Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from Vancouver, Canada. Is Dave Phillips. Dave, Good day to you. How you doing? Oh, fantastic. I felt any better. I'd be twins. I'd look as good as you, Greg. Well, I appreciate your compliment. I know Dave, by way of Beau Parfitt, and many of my listeners know, he's been on the show before, I think a couple of times. And most of my listeners don't know I'm in the midst of helping him write his next book. And we're getting closer and closer but Dave met bow and then Dave introduced us. Or I should say bow introduced us to Dave's wife. And I'm gonna let my listeners know a tad about you. We're going to be talking about his book called the three big questions that you ask sooner or later. He's a business owner, board member, author, columnist, TV host professional athlete, world record holder, father and husband and it pretty much describes David Phillips. He has also been a stunt man, professional ski show performer and coach for some of Canadians finest athletes. Dave broke two Guinness World Records for ski duration, the first on snow by skiing continuously for at three hours 500 chairlift rides and over 340,000 vertical feet. It's a long way. But considering you did that Navy three hours I could get it. It went up went down went up went down and the second on water but skiing for 20 140 kilometers 57 hours so from almost from Vancouver to Winnipeg, with partner Ralph Haidle brand. Dave also has been awarded the Bronze medal for bravery on his part in a lifesaving effort currently spends his time speaking and leadership mentoring for CEOs and business leaders. His top rank YPO Young Presidents organizational resources, Prentiss presented groups in Canada, US and UK. Over the last 25 years he served on boards and several public and private companies. As I mentioned about his wife, he's married to Ontario native Olympic gold medalist and alpine skiing, Kathy Phillips. And they now live in northern Vancouver and have three grown children. Nelson, is it lami? Liam? Liam. And what's the last one? Keller? Mikayla? You guys, you guys did a good job naming your kids. So the host of a podcast would have a tough time with that.

Dave Phillips
We weren't thinking about this podcast at the time, sir.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Well, that's a great background about you. And I think to just kind of dive in here, you know, most of my listeners will probably want to know what these three big questions are, that are referred to in the book. And you know, you're really very purpose driven, people go to the website at D phillips.com. You can learn more about it. He's got also another website that's linked to that. So once you go over to the courses, and you click on the course, about purpose, it'll go to the purpose process. And there you can sign up for the course you can get involved in, you know, we'll talk a little bit about that course. But you know, for years, Dave, whether you're a CEO, or you're an individual, or you're working in a corporation purpose, mission, vision values have always been a big thing. What are these three questions? And what regardless of my listeners’ capacity out there, whether they're an individual, a mom or a dad or listening to this, or they're a CEO, or executive, are those questions that maybe they should be asking that they're going to ask sooner or later?

Dave Phillips
Yeah, wow, Greg got a great, fantastic question, you know, and the reality is, I didn't I didn't actually just kind of make this stuff up. I started mentoring folks, many years ago, two and a half decades ago, I guess. And, and, you know, so we started talking, you know, one of the big things that comes up is what should I do next? What's my next role or job? Or should I buy another business? Or what should I do? You know, people are wondering how to spend their time. And so they would come in and we talk about this. And, you know, at first they started saying, hey, what's my mission? Or in other words, what is it that I do because everybody knows the purpose for your life is about what you do. Of course, we'll talk about that in a minute as well because that's a myth. But the this whole notion of how do I spend my time what's my mission, everybody wants a mission to fight right? And so They would come to this and they would go, Okay, well, they were smart guy, so you get a job or buy another business or something and you know, move them off on their way. And everybody was happy, except they would come back a couple years later and ask the second question, right. So they asked the middle question first, which is, what's my mission? But then they come back, and they'd say, you know, this time, I want to talk about and understand why I would do that. So in other words, what's the purpose for that? In fact, the bigger question was, what's the purpose of my life? Why am I here in the planet, right? And see, we determined that the purpose for your life is not actually to do something to do your mission that brings meaning to your life. But really, the purpose for your life is to first be someone. Because really, it's about our character, right. And in fact, we don't really care very much about the missions of our children, or those who are close to us if they're bad people, we want to say, what is the purpose for my life to first be someone of character? And then how do we describe that? So really, that's the foundational question and the purpose process.

Greg Voisen
And I think, Dave, maybe one of the things that you could do for my listeners, because, you know, it's a big overarching question. It's a very big question, and one that maybe my listeners have, or have not spent time trying to evaluate, or they want to reevaluate it, because they've done it, and it's time to revisit it. Yeah. And you know, it centers around values, for the most part. And to get a clue to find out your purpose, you really have to have a pretty good idea of your values. Could you speak with us a little bit about helping one to find those values? Which I'm sure you do in your, your purpose? Process course? Yeah. Gotta be part of that course. And how those values help guide and direct them toward finding that purpose. Which they then define a purpose statement, I'm probably I'm assuming. Yep. And then they can start to use that as the North Star.

Dave Phillips
Yeah, well, yeah, of course, you stepped on a landmine? Great question. Again, Greg. It's a very interesting thing. Values exercises make me crazy. Because they tell kids in university, hey, here's a list of 300 values, pick three and live your life. According to that. Well, when I was like, 20 years old, are right in that age category, I would have picked traveling in snow skiing. And so actually, which is kind of what I did. But then I realized, well hang on just a second, like, Hey, this is fun. But you know, you pretty quickly learned that you don't want to jump off big things for a living all due respect to my friends who are still stuck, stung. You know, and so you realize, hang on a second, what is it that I really value? Well, the reality is, Greg, that there's three kinds of values, there's not just one kind of value. And the younger you are, the more likely you will get stuck on what I call activity values. Those are the first kinds of values like I like to travel in snow skiing, waterskiing, and do all the fun, they're fantastic. There's nothing wrong with them, you just can't fully live your life by them. And that's what they're telling kids pick your values live by them. Okay, well, great. But actually, the further along, you go get a little older, and you say, oh, no, you know, I need to think about my competency values or my superpowers, what is it that I do? Well, what do I value doing what I like to do my passion, for example? And what does the world value enough to maybe pay me so I can eat? Right? So these are the competency values. So we have to have these, you know, these activity values are important, but competency values are really important. So the superpowers, but then also below that are the identity values, right? And the identity values, you know, this has to do with character, it has to do with who we are in the world. And I'm not just making up the identity values, these are the, I'm going to say about 18 not a hard and fast list, but I'm gonna say about 18 values that have basically held the human race together since the beginning of recorded history. It's the foundation that we build civil society so on. And so this is classically how we have described character, it's the things you want everyone around you to be know like, you want them to be honest and good and gracious, and you want them to be compassionate and you want them to have courage and experience justice and humility and grace, and so on. Right? So you these are all things that everybody thinks are good, and they are the things that we describe character with. And this starts the journey to say if there's these 18 Then how can I maybe pick three? And I'll tell you the dirty little secret as you start to really understand those three, you describe them with the other 17 It's a it's a very interesting process to go through. And I can tell you a legion of stories about this, but really when you start thinking about identity, used to ask people to ask people who they are, and they'll answer with their roles they'll answer with the things they do, they will not answer with the description of character identity. And this is the beginning of the life purpose journey is understanding character, and who you sometimes aspirationally want to be?

Greg Voisen
Right, right? Well, you know, we do have these various personas, we're a husband, and we're a business person. And we're this and we're that. And frequently, we act a little differently. And each one of those roles, right. But, you know, I remember having Simon Sinek on the show not that long ago, actually. And he got famous from a TED talk about our why, what is your why? And, you know, you say who we are, which is fundamentally at the core level of this is like, who are weak? That's a question I think people ask for a long time, you know, who they are. Because when you look at it, you have this emotional element, you have the spiritual element, you have the physical element, like you said, you were a stunt man, you're jumping off stuff and doing crazy things, and Senator Guinness records. But really, the when it comes down to it, how would you help people define their why? You just said in our first part, why we exist, right? And at the core of why we exist, is fundamentally should be their purpose.

Dave Phillips
Right? Right. And so the implication all due respect to Simon, the implication is that the purpose for your life is actually to do something. But the problem with that is if it's to do something, if you've caught your goals or purpose for your life, when you achieve your goals, you lose your purpose. And so I would call that purpose full, but not the purpose for you see, this is why we really need to answer the three questions, not just one. Because the purpose for our life is to be a person that we're going to be satisfied with, at the end of the day, do things that are going to be meaningful to us in the world around us, and have a direction that will drive us beyond the end of our lives, ideally, which is vision. That's the third question. Do you see this is the purpose, the mission and the vision? And it's like the, it's like the soul, or the operating system that every person on the planet is wired? To answer these three questions. I didn't, I didn't actually think of this stuff. I just saw people coming back over and over again, asking these three questions. It was never two, it was never four. It was always three questions. And so finally, a client said, you know, he's write a book about this, Dave, that that's where it came from. It came from a whole bunch of, you know, business leaders all over the world who were saying, Gosh, this seems to really work well, like, Oh, why don't you write a book about this?

Greg Voisen
Well, and I think it is three questions. But fundamentally, to even get there, it's almost like a, it's a process, that you're weeding through lots of years of being conditioned, living in this physical world, the challenges you have, and I really think purpose is, and I'm to say this fundamentally, I think it's a spiritual quest. It's an inner spiritual quest for each individual. Now, I just recently had Marshall Goldsmith on here, like literally two weeks ago. And in his book, The Earned life, something came up for me. You know, he said, Dave, we live on one end of the continuum, which is regret and the other end of the continuum, which is purpose, mission. Its happiness, its joy, its contentment, contentment, and they've got this continuum, right. And one thing I didn't know about him is that he speaks to CEOs and executives just like you do and coaches them about non-attachment, and impermanence. And I'm like, those are Buddhist concepts, which I've known for a year. How and I said to him, I said, martial and I'm going to give you this question to how can you speak to achievers? Who are big achievers, about non-attachment in impermanence. It's probably not even in their sphere. And he said to me, it's not only not in their sphere, it's like nothing they've ever before been questioned about. And you speak about in your book four levels of happiness as described by the great philosopher and teacher, Aristotle and the rich reason I asked this question is because I'm linking it back to happiness. If on one end of the continuum is happiness, see Kumar Rao, all the people that have had on that have talked about happiness, lots of books on happiness courses at Harvard on happiness. How would you help? The listeners who are trying to find a purpose with one of those core fundamental elements being happiness, joy, contentment.

Dave Phillips
So there's 26 questions in there, Greg, just to be clear,

Greg Voisen
okay. It says four levels of happiness, but you say a 26 questions. Okay.

Dave Phillips
Well, there was a whole bunch of questions in there. But you know, the four levels of happiness is a fantastic model. Okay. And so, so if you take the, you know, Aristotle's four levels of happiness, and frankly, take all the happy local happiness research has been done, like fantastic work by guys like Martin Seligman, and, and so many others. Now, Dan, I'd recommend people read Solomon's book, you know, I think in about 2000, he wrote a book called authentic happiness. I wrote another one where there's three I have, the second one he wrote was called Thrive, which was an advanced, I mean, fantastic books on happiness. Another one called what happy people? No, those are sort of my top picks, I guess. But you know, when you think about the four levels of happiness, it kind of fits with this, like, how conscious are we in the world as well, right. So but having said that, let's just go back to level one level one is immediate gratification, right? And we all know, a little immediate gratification, you know, we watch a Netflix movie, we have a drink, we do something, you know, fun, and fantastic. There's nothing wrong with but you just can't live your life at level one. So people realize, you know, it's got to be one more thing that will give me a little bit higher. And so they thought, you know, what, if I achieve something, I actually am a little bit happier, right? And so this is kind of the mission question we were asking, right? So if we do something, we are going to be just a little bit happier. So gratification through achievement. But of course, you know, you can't get stuck in gratification through achievement, because then you end up in this endless loop of just achieving to get immediate gratification. Well, everybody knows that doesn't work, right? So then the human condition goes on and says, Well, you know what, as it turns out, I like to take my immediate gratification, my contribution, or my achievement and make a contribution. So that's the third level of happiness, the people who want to make these contributions and on the planet, right. And so that kind of brings level two and level one into engagement, right, but the, the problem is, like, for example, fundraisers love this, right, because they know that if you've got if you're living at level three, and level two kind of dipping into one, that you're going to feel guilty next year, when they come back again, right, because you're giving the contribution for a level one gratification, that becomes an endless loop, right? Where you're kind of living outside yourself. So you've got this, you know, immediate gratification, then you have this, you know, sort of achievement, then you have contribution, but it's the fourth level where you really cross over the Gulf. And this is where you, you realize that the very happiest people historically, and this is I'm gonna start, I mean, I'm gonna maybe I'm pushing my luck a little bit, I would say this is, broadly speaking, 7500 years of recorded history on happiness boiled down into one sentence, but one paragraph, and I would say that the very happiest people are those people who have become, I'll say it twice, but they become the kind of people who naturally or spontaneously engage their signature strengths, to make a contribution in a virtuous fashion. So those historically are the happiest people. So but the first part is about the being, well-being who are we going to become? Right? So this is where we start talking about these ATM virtues are higher values, like this is the thing that describes that describes character. In fact, if you were to take all of the spiritual concepts, and then try to get some sort of a word to describe a spiritual concept, that's really what the virtues are, that's really, you know, essentially that's, that's kind of what they are. Right? So would you also

Greg Voisen
refer to it as kind of a self-actualized state like Maslow used to? I mean, when Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs goes way back, many of my listeners, you know, recognize that the levels that people are at as they grow, yeah. Is it that and the, the stuff that Richard Barrett speaks about and all of his things as well, so I look at it as kind of the top realm. Repeat your sentence again, is very good.

Dave Phillips
I mean, firstly, just to clarify Maslow on his deathbed, kind of renounced some of the things that he said because I think he'd been speaking to Viktor Frankl right about purpose and meaning that can create right so I mean, there's some there's some interesting stuff in there, right? But if we come back to the, to the, to the being, right level are the happiest people have become the kind of people. So it's both a character formation of the virtue, how do we describe ourselves that aspirational sense of self become the kind of people who know one, another door sells so well. And they've done the work. And they've done the behavioral assessments and all those sorts of things to determined listen to other people, they've determined what they naturally do, what's your signature strength, right, or we talked about the values of competency values, right? Become the kind of people who naturally know and engage their signature strengths are the things we do well, but not just for them. They're happier if they do it to make a contribution. Right. But it's not just any contribution. It's a contribution that FITS in keeping with what all of humanity has said are good things during the course of human history, right. And whether you're a theist or an atheist, right, it doesn't matter. Everybody kind of agrees on this formula. They might disagree on the origin, for example, but they all agree that these are the very happiest people, the people who are being good people, we listened. I listened to a 92-year-old, our local billionaire Jimmy Patterson speak the other day. And essentially, he said, like, what's the summary of my career? Work hard to be a good, honest person?

Greg Voisen
I would agree that's the simplest way to do it. You state there's five why's and the five questions that lead to discover your real purpose and motivation. Speak with the listeners about the five why's of purpose. Well, and again, these

Dave Phillips
Are these are just little exercises that you can drill to drill down. You know, the purpose process is something I've designed to kind of fill in the gaps. So you know, if you don't take all the seven steps that we'll talk about in a minute. The I'm sorry, restate the question again, the five the five Why's the five why's? Yeah, so the five why's are this exercise that I'd heard of. And I have to be honest, I'm the time when this slapped me in the face was when I was breaking this crazy waterski world record. You know, we're out there, waterskiing. And we had come to, you know, three, four or five, 600 Miles like everything, by the way, after about 300 miles, everything starts to hurt, and you got another you've got another, you know, 1000 or so miles to go and you know, so you're dealing with pain, right? It's the closest thing honestly, Greg that I can think up to being tortured. Because it was I've never been tortured. I don't think maybe my teenagers from time to time have tortured me. But I honestly the there well beyond that stage now. You know, the when you are out there waterskiing, 345 600 miles, everything hurts, so you got 26 bones and each foot and then you take those and swell up all the connective tissues to that and then just slap it 20 or 30,000 times and you tell me how you're feeling? You lose your sense of humor in a hurry, right? At about 800 miles, I'm out there kind of desperate going, how am I ever going to ski another four or 500 miles, right? Like this is unimaginable, right? Then like the closest thing that I can imagine to being impossible, right? And so you would think at that moment, Greg, I would ask myself a question that I should have asked a long time before then what would the question be?

Greg Voisen
Why am I doing this?

Dave Phillips
So you do you ask the question. Okay, well, so either the user I didn't get to five, maybe I did, I came up, but I'll tell you the things I can remember clearly. And Greg, I cannot properly put into English. What happened in this experience? Because it was an experience that you cannot fabricate or, or makeup. But I started asking the question, why are we doing this? And I thought, well, we want to we want to break a Guinness World Record at that point. Who cares? Right? I thought well, what's why would that be important to break the world record? Well to raise some money for cystic fibrosis, because it was terrible. CF is a terrible disease and, and so I thought well to raise money for this. And I thought, you know what, write him a check. I mean, these are distinct memories I had at that moment of this conversation I was having and then, and then I asked, Well, why is it important to raise money for cystic fibrosis. And then all of a sudden, I entered into a daydream, my mind drifted back to the beach. And there's these two little girls, both four and five years old named Joan and Allison Brennan. And they were dancing around the beach and having a great time. Both of them had cystic fibrosis, they were the most spectacularly beautiful little girls you could even imagine. And to know that their lives were going to be cut short. And I thought in that moment, you know, Greg, I'm getting goosebumps as I tell the story even all these years later. Isn't that a strange Same. And as I remember those two girls on the beach, I thought, can I give them another life breath, another, another, another breath another day of life. If what I'm doing now could give them another minute, another day, another month, from research from awareness from whatever we're doing out here. I thought that's enough. And in that moment, in that moment, I can't and I can't properly explain it. But somehow, the impossible, flipped the switch and became possible. There was a whole new gear that I got, and I cannot properly describe it. It's as though had come to the end of myself and my magical athlete, big strong guy trying to do all these things in a row was like I had come to the end, we did not find out how strong and invincible we were, in that event. Great, we found out how weak we were. And we found out how important others are, and how important this contribution is. And to do this good thing. It did, I

Greg Voisen
think, I think it's this may sound a little trite, but it does answer the question just like you were talking about that billionaire in Canada, you know, work hard, do good. You're really any end, working towards something that's greater than yourself. It's like the sum total of have so much effort. I mean, your partner was with you, you were doing it, you were trying to break these Guinness book records. It wasn't about the record anymore. It's about the two little girls with CF, right and something much greater than the record. Nothing to do with the record, even though you did break the record. And that's what you can say, what you really can say is that you raised enough money to help research to help more people actually live longer. Right. And that's the that's where you are now you speak to the listeners, you refer to this as your unique, your unique personal passion. Why? Why would you recommend people to figure out, what are some things worth dying for? Now, you might know, you might have been on that water thinking, maybe I'm going to die out here just because this is so much pain that crossed my mind. It might have it might have not that maybe you would have died, but you maybe you could have hurt yourself eating legs would have gotten weak. Great.

Dave Phillips
Well, the bottoms of my feet were numb for two months and some parts for two years, just to be clear are crazy. This thing was

Greg Voisen
Yeah. So it might not. The question would be I look at all these soldiers in Ukraine right now. putting their life on the line for the country every day. I don't know the numbers that have died. I don't claim to know, I know that the losses are crazy. And there's no way to put a good thing. But when somebody says, Hey, I'm doing this for something greater than me, my country, it's not about me, it's about everybody else, you begin to see how heroic many of these people are that are stepping up to do that to put their life on the line. Now that's happened war in in war out war in and war out in Vietnam, whatever. Granted, we have war resisters that ended up going to Vietnam and fighting anyway. But would you say that that might be this unique, personal passion that would be beyond that? Would you find that in skiing across, you know, from here to Winnipeg? What is that? Because you said it's worth dying for?

Dave Phillips
Well, the pathway again, to answer the question what's worth dying for? We need to determine first what's worth living for. Right? And so the mistake that people make is they over index on their mission. They think their goals are the purpose for their life. So say you win the war. But then you go, Well, what's next, right? I mean, my wife won an Olympic gold medal. And that when she was 10 years old, and she was walking through the she was walking me through the process of doing this she thought, boy, if I could just win an Olympic gold medal that would be the purpose for my life. It was the be the grand achievement. Well, fantastic, which she actually won the gold medal. Good news. The bad news is like what next? There is no higher, there is no higher gold you can get in the world of sport. So you know, if you call your goals or your mission, the purpose for your life, when you achieve your goals, you lose the sense of purpose. Right and so This is this is the grand mistake that people make, and they don't circle back to this more spiritual thing that you were talking about. And, you know, we can even kind of de spiritualize it for those who are scared by the word spiritual. And say one of the functional aspects of the of, you know, of the sense of the sense of goodness or virtue, I mean, you know, I'm not gonna dive into this, but you know, I rewrote a definition for love great, because I'm so very disappointed. And all of the notions of you know, love as being purely emotional or feeling based or emotion based it is all of those things they will love is a love is a what I would call a mystical, unifying, generative force, right. So it's certainly all of those things, all the definitions are written on that. But really, the practical application of it like how we would treat teach our young people teach my daughter how to find a young man and love him. But so beyond this mystical unifying force, is, is the practical application of these identity values, in relationships with people and planet. These are the values that have held us together since the beginning of recorded history, yet we don't talk and this is, this is essentially how you create all the emotion by loving somebody in this way. And yet, we don't give a proper balanced credence to the practical aspects of what does history say about what it means to love.

Greg Voisen
Now, once you've defined all these things, Dave, and you're now speaking about something that's like, Okay, what is love? What is this purpose mean? What advice would you provide to the listeners about contentment and equanimity? You know, we go through ups and downs in life. You know, life is not just one continuum. Sure, it and it everything is perfect, right? Whether it's a marriage or a business or right financial and whatever it is, and purpose, a well a purpose, a purposeful person, well grounded, would, in my estimation, understand equanimity, and understand contentment? In other words, if you're supposed to be this person living your purpose, yes, no matter what goes on around you, you should be steadfast. Okay, right. And what advice would you provide? Or what thoughts might you give our listeners about being? How do you want to call it equal mindedness? You know,

Dave Phillips
you know? Sure. Well, the, again, the foundation of equal mindedness comes in the balanced application of these higher values and understanding what they are developing opera essentially developing operating principles around it, and then practices. Right. I mean, this is really the view of this right now, you know, my view, and I would say, a lot of history would support it, certainly, you know, from, from a practical perspective, right. Like, you know, we've got all kinds of dysfunction run on all over the place, right, that blind that blinds us, the father wounds that the abuse that happened, the, you know, the misgivings that occurred to the broken families, and so on, you know, a lot of that has really taken us out, and people don't take the time necessarily there to focus on what those wounds are, that are that are kind of taking them out. And, you know, on one hand, I've heard it said nobody achieved anything with a little dysfunction. On the other hand, I've heard it said that, you know, sometimes the dysfunction can take us out. And so having people do the work on what the dysfunction is, what are the things that you know, consume your mind, find people to talk to, we are in a better time, the best time of history to be alive, to determine what these things are, although we're not perfectly clear, boiboi We're getting closer. And, you know, either talk therapy or different types of modalities can be very helpful for people to figure out how to solve those things, so that they can get back on to what I call the center line, Greg, a lot of people ask me, you know, I'm off track, I just don't know quite what I got to do. And I say, Well, you know, we're on track is, and they go, Yeah, I'm not exactly sure. Right. And so, this purpose process, really is the on track version, not based on what Dave saying, it's kind of based on what all of history is saying, you know, there's seven steps. You know, it's what's the purpose for my life? What's my mission? What's my vision? Those are the three questions as the book is about. That's where people start, right? But then they would come back later, actually, and they would say, Dave, what do I do with this? Great, what do I do with it? In a practical sense, you live that out to your primary roles. So you'll have different roles, you know, you'll have you know, community member Her father career finances, spiritual personal development, and so on, yeah, five, or six or seven. Based on that you then set your goals, I'll tell you the biggest single mistake people make the biggest single mistake people make in their lives, Greg that throw them way off track is they set goals without first having the context of the roles. So in other words, they become really successful a business and 100 pounds overweight, right? Well, that doesn't work, or they get in really good shape, but they're broke. Well, that doesn't work either. So roles, goals, from the goals, the tasks come from the task is a task to populate your calendar. Most people are living in their tasks and their task list in their calendar. And then they go, Oh, I better set some goals. And then oh, it's a better decide on some roles. And then it's why am I doing all this stuff? Right? And usually, the younger you are, the closer you are to the seven step. The older you get, the more you are focused on purpose, people usually start asking the questions when I'm 25 years old.

Greg Voisen
Well, I appreciate I appreciate you mentioning the emotional baggage that people carry, because that does get in the way of them being able to advance themselves. And always, you know, say Are they on the learning line, versus the goal line? The learning line looks at all of these experiences and lives as an opportunity to transmute it, learn something from it and move forward. Sure. Versus just checking off the box. I made this goal as you said, Okay. So, you know, and the learning line is a continuum, it doesn't end once the goal has been achieved. So that's important. And I'm glad you mentioned that. Now, you know, in kind of summarizing here, you have these three questions. But you also have this course called The purpose process. Can you give the listeners three takeaways on what you think would really be important for them to consider maybe applying somewhere in their life that could help them move beyond as you keep referencing a goal, but more a purpose? And what would those be?

Dave Phillips
Well, the three, I guess, the three takeaways. The three things that I'd like people to really think about is, you know that firstly, life purpose is three questions. It's not just one, right? So ask the question of sort of the Who am I the Why do I do what I do? It's really an identity question, right? The second word, what's my mission? So we spend all of our time the universities and schools and so on? That's where they spend all their time. But the third question, of course, what's my vision, and most people don't even really have an idea of how to think about the irrational process of vision. But you will never do so well, unless you understand the mission and the purpose. So it's those first three, three questions. There's, there's three, there's not just one question. You know, and then the second thing I would say, is that, you know, if you don't know where on track is, how do you know, when you're off track? You know, we must come back to this place where we start thinking about what are the central values that define my character, my purpose? What is my mission? What am I good at? Where's my center line in terms of my signature strengths? How I spend my time? What is my state of division? Where do I want to take all this right? And then the roles the, you know, the seven steps, right? The purpose, mission, vision, roles, goals, tasks, calendar, you know, how is it that I can build my centerline, so that I can be clear, right, we need to, we need to know when we're off track by knowing where on track is, and it's not just Davis, and this is I've looked at all of history is really saying, these are kind of kind of the quickest way to think about this. I'm saying it's not for the faint of heart, to be honest, it's it. But it's, this is the pathway that everybody's going to walk sooner or later. Unless

Greg Voisen
It is and I think for my listeners, and they've heard me say this before, because I've done other shows on purpose, but it's worth repeating. I used to teach a course that Kevin McCarthy created called the on purpose person. And I became a facilitator for that. And after two days in the course, now, your course, I think, runs anywhere from six weeks to 10 weeks, you say, and it is online, so people can go online and watch the videos and do the exercises and so on. But mine was a three day eight hour per day course. So whatever however many hours that is, at the end, I defined my personal purpose which hasn't changed, and is I exist to serve to inspire passion. Now, for me, what did that mean? Why do I do this podcast? Sometimes people ask, you know, you've done 950 Plus episodes of the show. Well, number one, this is my learning ground. I learned from everybody that I interview. Number two, it's my way to disseminate information to the world to inspire people to actually make that change. And it's moving people from and here's the most important point, a point of confusion and misunderstanding about something to understanding and being clear, right. And so when I say Passion, Passion actually can be defined as getting somebody from not having clarity to having clarity about where they want to go, or what they want to do. And to me, I think in life, somebody like you can help somebody get clarity around their purpose is very important. And we help meaning you as thought leaders, facilitators, light workers, or whatever you want to call us, our role is to help the people do that. And, Dave, I want to thank you for being on the show, spending time with me articulating what this is, what the questions are, people should be asking. And then I'm going to direct all of my listeners to go to Amazon to get the audio book, or to buy the book. And then we'll go to his website, which is D phillips.com. That's where you can learn about more of his corporate stuff. Then there'll

Dave Phillips
be there's a link to buy the book on the website as well, which might be the easier pathway,

Greg Voisen
okay. And then the other one is, you can virtually go to his course section at the top, and just click on core courses. And when you click on the first button there, you'll find the course on purpose. And this is something that's a synchronistic. So the one of the questions asked was, well, can I take it anytime? Yes, you can. Because it's recorded. And it's Dave speaking. And literally, you can go up there and pop in and take your course. And I will say it's very reasonably priced. The whole thing I think, was, if you bought it all at once was 997 cents, right? Yeah. And if you pay it in payments, it's three payments. So do go to Dave's website, check it out. There's a lot of places you can go to understand purpose. If it's, you know, getting his book right off the bat to ask the three questions and start the work. But I'd say you got to start someplace. So I'd encourage you guys to start everyone is listening, start. Dave, anything you want to say to sum this up?

Dave Phillips
Well, I, I just people listen. And they know that there's something that they should they should do. And I would I would encourage I would encourage the listeners to just write down that one thing that came from today's call, whether it's by a book or determine my identity values, whatever it is, everybody's usually Everybody's got something to take away because there is some great energy inside each of us to do some great thing. And I would encourage you to remember that direction is more important than position and could that one thing change your direction? One degree today?

Greg Voisen
Uh, Dave, thanks for being on inside personal growth and sharing the three big questions.

Dave Phillips
My great pleasure, as I'm sure you can imagine, Greg, thank you.