believe it's called, sound familiar.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 25:33

Does sound familiar? But I'm not okay on what the wait, yes, tell me more. I'm

William Harris 25:37

gonna do my I'm gonna do my short version. It's already a short story, but it would be too long to read the whole thing, but I'm gonna do my short I'm gonna do my short version of this, and hopefully I don't butcher too badly. This king has three questions. He wants to know what's the most important thing for him to do, for him to know, what's the most important thing for him to know, who the most important person is. I'm not just forgetting what the third one was. Oh, and when, when he needs to do it. Kind of thing, right? Basically, like, he's like, if I could know all these things, I would never make a mistake. I would be able to do everything that I need to do. And he brings all these wise people in to give him all this advice, and it's all different. And so he finally says, All right, I'm gonna go see this old hermit out in this field, because I've heard that he's a wise guy. And he gets there in the hermit's tilling in the ground, and he's kind of weak and tired. And so the king's like, Alright, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, he asks him the questions, like, you know, what are these things that I need to know? And then, hermits, he's like, Alright, you're too tired. You sit down and rest so you could think and give him my answer, and I'll dig these holes for you. So he starts digging these holes. And because he's digging these holes, or while he's digging these holes, this this guy comes running over and he's all bloodied up, and so they take him inside the king and the hermit, they take him inside, and they bandage him up, and the king is like nursing this guy's stab wounds, basically, until he's good. And then he goes to sleep. And the king's exhausted from the day, so he falls asleep, and they wake up the next morning, and the the guy who was stabbed says, Hey, forgive me. And King's like, I don't even know who you are. I have nothing, you know, why would I need to forgive you? He said, You don't realize this. But you know, I think if something like you, you had killed my brother and took his property, and so I was going to enact revenge on you, and I knew that you were going to see the hermit, so I took, I went down there to kill you, basically, and I didn't see you then, because you didn't come back with the rest of your caravan, because you were over with the hermit. So I went and found, you know, tried to look for you, and found your bodyguard, your bodyguards, you know, kind of, you know, did a number on me, and I, I escaped them, and I come over here, but you took care of me instead, and you nursed my wounds. And so, like, I owe you my life, basically, forgive me. Like I want to be your servant and all of my sons, like, we want to, like, serve you as our King. And the king is one of those things where he's like, Okay, well, that's really interesting. I'm glad that I made peace with my enemy. This is, this is a really good thing. But he goes out to the hermit, then, as he's about to leave, and he says, okay, but I really want to know the answers to my questions. Who is the what's the most important thing? Who is the most important person in like, when is the right time? And the hermit's like, you already have the answer. The most important there when you first came to see me, the most important thing was for you to dig these holes, because at that time and you didn't go back with the caravan. The most important person was me at that time that you needed to help. And the most important time was now. And then after that, it was the most important time in person, place was always, you know, helping this, this guy out. Because if you wouldn't have he would have died, and you would have never been able to have this, this reconciliation. And so a lot of it comes down to this. Now, idea of, it's like, the most important time, the most important person, the most important thing is, is right here, what's in front of you, and it's kind of similar to what you called out there, with this purpose is, like, it's the daily purpose, yeah,

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 28:52

yeah, and it, it's the now. But the other thing I really love about that story is that he's digging the hole for the hermit. He's the king, and he's digging the hole for the hermit. And this is the thing that I think is really lost in the discussion around purpose. Purpose is not necessarily glamorous. It's not the big Cathedral in the sky all the time. It is brick by brick building a life and brick by brick, serving others, brick by brick, building a family, building a community. And those things are often not glamorous. They're like digging the hole for the hermit or bandaging somebody's wounds. And I think often people say, Oh, I don't have a larger purpose in my life. I'm just going through the motions. Well, if you pause and think about what that means, what are you doing, and why are you doing what you're doing, and how does what you're doing impact other people, those you know, all work is purposeful. Work, even if you're just just putting food on the table and supporting your family when you are doing something that matters to you, then you can, in fact, get even more sort of sense of purpose out of it. But I think often this idea of so people talk about finding your purpose, and in fact, my audible original book was called that, really it should probably have been called something more, like uncovering your purpose, or like washing the windows so you can see your purpose, right? Because it's it's not like something that you that's going to come down on you from on high. This is a choice that you get to make, day in and day out, and even if you are someone who believes that there is a higher power associated with your purpose, it's still a choice that you as an individual make, day in and day out. So this idea of this king and and this hermit is is really wonderful, because the king is digging the hole, the king is caring for, for this stranger, and that's what we're all actually called to do.

William Harris 31:24

Yeah, you're talking about uncovering the purpose, and that it's not like you're just uncovering it or whatever, that you're not just discovering it. I wonder what you think about Alex formos. I don't know if you know who he is, but he's a influencer out there. Launch this thing called gym lives. Really cool influencer for business owners, but he talks about how your purpose, oh, I want to say, when we're trying to maybe not your purpose, but your passion, at least, let's say, I want to clarify the right words, it doesn't just happen that it's formed from, like, daily use of doing something and you become passionate. It's like, maybe you weren't passionate about guitar, but because you practice guitar every single day, now you're good at it, and now you're passionate about it. And a lot of times finding that passion, or maybe potentially leaning into purpose, a lot of times it's just from doing those things like you said, that you value and then they become your passion. Your purpose is that kind of what you're saying.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 32:17

It is, and it is. And so one of the you know, the the career advice of follow your passion, has been so ingrained in young people, and yet we're really speaking out of both sides of our mouth on this as a society, because it's like, find your passion. But also, by the way, if you want to put a roof over your head, you really need to earn a bunch of money, and oftentimes your passion is not what's going to pay the bills. That doesn't mean that you are a lesser person, or that your passion is lesser, or that the work you do to pay the bills is not purposeful and meaningful. True, especially for young people starting out the idea of trying something rather than just thinking about it is so important. And the jobs that you hate are the ones that are often going to teach you the most, because it shows you what you don't want to do. The story that I tell to my students about how I started my career and what I was trying to think about what I wanted to do. I had a lot of sort of internships, some of which were just terrible for me, because, turns out, I do not like data entry in I can sell I can sell women's swimsuits. But that was not actually something that I that I really wanted to do all of those jobs, taught me something. And what I ended up with was, what was the, what was the element of of a job that I really wanted, and I decided I wanted to do something that was good, cocktail party conversation. And my students were like, Wait, what did our professor just say this to us? Yes, so good cocktail party conversation, and there's a lot embedded in that. I wanted to study and think about something that other people had opinions about, were also interested in and could share with me. I wanted to as a journalist. I was trained as a journalist, and so I liked something where I could ask other people questions and they could share their experiences. I did not want to do something that was so specific that nobody else would relate to it. And in that, I found a bit of my passion beneath that sort of passion was that larger sense of a calling of purpose. And I did not know that at 22 I was probably, I didn't know that at 32 probably, I mean, it was, I was just beginning to. Discover it. But when you tell a story of your professional career to a younger person, I think it's really important to not tell a just so story of, you know, I'm here now, and here are all the perfect points that got me here. Sure, part, there's a lot that is left on the cutting room floor as we put together the documentary of our lives, and that stuff is as important as all the pieces that do come together for the sizzle reel.

William Harris 35:31

Yeah, that's it. That's important. Call out if we were going to take this then and continue to make it more practical. I love your your tool that you have for people being able to go through those questions, but let's say that from a business perspective, because what I find is, as a business, a lot of things, what we're trying to help these people do, especially on this podcast, is breakthrough these ceilings. So they've maybe gone from they're at 10 million, and they want to get 200 million, but they're stuck. It's 10 million this year, 10 million next year. They've reached a plateau, and a lot of times, what I've found is that there's not necessarily a limit of it's not an inventory problem. It might not even be like a cash problem. There might be a limiting mindset that is helping them. And I'd say that there are many different ones, but the one we're going to focus on here is obviously that purpose. There's a tool called EOS traction for businesses, which helps them to outline your mission, vision values, things like that. And I have heard, and we had another guest on here, Chris Carey, talk about how he was stuck at 10 million 10 million year after year after year, until he implemented this, because the business the as an entity, didn't have its purpose. And so let's go beyond just like the individual, but the business entity didn't have its purpose. Do you think that when people are trying to break through these plateaus. What is the best way for them to realize that there's a misalignment, maybe, with the business values and their own values, and how they can start to kind of get that back on path when it's not just leave the company and go somewhere else, because these are the business owners, or the, you know, C suite, or the executives, where it's like they're necessary, they have to really course correct.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 37:26

So this is where the daily purpose statement exercise can be used on a corporate and a structural level as well. Because just thinking about it in terms of what is it that the either organization as a whole or that, or the particular unit that you're looking at, what are they? What are you doing on a daily basis? Like what's actually happening? So oftentimes, we spend so much time preparing for the meetings to talk about what we are going to do at the next meeting, right? Right? So, yeah, what you actually see is that all of your time is being spent, not in the purpose of the actual goal of the organization. And I always give a call out to my my friend and and college classmate Laura Vanderkam. She wrote a book called 168 hours. You have more time than you think, and it's and she has since written a whole suite of books about about time management, but time management from a perspective of purpose and values. And her argument is, if you do a time diary, like, pretend you're a lawyer and Bill out your time in 15 minute increments to yourself, like write down what you're doing for an entire week. It's very tedious, by the way, and but I make myself do it every year because it is really illuminates this question of, what exactly are you doing with your time. Now I do it for myself as an individual, but as a consultant and a professor and a mom, I'm kind of like a small business in and of myself, right? Totally do this on a business level as well. And what is it that you are doing in in your workday? What's your team doing? What is the output right now? And are you spending those resources, those human resources, those those financial resources, the product and and stuff resources, are you spending those in a way that is growing your company based on what you said you were going to do with this organization so often, really kind of going back and saying, you know, am I? Am I putting the time in where toward the thing that I actually want to accomplish that can help these, these very simple exercises, can really. Help with that and and so I kind of recommend doing this. You can either do the daily purpose statement exercise, you can do it the time diary exercise, something to really taking inventory of what it is that you are doing as a cohort or as a group. And does that match up with what you say you want to happen.

William Harris 40:21

I like that. This isn't in my notes, so just have a little fun with me. I'm going to do something very ad hoc, and I want to see where it goes. This is this is going to be interesting. I love it. Just give me some directions, left, right, straight, go ahead and give me one.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 40:43

Left, okay, next, straight, okay, left, okay, right, okay, straight, Okay, two more, okay, okay,

William Harris 41:00

left, okay, you walked out of your house and you went left, straight left, right, straight, straight, left. Maybe that's not enough directions, but yeah, where are you likely going to end up? Do you have any idea, like, without trying to google it, just figure it out, right?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 41:22

Basically, I would end up, I actually, without even thinking about it, kind of described a walk we do often nice to up to a golf course that is sort of on the top of of a hill in in our neighborhood. And we love this golf course. We actually call it. We live in Wisconsin. We live in Madison, Wisconsin. We call this walk walking to Colorado, because when you stand up at the top of this small hill, you can sort of see, you can it almost, sort of looks out west, and you can sort of imagine that there are mountains in the distance

William Harris 41:59

that's beautiful. Out of curiosity, if you did that outside of some place, maybe that you don't know the streets already as well as right? So let's say that. Let's say I pop you down here in Minnesota, okay? And you leave, you go outside my door, and you go left, straight, left, right, straight, straight, left. You know where you are. Like, you could look outside. You're like, I know where would you know where you are going to end up with that? Okay? Because you were too smart for me to do it the other way around. Apparently, I had to go somewhere you don't know. So the thing where I'm trying to go with this is, if all we're doing is just making actions, but we don't have an idea of where we're going. We likely don't know where we're gonna end up. Let's say, since you don't know where you're gonna end up, do you know if where you're gonna end up is likely a good place or bad place?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 42:53

So if you are if each individual action that you are making is one that is in keeping with your values and that you choose as the next best thing to do, the next right thing to do. No, you don't know where you're going to end up, but frankly, even if you set out for a particular destination, often we don't end up there anyway. Sure, you don't know where you're going to end up, but you do know that you will have gotten there based on things that matter to you and things that are the next you made the next right choice. And life is really opaque. So if I mean anyone who tells you, you know, just do these things and it'll all work out, I mean it just the last five years alone have taught us that that is not true.

William Harris 43:47

I like that, and that's where if you have those values. So what you're saying there reminds me of there's a Bible verse I like where it says, in a man's heart, he plants His paths, but the Lord directs his steps. And then there's another one that I like to couple with it that's in a completely different spot. It says, Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light into my path. And I usually use that verse to talk about how it's like it specifically calls out a lamp to my feet, which is such a weird illustration, because I don't typically shine a flashlight on my feet, but in when you're outside, you kind of almost do right? It's like your feet and like one step in front of you and the rest of everything else in front of you is completely black, and you don't black, and you don't know necessarily where you're going, other than you know that all right, I could take this step here, this one next step is the right next step.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 44:29

That's all we know. Is what the right next is. And we don't even know, by the way, whether it is the right next step. If we know that we are making what we believe to be the next right step, then we have to have some faith, largely speaking, that this is going to get us where we want to go. We just don't know. And so I, you know, so I quote Seneca, I you know, I quote, I quote, CS Lewis. I quote. All these folks. But the the person that I'm really quoting here is Anna from Frozen frozen two. Nice, because in Frozen sage, the wise sage, Anna from Frozen two. Because in Frozen two, when Anna thinks her sister Elsa is dead and she is crying, she sings a really beautiful song about this, about doing the next right thing. And that has been, I think, that is that is living with purpose, that is making decisions in keeping with your values. And really, that's all that we can do. So the idea of a daily purpose statement is that step? Is that shining the light on the next step? But one thing that does happen is, after you do those daily purpose statements for a while, then you pull back and you look at them as a group, and then you see the path that you're heading on. Then you can look at your your stuff, and say, you know, I see that I'm really spending a lot of time here. Is this where I want to be spending my time? Yes, actually it is. I repeatedly am choosing to spend my time there. So given that, do I need to realign what my what my end goals are. I had this in my own life when I did a time diary, and it was a very useful exercise, because I could not figure out why I wasn't getting any work done. I was always behind on everything. I was just, I just, I was beating myself up left and right for not accomplishing enough. And when I did my time diary, I could see quite clearly that I was spending a great deal of time with my one three and five year old at the time, and I had to say to myself, well, do I want to be spending all this time with my one three and five year old? And my answer was, yes, I did, and that actually was my lived value. So while my stated value to the outside world was about accomplishing all of these other goals, what my lived value was was spending time with my kids. And so when I saw that, I then realigned what I was going to tell the outside world, pulled back a little bit and said, for the next year or two, this I'm going to I'm not going to take on any more of these projects. I'm going to pull back so that I am more in sync with what I actually value.

William Harris 47:31

I love that if you hear me come up with these things that I'm saying in response to this is because I'm trying to process what you say and see if I understand it well enough, right? So that's why I'm coming up with these weird like, Hey, let's go these directions and stuff like that. I love it. Get it. So from a business perspective, if I'm looking at this daily purpose statement, then I have to know the values. In order for me to put that together, I have to know what my values are. And so from a business the same thing is going to be true too. We have to establish what those business values are, and then we have to hire according to those values and make sure that we're rewarding according to those values. And I'd say that's one thing that unlocked in EOS for us when we implement this is is now, instead of me being the bottleneck in every decision that needed to be made for the business, we've established that these are the values that we value as a team, and that allows other people to basically be able to have a rubric now for making decisions to go through and say, Okay, our mission, our purpose as a business, is to amplify joy through profitable business growth. And I want to come back to Joy, because you and I talked about that a little bit too, amplify joy through profitable business growth, our values are this, this and this. So now they can look at this and say, Does this action that I'm going to take this next immediate action that is necessary to take this next step in the light, is this aligning with our vision and these values? And if it is, then they make the decision to go for it because it aligns within those values. And I think that's one of the things that I would say that prevents a lot of businesses from breaking through these plateaus, is that's not established, and so people can't make decisions, and there becomes bottlenecks. But if those things, those values, are established now, that bottleneck is removed, now everybody can begin making decisions, and that amplifies the work that could be

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 49:20

done. So this gets the concept of Thrift, and I really like this, because this gets to this idea of the true definition of thrift. So when we think about Thrift, we think about not spending, right. We think about being a tight wad. We think about screws, right? So that is not the real definition of thrift. Thrift is when you are using your limited resources, not only for your own benefit, but for that of the social good, when you're using your resources again in keeping with your values. Now here's the challenge with this, though, I don't know about you, but I can talk myself. Into anything being in keeping with my values, if I want to buy it

William Harris 50:03

Sure. Yeah, right, yeah. What

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 50:07

I think we what I think businesses will struggle with when they try to implement this is all right. Well, who's joy? How do I define joy? Is it going to be sure this probably is going to bring joy, you know, and that rationalization that we all do to do what it is we want to do anyway, I my husband and I walked to Starbucks, and I got a new coffee this morning, and I was horrified when I saw that the coffee that I had ordered was $5.55 that's a lot for a cup of coffee. And we started doing we started adding it up and thinking about, well, what, um, you know, we really shouldn't do this. We shouldn't spend this way. And then within less than 60 seconds, I was like, but think about the joy that these walks bring us. Think about the and I rationalized us right back into the coffee again. Now, sure, from a business perspective, this is something that I put up as a flag for everybody. Not to give you a hard and fast answer, but just to know that we're going to do it. This is human nature, to take any of these questions and kind of massage them into the answers that work for us in the moment. This is why this is a structure that you have to work with over time and ask yourself over time and then see what results come from it, because when we think about Thrift, what we're thinking about is spending wisely. When I think not thinking about not spending at all, but you're thinking about spending wisely in keeping with your values, to benefit yourself, to benefit the social good, and unfortunately, with that definition that does allow you to tell a just so story and justify things if you, if you so choose, so as a, as a, as a flag for companies thinking about this, continuing the conversation. Okay, we made this decision. Okay. Why did we make it and then how did it? How did it turn out? Is this really what we were anticipating when we said this was our value?

William Harris 52:29

Yeah, so. And I think in fairness, that's because we, we as individuals and as groups, have conflicting values, right? And so you have the value of spending time with your one, three and five year old. You also have the value, the very real value of writing your next book. You have the very real value of date nights with your husband. And so these you have the very real value, let's say, of being healthy and in shape and getting your work on it. And so all of these values, though, like you said, there's a limited amount of time, and that's I like, where you brought this idea of Thrift, spending the money, spending the time, spending the emotions, wisely. But you had talked to me about this a little bit before, too, and you broke down the etymology of thrift too, that it's not just Thriftiness. What is the etymology there?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 53:23

So thrift comes from this Old Norse word thrifta, and that is also the root of the word thrive. And so you can really think about thrift like you think about what you do with a plant. The plant has to have soil, water, air, sunlight, and it has to have them in the right quantities, in the wise quantities, for it to grow. Interestingly enough, with plants, different plants need different things. If you've ever tried to plant wildflowers, you know that you cannot plant them in the same rich soil that a rose needs. Wildflowers actually grow best in actually rather difficult soil and difficult conditions. I didn't know that. And so it's a metaphor I love to use, because it really gets to this idea of you have to think about, sort of what conditions you are in, what are you trying to grow as you, as you thrive, and it changes. It changes. One of my, one of my colleagues, says that she does seasonal purpose statements because, because she thinks that it changes for her and her family with the seasons. Other people have said they like they do like week weekday purpose statements versus weekend purposes with their with their family life you can do like a school year versus a summer break. Kind of idea. We all have these cycles in our life and and to hold ourselves to the same set of values, goals and structure in each actually kind of sets us up for. Failure. One of my since we're talking about metaphors, one of my other real favorite metaphors is the idea that walking is actually the act of controlled falling. Think about it. As you lift your leg up, you're kind of like teetering off balance. It's just that you lift your leg up, and then you put it down, and you do it up and down in such a smooth motion that you end up walking, but in any point in that motion, you're kind of out of control, right? And life is very much like that. It's this act of controlled, falling at all times and moving from one being out of balance in one way to being out of balance in the next. So work life balance. I mean, it's an awesome thought for somebody, I'm sure, but I there have been times when I have been really focused on work, and then times when I disappear entirely. And not everybody has the luxury of exactly that, but there are going to be times where you say, Listen, I'm not going to be home for a little bit, guys, I'm going to miss you a lot, but this is a really important business meeting, and I'm going to be gone for it. Or you say to work, I need to take some half days here, because this is what's going on. And that kind of awareness that it's not a it's not even a one size fits all for any given week of your life. Yeah, that gives us the grace to kind of be in that act of controlled falling all the time.

William Harris 56:35

It's a beautiful metaphor, and that's probably the best way I've ever heard work life balance described, because I completely agree with you that it is, it is very situational and seasonal, and the balance comes from moving back and forth to the different imbalances, versus having this perfectly flat, balanced every single minute of every single day, thing which is not possible. One of the other things that I was thinking about is, you've you've clearly thought through this a lot. You have your own journey. How did you What was your journey to realize putting together this purpose, daily purpose statement, but also just this journey towards happiness.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 57:20

So I was a journalist before I was anything. I was the editor of my high school paper. I was the editor of my college paper. I got an academic scholarship to Oxford, and I got my master's and my PhD in economic and social history. But that like sounds way more highbrow than what I was actually doing. I was at Oxford, and I did get my Master's and PhD, but my master's, I couldn't think about what I was going to do. And what I really realized that was I was interested in advice, and I was particularly interested in all the trashy men's and women's magazines out there, and the advice that they gave to young men and women about like how to live a good life. So I wrote my master's thesis on changing dating and marriage patterns as seen through 50 years of cosmopolitan and 50 years of Playboy.

William Harris 58:18

Oh, wow,

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 58:19

I read 50 years of Playboy in Bodleian Library at Oxford. 50 years Bodleian Library at Oxford. There's some really, really funny stories about that, the funniest of which is the they decided I needed a minder because they were giving me a huge box of pornography, and they thought that I probably needed a minder. So this, like 80 year old man was tasked with being my minder, and I was a 23 year old woman sitting there with a box of Oh man. And I tortured this man. This man did not last more than two hours. I mean, I just was holding up. I didn't want to mind her. This whole thing was ridiculous. Can you imagine that work? I really feel badly about that. So that was my master's thesis, and then I was going, then I was going to write my doctoral dissertation. And so I thought, well, what am I going to do it on? Usually you would do it as a continuation. But the other problem was that I was single and and the idea of studying dating when you're supposed to also be dating was like way too much social pressure. So I I was hanging out at Barnes and Nobles recently, or during, during in the time that I was doing this, and I looked around and I saw all these people, sort of clumping around the self help aisle. And I saw these women plopping down in front of the relationship self help and like, pulling out five books and starting to cry. And I saw, I saw these men grabbing the How To books on sex and then running into the home. Economic, you know, the economic style, or something like that, and then reading it, I mean, it was amazing what people were doing in like, 2001 in a Barnes and Noble, with, with, with these self help books. So that's how I decided I was going to write my dissertation on that. I tell you all this because this was the evolution of this quest for like, what do people want in life? What? What's the advice that's out there does any of this work? And this also came from another really core idea of mine, which is that academics really need to touch the real world and speak to people in their everyday lives. And we may think that things like cosmopolitan and, you know, self help books like Who Moved My Cheese and how to win friends and influence people. We might think that they're sort of throwaway and stupid because they're in the popular press, but they have an incredibly large impact on the way our culture thinks and feels, and so I'm really passionate about taking academic ideas and looking at them through the lens of people's everyday life. And so that's how I got to studying happiness and purpose, because I was immersed in all of this very pedestrian but really powerful advice on what makes a good life.

William Harris 1:01:27

I love that that is actually a really good transition to learning more about who is Dr. Christine B Whelan, because there's more to your story than this. You. Let's go back before college. You were a radio personality at eight years old. Tell me a little bit about your childhood and what it was like to start off as a Radio Star.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:01:54

Oh, my heaven. So my mother, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, was the one of the first female graduates of the Harvard School of Public Health, and she was an epidemiologist. Before anybody knew what an epidemiologist was, she wrote 27 books, she founded a national organization, and she did a lot of TV and radio. And so she had her she had her own radio show that was nationally syndicated, and she would interview scientists, and then try to, you know, make this, this information available for people. I was an only child, and the way that I kind of describe it was, she sort of thought to herself, well, I could get a babysitter, or I could get Christine her own radio show, and she could come to the studio with me. And honestly, I think that's about the calculation. So the scientists would be interviewed by my mother for an hour, and then they would go into the studio next door, where little Christine, age eight, was in like some 1980s pinafore dress. And I would, I would interview them for my radio show that was called, no kidding, a talk show for kids, and I would translate the science into kids speak. And it really was syndicated on 100 networks. I don't know how I know. I have no idea how they pulled that off back in the day, but, but that was my that was my start. So I definitely come by the radio stuff, the TV, the writing, I come by it pretty naturally, and my mom totally schooled me in terms of the number of books she wrote. So I've got some catching up to do.

William Harris 1:03:31

No, that's good. What? Uh, so who was your, let's say your favorite guest on your show, or, like, favorite moment from your show.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:03:41

To be honest, I have, like, so little recollection. I basically so what i The only thing I remember was that I was I wanted to have a playdate, and the only way I could have a playdate with one of my friends was if she also agreed to go on the radio show. So I had one of my little friends in the studio with me, and I remember thinking like, Man, this is either socially terrible for me or going to be the best thing ever. I don't know, but, but, yeah, so I remember bringing a playdate to the studio. I was not a I would read from a script, but I guess I did that pretty well and and then I do remember going on with Frank field on the local news in New York City, Christmas Eve, 1986 85 or something like that. And and they did my hair up like all like 1980s newscaster. I'm eight years old, mind you, and it was such a hilarious interview, because I was whatever my father my father just told me, Don't ever say Right? So I was little Christine saying precisely, exactly, precisely, a. Amazing,

William Harris 1:05:00

dig up this clip.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:05:05

So, yeah, that was, that was that was fun. So, yeah, so that's how I started. Which meant that, which, which meant that the rest of the the media, translational and writing career kind of really came from that absolutely

William Harris 1:05:19

wonderful What about some books? What are some books that you would recommend to others that are going down this path? Is there a book that you would say is top of your list for people to read to help them? Yeah,

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:05:32

I think the best self help book ever written is Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Hands down, it is. It's a classic, and it was written in the 1930s but I tell you, I assign it to my students, and I encourage them to put it into practice in their daily lives, not just to read it, but to actually try it out, chapter by chapter. And it's always the highlight of any class, because people realize, yes, we theoretically know that it's a good idea to ask other people questions. We theoretically know that it's good to smile and be kind and help people, but to be reminded of it in such a basic way with bullet points. He was using bullet points in the 1930s he was so ahead of his time. So yes, I really, really love that book. It was. It has been criticized for being more about, sort of more about the personality ethic, rather than the character ethic of self help. And I honestly think that misses the point. I think that there is a lot of really solid character that is embedded in the ability to be a likable person.

William Harris 1:06:45

I believe it was the first self help book that I ever read. I don't remember how old I was at the time. I can't remember the first time I read it, but I just remember that being the first time I wasn't reading just adorable fiction book or something, and going, this is really cool. And now I almost only read self help, although I'd like to get back to reading some fiction too. Do you remember when you first read it like how old you were or what was going on? So

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:07:08

this is my other claim to fame. My grandmother was one of Dale Carnegie's secretaries during World War. So while my grandfather was away at war, my grandmother was in his typing pool, I think, and so, so we had them floating around the floating around the house. I had, I did not, sort of consciously know that when I decided to study self help books. And so the time that I really most remember reading it is when I was doing content analysis for my doctoral dissertation on self help books. And remember, I remember thinking this is so much better and truer and realer, sure, and so many of the other crazy books that I'm reading,

William Harris 1:07:51

I love that. Yeah, it's a great book. Um, what's a quote that you live by? Is there any quote that you have, maybe in your office, or, I don't know if we could go back further, maybe yearbook.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:08:05

So my senior yearbook quote was from Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live, which is funny, because he was the self help guru on Saturday Night Live. So really goes way back before I could even realize it, and, and it's that famous quote, because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, gosh darn it, people like me so good. I have always loved that quote. I have taught that quote to my kids. And, and I don't know that's just a, I think a really a good quote to live by.

William Harris 1:08:43

It is a good quote, like, it's a funny quote when you, when you it's a joke, right? But it's a joke. That's true, because you have to have the competence. But even we have the competence, but people don't like you. You're not gonna, it's not gonna be very effective. You need both

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:08:58

exactly. I mean, Stuart Smalley had so many wonderful ones. I will not should all over myself today. Yes, this is good that if you're you don't want to be a human doing. You want to be a human being. I mean, like all of these, they're all meant as jokes. But I'm like, dude, these are these. This is really core, important stuff that we should all know, and yes, being likable, just like with how to win friends and influence people you're really seeing like a this all really comes true. It really totally comes together in my life, but I will promise you, I did not see the trajectory when I was taking one step at a time. Yeah,

William Harris 1:09:41

you almost can't see it when you're taking one step at a time. But like you said, if you're taking that one step in within the context of those values and the purpose, then there seems to be a thread that runs through it. I always like to ask about show and tell too. So anything in your office that you would want. Show off.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:10:01

Yes, well, let's see. So I have my I have my purpose statement exercise that is in it on a whiteboard format. And the thing that's really cool about it being on a whiteboard is you can do it every day and then just erase it. And this was made. This was made by one of the universities that I spoke with and handed out to all of their students, which was a real it was a real gift for the start of the semester. Oh, and that's pretty cool. This is always on my on my desk. This is the after school schedule for my five children. Yeah, this is just the pickups and drop offs and how everybody gets to volleyball and chess and piano lessons when you when you're juggling a family with with five kids. So I

William Harris 1:10:55

feel that way with three already, right? Like it is, it is an absolute nightmare. I like seeing the schedule. How tell me if this rings true to you, I've got one in elementary school, one in middle school, one in high school now, so that's where we're at, and that means that the amount of emails that I get from the school, it's like 10 a day for each one of them now, so it's like 30 a day. How do you manage to just keep it all organized and together and make sure that you're doing what you need to do. So

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:11:23

first of all, I do my best, and I don't always make it, and this has been one of the things really important to me, is that I have gotten the school and the teachers all on my team, and guys, I'm doing the best I can. There are five kids we may need to do pick up here and drop off here and and so I've really recruited the community, which has been wonderful. I also have some I have one in Lower School, two in middle school, two in high school. The other thing to do is have all of them come to your Gmail, go into a folder, and then, like you can batch them, because some of the school emails are really repetitive. Our school does a need to know on Fridays, and that's really awesome. It's one email, and if you only read one email from them, it has all the big things, and then I put it in my calendar, because that's, yeah, yeah, yeah. So these shared calendars, and

William Harris 1:12:20

that helps. We have shared calendars as well. I like that you're using Gmail. So Google came out with Gemini this year. Their AI, I have the paid version. When you have the paid version, you can actually have it go into your Gmail. And I do the same thing where it's like, I you can actually tell prompts to it. It's their AI, I say, read all of the emails from blah blah blah school, summarize anything that's important that I need to know for blah blah blah, blah blah, and it'll go through and give me a nice little summary of all of the emails, like specify timeframe from this week, or whatever that needs to be.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:12:55

Oh, I'm totally, absolutely fantastic. Oh, this is, this is very important. And then, and then I wonder if the next thing is, if they could put it on my Google Calendar for me, like, summarize the important thing, and put those dates on the on the calendar. I

William Harris 1:13:10

haven't tried that. That's a good it should be able to. I don't know why it could. If it can't yet, it should be in a very, very, very soon version of this. The

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:13:19

thing that I will tell you, and we experienced this just last night, is that no matter how organized you are, we there is a limit of what can be done. And last night we totally reached that limit. It's the beginning of the school year, and we're testing out new things, and I realized that, you know, my nine year old cannot do seven different things in one night, right? And so and so. That has been a real learning for me. And I have to tell you that having five kids, I am the unlikely mother of five children, but has been the biggest blessing of my life, because I it has taught me when to pull back and say, Nope, this is a bridge too far. We're going to have to regroup and try something else. And I was always the perfectionist that was pushing, pushing, pushing, and I feel like I've gotten a lot more human, because I have totally reached the limit of what can be done, and especially done with joy and purpose and happiness well.

William Harris 1:14:20

And to your point, like, there's, again, going back to the values and that daily purpose, where it might be within their value, their daily purpose to be in chess and volleyball and, you know, Taekwondo and whatever else. And you're like, but is it within the family's value to be that frantic? Is it even within the family's, uh, resources, like you said, I think it's like two cars. It's like you could only get so many places and so many, so many different times and locations and whatever, absolutely,

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:14:49

absolutely. And you know, these are all first world problems. We're all very fortunate to do this thing, and yet they can be real. So. Dressers, especially if you are operating from shoulds more so than values and so. So really, having those conversations as a family is something that we try to do as well. I

William Harris 1:15:14

love it if I want to wrap up here, but I want to give you a chance if there's somebody that's listening to this and they they got to this point, what other advice would you give them to just help them, especially from the framework of a business owner or an executive, to help them unlock that next level of growth for their business from the framework of purpose.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:15:46

So every company, every executive, is going to have his or her own unique needs, and every company is going to have its unique needs, but the idea of actually practicing purpose on a daily basis, rather than simply putting it in a corporate mission statement that nobody thinks about very much until a board meeting and it gets trotted out. The idea of actually practicing purpose is a concept that is one that I'm really warming to these days, because, yes, making commitments to change is very important, but the idea of practice meaning that you're not there yet, it's still it's a work in progress, and it's growing that gives us A lot of grace and room for improvement. If you are an executive who is thinking about trying to bring more of these purpose ideas into your workforce, I would encourage you to do it yourself first, because all too often we see these kinds of initiatives from the top down, and when they are a sort of like you. You person who works for me, need to find your purpose and align it with the company statement, rather than this is what I am doing as an individual. It really works best when when you're really walking the walk and practicing what you preach. So it's one of the things that I'm I'm doing at Emory University, where the purpose project is infusing purpose into this really large university structure. And as I was joking with some folks at Emory today, if we can do it at a really amorphous, large, behemoth University, we know that we can bring it into companies as well. So we're really kind of thinking about how we can help individuals, help companies grow purposefully and live, work, act on purpose in a way that is about practicing purpose, not about being perfect in you know, from the outset,

William Harris 1:18:04

very wise words. If people wanted to follow you or use your tools, what's the best way for them to follow you? Get in touch.

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:18:13

So I'm on LinkedIn, and I encourage everybody to follow me on LinkedIn at CB Whelan at LinkedIn. The other thing that I am about to debut, and I will certainly post it on LinkedIn, is a online purpose tool where people can do their daily purpose statements themselves in digital format. Some of us like the paper and pen. Others like to be able to screenshot it, and I'm going to have options for both fairly soon. So those, and those will be on my website and available for folks, and I also do a fair number of speeches and keynotes to organizations I talk at in service events and at larger leadership events, really to kind of infuse this message of purpose and demystify it so that we can ask those questions of what matters most, why it matters, how to make it happen without it being this big, scary thing. Do it daily, not put it off for tomorrow, because it's so scary.

William Harris 1:19:13

Yeah, such wise words. Dr. Christine, I really appreciate you being on the show, sharing your time, sharing your wisdom with us. It's been a lot of fun, talking to you, learning, unpacking things here,

Dr. Christine B. Whelan 1:19:27

this has been so fun. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah,

William Harris 1:19:32

and everyone who is joining in, thank you very much for listening. Hope you have a good rest of your

Outro 1:19:38

day. Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, we'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

‍