Episode 16 - Living A Life On Purpose – Six Passages To An Inspired Life with Brad Swift

Living A Life On Purpose – Six Passages To An Inspired Life with Brad Swift

Announcer:  This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com

[Music]

Mark Lewis: Welcome to Money Mission and Meaning, passion at work, purpose at play, where we explore how we can integrate our personal values and professional skills to create pleasure and profit in the business of life.  I’m your host, Mark Michael Lewis, CEO of Smart Energy Enterprises, Incorporated, makers of “Smart Power” energy drinks, “SEEinc” a beautiful future, now.  Today’s guest is the founder of the Life On Purpose Institute and author of the book Life on Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life.  Join us as we examine these six passages and guide you through the steps to clarifying your true purpose, so that you can infuse this inspiration into every aspect of your life.  But first, a few highlights from the show:

Brad Swift: We need as individuals a clear and inspiring life purpose to get on and to stay on the right path itself…
When we really are clear about what our true purpose is, then it has the power to shape each and every moment of our life…
Authentically say, “My life is a reflection of my life purpose.”  Well the reason that’s so important, to start looking at that is because that will inspire us forward.  It will kind of take us forward even through the more difficult parts of the process of clarifying one’s life purpose and living true to it…
Folk, a lot of our lives seem to be shaped by the fear, lack and struggle of the inherited purpose…

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Mark Lewis: So welcome, Brad.  It’s a pleasure to have you on Money Mission and Meaning.

Brad Swift: Thanks, Mark.  It’s great to be here.

Mark Lewis: Well first, your company’s called the “Life on Purpose Institute”, and your book is called Life on Purpose, so let’s start with that.  What do you mean by living a life on purpose?

Brad Swift: Well, Mark, what we mean by this whole notion of ‘life on purpose’ is really about living each and every moment of every day according to one personal purpose.  And when we talk about a personal purpose, what we mean is that it’s a blending of one’s vision for what’s possible for themselves and the world, their core values, those intangibles that mean the most to them, and the very essence of who they are as a human being.  And we take a view here at Life on Purpose Institute that we are all born with a master plan for our life.  And unfortunately most people don’t know their plan, or they’ve misidentified it, or sometimes we get off course, off purpose because of outside influences.  They can stem from the upbringing from our parents, the culture, expectations of other people, or just downright fear itself.  So if you think of like a business needs an inspiring vision that is powerful enough to shape the culture of that business, we need as individuals a clear and inspiring life purpose to get on and to stay on the right path itself.

Mark Lewis: Right, and as I understand it, over the last decade you and the coaches at your Institute have led literally thousands of people through this process and this book is kind of a summary of everything that you’ve learned from that.  From your experience, what difference does it make in your clients’ lives when they actually articulate, clarify, and then live on purpose?

Brad Swift: Well on one hand it’s different for each person because the whole experience of living our life on purpose is unique to each person, but it’s definitely one of the most transformational experiences in life itself, because when we really are clear about what our true purpose is, then it has the power to shape each and every moment of our life.  You know, we take the view that a life purpose isn’t about what one is here to do, but it’s more like the overarching context for our life, which then has the power to shape all of our life, including all the things that we do as well.  So some of the benefits that people have reported back to us through the years is a renewed sense of focus, because they have their life purpose that they can focus on that kind of gives them that direction of what to include in their life and what they’re going to attract into their life itself, a deeper sense of fulfillment.  And perhaps one of the most common things that we hear [is] life becomes a lot more fun, because when you’re living your life true to your values and the essence of who you are, it’s just a whole lot more fun to go through each and every day.

Mark Lewis: Yeah, and the show is called Money Mission and Meaning, and it’s really about bringing the meaning into the mission, into the actual money you’re creating, the life you’re living, because when you know, as you put it, “When you know what your purpose is, all of your life can become an expression of it.”  One of the things I appreciate about your book is it doesn’t talk about what purpose is.  It actually guides people through six passages to creating a life purpose for themselves, and I’d like to introduce to my listeners, I’d like to introduce them to the six steps of the life purpose journey, so that they can get a sense of why they’d want to get a copy of your book.  Now obviously we’re only going to be able to scratch the surface of what’s possible, but I’d like to have you imagine how your life would be monumentally different if there were a single orienting purpose through which every part of your life took on meaning. 

And so, Brad, in the first passage you describe in the book, to creating a life on purpose, is to prepare for the journey.  Now in the book you have extensive self-tests that people go through to get a sense for where they’re at on the purpose journey, how they relate to their lives currently, and what’s possible for them if they were living on purpose.  What’s the importance of really becoming aware of the gap between our current life habits and living a life on purpose?

Brad Swift: In Passage Number One, the preparing for the journey is for the simple reason that we’re not talking about a simple journey.  We’re not talking about just kind of going down to the local grocery store to pick up a quart of milk.  We’re talking about a hero’s journey, a journey to really embracing who we each are as individuals, and what we came here to experience and to be in the world, and the contribution that we’re here to make.  So in that first passage, the “preparing for the journey”, it’s really important to both… it’s like any other journey, if you want to… say if I wanted to go from the mountains of North Carolina where I live, to San Francisco, well those two things are what I need to know: I need to know what my starting point is, and I need to know where I want to go.  And for my ‘life on purpose’ perspective the distance between those two points is where the gap exists.  So in the preparation passage we help people to get a much clearer sense of how on- or off-purpose their life is, how clear or unclear they are about what their life purpose is, to get a clearer sense of what that starting point is.  And then that, as we describe it, that kind of “visionary reality”.  What would their life be like, look like, feel like, once they’re crystal clear about their life purpose and they’ve been living it long enough to authentically say, “My life is a reflection of my life purpose.”  Well the reason that’s so important to start looking at that is because that will inspire us forward.  It will kind of take us forward even through the more difficult parts of the process of clarifying one’s life purpose and living true to it.

Mark Lewis: Ah, kind of a creative tension that pulls us forward into what’s possible.

Brad Swift: Yes, exactly.

Mark Lewis: Well unfortunately there’s so much good stuff to go into in each of these passages, so I’m going to move on…  After preparing for the journey, the second passage is actually starting out on the purposeful path.  Now you make it clear, as you were saying a bit earlier, a life purpose is not what we do; it isn’t a goal or a set of projects to accomplish, but it’s a set of qualities about how we are, our being, how we relate to ourselves, our actions and projects and goals.  Can you help the listeners understand what’s important about that difference?

Brad Swift: I really think that it’s time for us to evolve to a new definition of “purpose”.  So in our culture, particularly our Western or American culture, we’re so much into the doing-ness of life, and yet what we often find is, when we look from that kind of cultural perspective that says that our life purpose is about doing, what that ends up giving us oftentimes is a life filled with a lot of doing, doing, doing, doing, almost to the point of overwhelm or burnout.  But oftentimes there’s still that deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that’s missing. 

So in the second passage we invite people to rethink the whole notion about what a life purpose is, and encounter the life on purpose perspective that says your life purpose is more like the context or vessel into which you pour your life, which then has the power to shape each and every moment of your life.  And I think one of the best ways to kind of understand that is to think of kind of a visual metaphor about your life purpose.  Think of, you know if you can imagine a coffee mug filled with water.  Well the coffee mug kind of represents a person’s life purpose, and the water represents the person’s life itself.  And so just like the coffee mug gives shape and form to the water inside of it, when we know with crystal clarity what our life purpose is, it has the power to begin to give shape and form to our life.  And in this case, all of our life, our decisions, our choices, you know… our speaking, our experience of life, and ultimately all the actions that we take, you know, in life as well.

Mark Lewis: Excellent.  So the water inside the cup takes on the shape of the cup and so we can actually determine what our life looks like and the quality it has by getting clear and designing the cup such that it’s an expression of those three things you were talking about: our vision, our core values, and our sense for what’s possible.

Brad Swift: Exactly.  The essence of who we are, as well.  And out of that it kind of… what gives the power to that context is the fourth quality that I describe as “the attractive force of universal love”.  And for many people that would equate to a relationship to God or a higher power, or their spiritual nature, their spirituality.  And so when you take those four ingredients and you identify what your core values are, what is the essence of who you are, and what’s that vision that you see possible, and then begin to operate from that context, life takes on a whole different experience and a whole different meaning.

Mark Lewis: Absolutely beautiful.  So we’re about to take a break to support our sponsors.  When we come back, I want to get into the next passages to clarifying your life purpose, especially differentiating our true life purpose from our inherited life purpose.  So, I’m Mark Michael Lewis.  I’m speaking with Brad Swift, author of Life on Purpose.  And we’ll be right back.

[break]

Mark Lewis: And we’re back with Brad Swift, talking about his book and coaching institute, Life on Purpose.  So, Brad, we’ve been talking about “life on purpose” and sometimes, different people have different ideas on what a purpose is.  Could you give us an example of what a “life on purpose” statement might sound like, so people can get a more concrete example?

Brad Swift: Sure.  Actually, that’d be a great idea.  Well you know, again probably the best example that I’m familiar with is my own example.  I say that my own life purpose is “to live an inspired and inspiring life of purposeful passionate and playful service.  To live a life of mindful abundance that I balance with simplicity, and a life of spiritual serenity.”  And you know, Mark, the first time listeners hear that, that can be kind of an earful, so I also have a kind of a “Reader’s Digest” condensed version of that, which says that “My life on purpose is a life of service, simplicity, and spiritual serenity.  So as we were saying in the first segment, that becomes the context into which I pour my life.  So my job and my profession as a coach gets to be shaped by that.  My relationship with my wife of 17 years is shaped by that.  My relationship with my daughter of 15 years is shaped by that.  You know, when I go to play volleyball at the local Y… all of these are opportunities for me to be and to express that life purpose itself.

Mark Lewis: Right, and that gets into the distinction between having a purpose being about doing versus being, because you could always “be”, in every situation, versus a purpose about doing.  So okay, great.  So that you for that.  I appreciate that.

Brad Swift: Good.

Mark Lewis: When we get onto the third passage…  The first two passages are about getting prepared to clarify your life purpose.  The next two are actually about articulating it.  But to be clear about what it is, one of the things that you’re very articulate about is that it’s critical to be clear about what it’s not. 

Brad Swift: Mm-hmm.

Mark Lewis: So in Passage Number Three is ‘uncovering what is already shaping your life’.  So you say that your life is always being shaped by something, and if you haven’t clarified your life purpose yet, your life is being shaped by something else, which you call an “inherited life purpose”.  What’s the difference between a true life purpose and an inherited life purpose?

Brad Swift: Well one way to say it is the difference between life working, and where you’re satisfied and fulfilled, and the other is where life really sucks [laughs] trying to say it clearly.

Mark Lewis: That sounds pretty straightforward.

Brad Swift: Yeah, that’s pretty straightforward, right?  Your inherited purpose, to kind of further make that distinction, is kind of like the meaning you ascribe to life as you were growing up, as a young person, as a young child, particularly in those moments when you felt threatened or unsafe.  And so, unlike your true life purpose, as we mentioned earlier, is you know, really founded in and the very foundation of it is your universal laws or relationship to God or a higher power, or your spiritual nature… your inherited purpose is based in fear, a sense of lack or not enough, and a need to struggle, to make it in life.  So the inherited purpose happens, it begins to get formed very quietly, without us even being aware that it’s being formed, in those early formative years of growing up.  And so usually by the mid-teenage years it’s pretty well formed, and if it goes undistinguished and kind of continues to operate in the background of our awareness, it can continue to shape much of our life as adults, particularly if we don’t know our purpose and particularly in those times when we feel threatened or unsafe.  And Mark, in today’s time and age, there’s a lot of things that can have us feel threatened and unsafe in the world.  So a lot of our lives tends to be shaped by the fear, lack and struggle of the inherited purpose.

Mark Lewis: Right.  And it sounds like during our childhood, as we’re going through challenges, there’s some experience of you know, something’s wrong.  And so we create some kind of response in reaction to it, and then we actually forget that we created that and we end up thinking that that’s how we’re supposed to be, and that becomes kind of a purpose that we’re living, even though it comes from something we didn’t want.  Is that pretty much…

Brad Swift: Yeah. Very well said.  It’s the lie that we’ve told ourselves about ourselves and about life so long, that we think it’s the truth.  But it’s not.  It’s the lie.  And it’s not like, you know… well for example, my inherited purpose began to get formed when about two weeks before my seventh birthday, my dad of 43 years of age died very unexpectedly of a massive heart attack, and you know, kind of left us in a state of really struggling to get ourselves back together.  My mom and her two sons had to really struggle for a few years to get life working again.  And during that time my own inherited purpose got to be formed.  And it wasn’t like I ever sat down and said, “Okay, my dad just died.  What can I make that mean?”  The meaning happened kind of almost automatically, almost unconsciously.  But then, you know, it’s what began to shape those next several years of my life and even continued to shape it so that at the point of… I was about 37 years of age, I was a successful veterinarian, a prominent member of my community, to all outward appearances, but because my inherited purpose had shaped so much of my life, I was seriously contemplating taking my own life because my life just felt empty and meaningless.

Mark Lewis: As you’re saying this, I’m imagining almost like Lego blocks.  There are some decisions we make as children… you know, you faced this very unfortunate situation, your father died, you learned to cope with it, and the way you cope becomes like foundation and then you build on top of that.  You build on top of that, and it’s never quite, “Here’s what I really want.”  It’s not looking into your heart and your soul, into your vision and your core values and your essence, your connection with love.  But it’s like, “What do I have to do?  What do I need to do?  What must I do?”  And then you build on top of that and so even when you get successful it’s not fulfilling.

Brad Swift: Exactly, exactly.  It runs the show, particularly whenever we feel threatened and unsafe, and it’s what gives the inherited purpose so much of its life-shaping quality, is that it operates in the background of our awareness.  It’s kind of like if you’ve ever walked into, or you know been in a room for awhile and you thought it was, you know, real quiet, and then suddenly the air conditioning cut off, and you realize that there was air conditioning running in the background but you hadn’t even noticed it because it was just part of the, you know part of the surroundings.  That’s kind of how the inherited purpose operates.  And one of the reasons I think so many people have shared…  this third passage, while it’s one of the most challenging parts of the process, is also one of the most ultimately life-enhancing, is because when you pull your inherited purpose from the background of your awareness up to the foreground, it begins to lose the power over shaping your life.

Mark Lewis: Aha, and that leads us into the next step, because like when you can recognize what your inherited purpose is, then you can begin to distinguish, “Wait a minute… that’s what I’ve always done.  What would I actually want?  What actually resonates with who I am?”  And so let’s get right to the fourth passage, which is clarifying your true purpose.  Now you talk about two different ways that people often try to clarify their life purpose.  The first and most common is what we might call the -- or what you call the -- “endless search mode”, where you’re trying to find the one right purpose.  And you contrast that with the process of “creating your life purpose”.  Can you talk about that a bit?

Brad Swift: Well you know, the endless search mode is kind of… another way of describing that is kind of the trial and error method.  You know, “Well, I’ll try this, and I’ll try that,” and oftentimes again if we’re operating from the old cultural perspective that says your life purpose is all about doing, then you tend to go out there into the world trying to find the perfect job or career, or the perfect role in life that you can identify as your life purpose.  Now we take the view that, no, you unconsciously created the context of your life called your “inherited purpose”, and so once you’ve uncovered that and you distinguish it so that you can be aware of it, as to whether to have that shape your life or not.

Mark Lewis: Right, right.

Brad Swift: And when you don’t have that shape your life, then you can create a new context for your life.

Mark Lewis: Right, and in this step you really go through those three pieces of discovering what your vision is and in the book you actually have a series of exercises I thought helpful, around this, really discovering what your vision is, what your core values are, and what the essence of who you are is, so that you can use that –  you call it “universal love” or God, or spirituality – to bind that together into a purpose.

It’s time for another break.  When we come back I want to get into the last two passages to living a life on purpose, and how to… not ‘integrate your purpose into your life’, but to actually ‘integrate your life into your purpose’.  I’m Mark Michael Lewis, and I’m speaking with Brad Swift, author of Life on Purpose, and we’ll be right back.

[break]

Mark Lewis: And we’re back, with Brad Swift, author, trainer, and coach.  So, Brad, in the first four steps we got clear about where we were, prepared for the journey, discovered what a life purpose is, got clear about what our inherited purpose is, so that we could create something new, and then clarified what our life purpose is.  Now in the last two passages you could say the play of the game really begins.  As you say throughout the book, we must take our action into insights for them to be something truly valuable in terms of our growth and development. 

Now the fifth passage is ‘learning the tools for living a life on purpose’.  And in this section of the book you have a whole series of tools that go through and show people how to take the purpose that they now articulated, and to begin to bring more and more of their life into it, such that life can become an expression of it.  I want to talk about just one or two of those if we could and I encourage my listeners to get the rest of them in the book.  The first one is what you call “a purposeful pivot”.  Could you tell us what a purposeful pivot is?

Brad Swift: Sure, I’d be happy to, Mark.  First, I’d add one other piece about why these last two passages are so important.  You know, earlier I said my life on purpose, to give the shorthand version, is “a life of service, simplicity, and spiritual serenity”.  Well that’s my life purpose statement.  My actual life purpose is the moment-by-moment day-by-day experience of living a life that’s described in that statement.  And that’s where these power tools for living on purpose become so important, because as you said before, “It’s the process of, okay, having created the context for your life, how do I pour, you know, more and more of my life into that context, so my experience of life can be shaped by my life purpose itself?”  And the ‘purposeful pivot’ is one of those… I’ll often describe it as one of the big three of the power tools, because it’s something that you would use… well probably most people use it each and every day, maybe several times during the day, and it’s the process of first identifying when your inherited purpose is shaping your experience of life.  When you’re struggling and when you feel stuck or frustrated or anxious or angry or any of a number of other emotions that we can identify as the inherited purpose…  At some point when you notice that, and you notice that fear, lack or struggle is shaping your life, then you have a moment of choice.  And in that moment of choice you might commit to having to pivot – as we talk about – to “pivot” through that emotion, through that experience of your life being shaped by an inherited purpose, and choosing instead to have your life shaped by your true purpose.  And there’s a really simple exercise that even if somebody hasn’t gone through this process yet and hasn’t completely crystallized their true purpose or uncovered their inherited purpose, they can kind of play with this purposeful pivoting.  So if I might, if I may, I’ll give that kind of a bit of an “assignment” to somebody that might want to take on.

Mark Lewis: Excellent.

Brad Swift: And that is, as you go through the day, and particularly on those type days when you’re feeling frustrated, or you feel stuck, in those moments, ask a couple questions.  One, ask the first question, [which] is, “In this moment, is my life being shaped by fear or love?”  And when you hear the term “fear” know that that also includes lack and struggle.  And when you hear the term “love” know that that also includes abundance and being willing to flow with life.  And if the answer to that question is, “Well obviously some fear, lack or struggle is shaping my life,” then the next question to ask is, “If in this next moment I were to choose to pivot and allow love to shape my life, what would be different and what could I create?”  I’ve had many people, even before they’ve gone through the life on purpose process, try that out for a week or two and have it really make a huge difference in enhancing the quality of their life.

Mark Lewis: Excellent.  Yeah, it’s interesting because the visual and the kinesthetic experience of pivoting is something we can all relate to.  It’s simply a choice that we make, and then we re-orient ourselves.  As I’m imagining the coffee cup, in a sense it’s like recognizing that the water of our life is in our old inherited life container.  And we pivot and we put that water into our chosen true life purpose container, such that it can begin to shape it again.

Brad Swift: Exactly, exactly.  And like any other tool, you know…  In the first passage you’re introduced to the tools, and then the more you practice and work with those tools, the more proficient you become, and that why we talk about in the sixth passage is about mastering the tools, working with them long enough that when you really see that there’s an opportunity to pivot, rather than staying stuck for days, weeks, or months, you can pivot powerfully and cut the time of suffering down to hours, minutes, and in many cases even seconds.

Mark Lewis: Excellent, excellent.  Now again, there are so many practices.  The next one I want to speak about is what you call “a purpose project”.  How does a purpose project help us?

Brad Swift: How does it help us?  Well again, the sort of work we mean by “a purpose project”… a purpose project is a project, some goal or something that you’re going to take on, that by the very nature of it, it arises from and is an opportunity for you to be, be known, and to express your purpose out into the world.  And so it’s one of the great ways to be known out in the world as your life purpose without needing to go around and, you know, introducing yourself, “Hi, I’m Brad Swift and my life on purpose is a life of service, simplicity and spiritual serenity.”  You can, you know, begin to communicate really what you want and who you are and what you’re up to through those purpose projects.  And you know, for example, one of my first purpose projects way back in the days when I was still clarifying my own life purpose and knew a key part of it was purpose itself.  And a lot of the work that I was doing at that time was as a free-lance writer, I created Project Purpose, which was to write and publish articles about people living purposeful lives.  And what I didn’t know at the time, I initially created the project to inspire other people to live more purposeful lives and one of the people that I most inspired was myself!  Because I noticed those people that I was interviewing were living their life purpose in many ways and expressing it in some organized way, some business or non-profit or some structure like that.  So out of Project Purpose grew the next project, which was to found Life on Purpose Institute.

Mark Lewis: Here we are, some… over a decade later and you’ve touched thousands – and through them, probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people.

Brad Swift: Yes, and at the time that I created the first project, the writing project, I had no idea where it was going to lead me.  But it’s kind of like, as I often describe it, “following the bread crumbs of your passion.”  You may not know where each bread crumb’s going to lead you to, but I’ve never seen anybody yet who followed those bread crumbs of passion that was ever disappointed about where they ended up.

Mark Lewis: Yeah, absolutely.  As you’re saying this, I want to get to a point, which I think is critical, the idea of a “purpose project” does something neat, from my perspective.  The way you’ve structured Life on Purpose is that it’s really about shifting our focus from what it is we do, back to who we are, how… you know, our ways of being.  But interestingly, the culture, on the whole, is focused on doing.  And so when we create a project, which is about doing, that expresses and is infused with that purpose, it provides a tremendous vehicle to communicate with people in the world through the one thing that they’re used to, which is ‘doing’.  So they can actually see the doing; they can relate to the doing, and then add the interaction with it and with us; they actually get the purpose.  They get the ‘being’ through that.

Brad Swift: Yeah, very well said.  Very good point.

Mark Lewis: You know, and what the third – again, so many practices – the third one I really want to talk about is what you call “purpose partners”.  And those are the people who actually know what our purpose is, so that they can support us in it and reflect us in it, because you make just a critical point:  And you ask the question, “Where does this purpose actually exist?”  Once we’ve created this purpose, where does it actually exist?  And you answer that, and you say that our purpose, our life purpose, exists in our awareness, in our consciousness.  It exists in each moment and therefore anything that comes into our consciousness can be transformed by it, because that’s where it lives.  And it’s tougher to live there because consciousness is moving all over so it really helps when other people share our purpose.  So we do that through our purpose projects, but we also do it through purpose partners.  Can you say a little bit about what you teach people about purpose partners?

Brad Swift: Yeah, a purpose partner is like you said, you know.  It’s another person who you shared [with] what your true purpose is, and in most cases also have shared what your inherited purpose is, so they can, you know, see that when it’s operating and give it some room without getting hooked by it.  And they know you as that purpose and they’re going to relate to you as that purpose.  And the more purpose partners you have in the world, the easier it actually becomes to live and express your life consistent with your life purpose.  So for example, my wife of 17 years I was speaking about, is not only my wife and my soulmate; she’s also my business partner and she’s my purpose partner.  I know who she is; I know her life purpose.  She knows who I am; she knows what my life purpose is.  You know I really hold my clients, my coaching clients, also as my purpose partners, because I know they’re counting on me to live a life that demonstrates this possibility, a life of service, simplicity, and spiritual serenity.  So let’s say, you know, I wake up and I’m, you know, kind of being shaped by fear, lack and struggle with my inherited purpose, but if I have a call with my client at 10:00, you know, that gives me plenty of opportunities to go ahead and pivot, and get back in touch with who I truly am, for that client itself.  So you know the more full partners you can have in the world, actually the easier it is to stay on purpose.

Mark Lewis: Yeah, not only do they inspire you because of – again, for lack of a better term – your love or respect for them, just you see their goodness, their innocence, their potential, their beauty, and you say, “I want to be my purpose for them.”  They also… one of the things I love about it is just seeing them reminds me who I am.  You know I might, when I go back and visit my parents for holidays and I’m around my family, they don’t necessarily relate to me as my purpose.  They’re used to seeing me as the kid who grew up and got in trouble and did all those things, and so the more I can share my life purpose with them, the more they become my purpose partners, the more just being around them helps me remember who I am, remember what my life is about.

Brad Swift: Yes, exactly, exactly, yep.

Mark Lewis: Well, Brad, thank you so much for coming on the show.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I trust my listeners did as well.  Now if my listeners want more, Brad’s site is very simple; it’s LifeOnPurpose.com, and there are a lot of resources there.  You can get books and coaching and learn about more of their programs.  Also, if you want a transcript of this show, you can just go to our site at PersonalLifeMedia.com, under Money Mission and Meaning and we have a biography and information on Brad, as well as the transcript of the show.  So, Brad, thanks for coming on.  Is there anything you’d like to say before we close?

Brad Swift: Yeah, there are two last real quick points.  One is it’s never too early or too late to bring clarity of purpose to your life.  The youngest person to go through this process was ten years old at the time she went through the process.  The oldest person that we have on record was 83.  So it’s never too early or too late.  And the second point I would make is, you know, I would encourage people to not try to go through the process by themselves, but to engage a few friends, a spouse or partner to go through the process with you.  Not only will it be a lot more fun, but you’re less likely to get kind of bumped off course and then not complete the process itself.  And so, you know, if you have a reading group or something like that, it makes a perfect book to go through the process together.

Mark Lewis: Excellent.  And I fully agree with that.  Partnership, purpose partnerships, and partnerships in general make everything not only more fun, but more workable.  Now if someone is in a position where they would rather go through this alone, do you have coaches available at your Institute that they can get into relationship with?

Brad Swift: Yeah, thank you for mentioning that.  Yes, in fact each time… each person who purchases a copy of the book, it entitles them to a session with one of our coaches, because we really want people to not just buy the book, and not just read it, but to engage in the exercises that are in the book and use it to their benefit.  So in the book there’s a special link to a special page on the website where they can go and select a coach who can help them kind of get jumpstarted onto the purposeful path itself.  And that’s included as our gift to people who are willing to purchase a book and try it out.

Mark Lewis: That’s great.  I appreciate you pointing that out, because I know that that might make a difference for quite a few number of my listeners.

So, thank you, Brad.  Have a fantastic rest of your life, and I look forward to what you do next.

Brad Swift: Okay, great.  Thank you again, Mark, for having me on your show.

Mark Lewis: You got it.  Bye-bye.

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