ISI Brotherhood Podcast

114. How to Discover Your Purpose with Seth Buechley

• Aaron Walker

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"Purpose is to be discovered, not designed." What does it truly mean to find fulfillment in life? Known for his remarkable success as an entrepreneur, Seth Buechley shares captivating stories, including a life-altering adventure on the waters. Through his experiences, Seth reveals how aligning passion with purpose, alongside cultivating gratitude and meaningful relationships, plays a pivotal role in achieving genuine satisfaction.

We challenge listeners to navigate the complex path of discovering one's unique purpose amidst cultural misconceptions about success.

Key Takeaways:

  • Purpose is found out, not figured out
  • Are you living in God's world, or your own?
  • How to be purpose-driven and not task-driven

We explore how recognizing and utilizing personal gifts can illuminate one's path to purpose. Seth provides listeners and the group of men on today's ISI Community Roundtable recording with practical steps to discern their mission and invest their efforts meaningfully. This enriching dialogue with Seth inspires us to embrace our unique journey, trust in divine timing, and remain open to the unfolding of our purpose.

If you want to hear more speakers like this every month and be with the guys on the call, join the Iron Sharpens Iron Community today: https://www.isibrotherhood.com/isi-community

Connect with Seth Buechley:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/seth-buechley/

Connect with Big A:
View From The Top Website: https://isibrotherhood.com
The ISI Newsletter: https://www.isibrotherhood.com/newsletter
Big A’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronwalkerviewfromthetop/

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, welcome to View From the Top podcast, where we help growth-minded men who desire momentum in their business, their family and their finances to go through the valleys and up the mountain to their very own view from the top. Hi, my name is Aaron Walker, better known as Big A, and I want to welcome you back to this week's episode where we're going to mix it up just a little bit. Those that have been around for a long time know that we don't do anything consistent day in and day out. We like to keep you on the edge of your seat, so today is no different. You know, every single month we bring a guest to the Iron Sharpens Iron community that shares a huge amount of value to our guys in various areas of life, on a monthly virtual roundtable. We call it, if you will. And for the last few weeks I've been thinking about all of this great content that we are providing our guys in the Brotherhood and I felt a little bit guilty because I wasn't sharing it with the rest of the Brotherhood. So for the next four weeks I want to dive into some of these real life topics that are certain to be thought-provoking. I want you to think about these topics in these presentations that these men are presenting and figure out how is this applicable to me in my life? Well, today's episode is the power of purpose, aligning passion with persistence, and I want to tell you this is an unbelievable presentation made by my good friend, seth Buechle.

Speaker 1:

Seth is a serial entrepreneur and he's a business founder who has achieved not one, not two, but multiple multi-million dollar exits. You know he hosts another podcast called Business Done Right and it's to help faith-driven entrepreneurs build valuable businesses. He wrote an incredible book, also called Ambition, leading with Gratitude, which I can't begin to tell you how many copies of that I've recommended to guys over the years, and it was written as a leadership manifesto to help driven people understand why they struggle to find satisfaction in really what they can do about it. You know Seth also serves as the chairman of Cathedral Consulting, which provides merger and acquisition advisory and strategic planning to owners seeking to sell their business and achieve an ideal exit.

Speaker 1:

Seth also is married to his wife, helen. They live in Oregon, they have four beautiful children, but the best thing in Seth's life is his two grandchildren, and if you spend any time with him at all, he doesn't hesitate to tell you that as well. Seth has been a member of the Iron Sharpens Iron Brotherhood for about seven years and he is a phenomenal guy. I really think you're going to enjoy this. So, without any further ado, let's get into it.

Speaker 2:

Well, great to be with you, brothers, and I've been involved with ISI for about five or six years myself, and I continue to benefit from the relationships that we build here. I want to share a little bit about a story that happened just after I turned 50. So my dad and I had been going down to Costa Rica for about 20 years, and he was an adventurer. He went down there and just bought some land, and I'm still working with my mom to process through that land that he acquired over the years. He passed away about eight years ago, and one of the things that I inherited from him, whether I liked it or not, was a boat. It's just a little boat and on my watch it never quite ran right. And so I had a buddy who is also an adventurer and we thought let's go down and we'll do some fly fishing in Costa Rica, and when we're down there we're going to get the boat running. Or, more accurately, I'm going to call my buddies in advance and ask them to get the boat running for us so that when we get there we're going to have a boat. Well, we get down there and, of course, the buddy that I had asked to get the boat running. Hadn't quite gotten it running, we had to wait for the mechanic to come. It was kind of running, but not really. But nevertheless we decided we would take the boat out for a little joy ride, extended the trip a day just so that we could do this.

Speaker 2:

And so, as we're walking out from the house, I remember going down the dirt road towards where we had the boat parked out in the water and I said should we grab our life vests? And my buddy goes yes, and I thought OK, ran back and got those little orange generic life vests. So we get the bump, the boat kind of pumped up a little. It's slightly inflatable on the edges, and we go out for this uh little jaunt and, um, it's not quite running right. I think it's got three cylinders, maybe it's running on two. Every now and then it ran a little bit better. And my buddy says you know, uh, he's driving. I'm sitting there, beautiful morning. We take the life vests and we attach them to the little rope around the perimeter. I tell my buddy just keep going. There's this little fishing town that I want to get to. It's called Legarto. It's a beautiful little spot. Let's just keep pushing up. We're just bogging.

Speaker 2:

Every now and then it catches a little bit of a plane I point to where Legarto is and we begin to kind of make the corner into the bay and then, all of a sudden, we just felt the sea below us drop and we looked behind us and there was a massive wave and we just gunned it. Of course, there was no power, none, and it just threw us, it just ragdolled us and didn't have the life vest on. And I remember thinking, just for a split second this is how is how people die. And I remember thinking about my grandson, who was just born. Uh, maybe six months before that.

Speaker 2:

And uh, if you've ever crashed when you're skiing and you know how all your stuff just scatters all over the mountain, well, let me tell you, when you capsize a boat, it's even worse than that. There was stuff spread everywhere, uh, and at that moment, you know, once we realized we were still alive, we thought I need to get back to the boat. That's where the life vests are. They're attached to that little rope, swam back to the boat. The boat is still a projectile at this point, so it's just going again. Finally got the life vest off, finally got my fingers to work so that I could untangle the life vest. And then at some point we knew that we were going to survive. We're floating out in the water. Our boat is now capsized, maybe 100 yards from us. We still don't see anybody.

Speaker 2:

And eventually some of the locals in that fishing village spotted the boat. They didn't even spot us and they went out to get the boat. And then they start looking around and I'm waving my hat because my hat happened to float by in the water and I'm waving just to get somebody's attention. And finally they came over. They knew how to navigate the water. They rescued us and so we had a few minutes to get back to the shore. They took us back to our house where we had our truck and our trailer and I, I showered and I'm just sitting there in the sun and, of course, my heart rate is still elevated at this point. I'm, I'm, I'm still in shock.

Speaker 2:

But I had that deep thought of. That was almost it Like. If that was it, what would have been the story? What would have been the story of my life? Would I have accomplished the things I needed to accomplish? What would have that been like for my family? And I had that moment of this is not a dress rehearsal. What am I doing with my life? And maybe you've had those I suspect you have.

Speaker 2:

I've heard from pastors. You know, that they'd much rather preach at a funeral than a wedding, because at a funeral people have mortality motivation, they're paying attention, they're seeing with their own eyes. This is not a dress rehearsal, this is something that is finite. And they're kind of confronted with reality. And that's what that little boating accident did for me. It confronted me once again, like other moments in my life, with this reality that life is short. I need to live with a sense of purpose and I've never shared these pictures before, but I thought you know what, since I've got my brothers here, let me go from presenter view. You guys seeing that picture All right on the left, I decided I would track our trip.

Speaker 2:

That trip from the time I tracked. It lasted exactly two minutes and 48 seconds before we capsized our boat. That's the shortest little trip you'll see tracked on the left. There the locals drug the boat up to shore I knew they would while I was recovering and getting the trailer. And then on the right here this is me. They're all lined up in a semicircle and I grabbed basically a bag full of cash and when I came back I handed each one of those guys a $20 bill and gave a little speech about how they had rescued me. It's captured on video, but I just basically expressed gratitude to them and, of course, they kept finding more and more people who had helped in the cause. So I was just handing out $20 bills like it was candy, but I was glad to do it.

Speaker 2:

But back to the topic at hand. I've been asked to speak around purpose, and purpose is a heavy topic. You know the title is the Power of Purpose, aligning Passion and Persistent for Lasting Fulfillment. That's one step right below. You know why do we exist? And you know I'm sure you didn't join this call so I could tell you why you exist.

Speaker 2:

But we are going to cover a few things that I think will be really helpful, because I actually think a lot of us spend time agonizing, wrestling with are we using the gifts and opportunities? We have to be on purpose, and I really think it's a privilege at this stage for us to be Americans, at this time of life and even though there's a lot of things we could be worried about our life expectancy. Our health, our wealth, our opportunities are significantly better than generations and generations have had before us. And if we're in a desperate personal situation wrestling with health issues, wrestling with financial crisis we don't even have the opportunity to think about purpose. We're just trying to survive. But for most of us, that's not the case. We actually have bandwidth to think about our purpose and our gifts, and there are those moments that we all have when we lay our head on our pillow and we kind of reconnect with what am I doing? Is this real, what really matters? Why am I chasing the things that I chase? And we're going to speak a little bit about that. Purpose right, and purpose can shift a bit over time, and we'll talk about that here as well.

Speaker 2:

There's a famous quote from Mark Twain, who's maybe my favorite theologian he's not really a theologian. He says this the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you found out why you know. I was looking at this quote today and it was interesting that he didn't say the day you found out why you know. I was looking at this quote today and it was interesting that he didn't say the day you figure out why. Here's a guy who knows his words. He says the day you found out why. I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 2:

You know, one of the reasons I think it's a challenge this topic of purpose is, you know, you can't outsource it. This isn't something that you can rely on somebody else to define for you. In fact, it's dangerous if you do. You actually have to do the work. And you're doing that work in a time when the culture completely lies to us about the definition of success and about what matters of success and about what matters. You're doing it at a time when the world lies to us about what truly satisfies our deepest. You know, human needs.

Speaker 2:

And it's also a complex topic because this isn't something that is just personal. There's parts of our purpose and responsibilities that are because we're humans, right, their purposes, their universe, parts of our purpose and our focus is kind of circumstantial. You know, we were born at this unique time in history. If we were born in a war-torn country, if we were born into poverty, if we were born in other eras and moments, our circumstances might have dictated our expression of our purpose. And then, when we talk about purpose, is it fundamentally personal or is it broader? And then, of course, there's the issue of time. Does our purpose shift as we go through these seasons of life? And then we think well, if we're going to talk about time and shifting, do we factor in eternity into how we think about purpose? So these are all things that make it a relatively complex question, but one that's really important because, as I started with, life is short. We want to make it count, we want to make a difference. That's how God has hardwired us and fortunately, we're not the first folks to wrestle with this.

Speaker 2:

In fact, in 1648, a bunch of Christian folks from the Church of Scotland and the Church of England decided they were going to get together and try to get on the same page, and they wrestled with this very question. They brainstormed you know what is it that we believe? That is true and they wrestled with this very question. They brainstormed you know what is it that we believe? That is true and they came up with 107 questions that they answered Q&A. They called it the catechism, westminster Catechism and the very first question that they wrestled with and I'm so glad that they did was this what is the chief aim of man? You know what the heck are we doing here, right, and what they said was man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I love the fact.

Speaker 2:

When you look at their answer, there's two themes that we're going to extract out of that a little bit. Is that our aim is to glorify God. It's not very prescriptive on how we're going to glorify God. I think that's our duty, right, but the byproduct of us figuring that out is, in my view, the back half of their statement is enjoy him forever. If we will effectively figure out how it is that we and I would say we uniquely are supposed to glorify God, I believe that the byproduct that we're going to receive from that is that we get to enjoy him forever. And forever isn't just off in the yonder. Forever is now here in the process, right, so quick, uh, quick side note around our cultural moment.

Speaker 2:

We're in a very confusing time for many people. There's a great book called the Rise and Triumph of Modern Self. You've got to go back, you know, a hundred years to see these changes in moral philosophy and these cultural moments that have shifted to create this environment where it feels like everything's changing so fast. You know, you see these protests recently, the Palestinian protests. I can say you see this gender confusion, you see all this stuff and you're like how on earth did that happen so quickly? Well, it didn't happen quickly, it happened steadily.

Speaker 2:

And a gentleman named Carl Truman wrote this book, the Rise and Triumph of Modern Self, and one of the things he said is, a hundred years ago, if you were a man and you're speaking to a medical professional and you say I am a woman trapped in a man's body, that medical professional would say go get your head straight to align with reality, which is your body. But in today's moment, for real, if a man goes to a medical professional and says I am a woman trapped in a man's body, he may be told go get your body adjusted to your beliefs and your view of reality. He said how did that happen? Well, it happened because generationally, in the old way, people used to feel the sense of external obligation like an obligation to others and an obligation to God, an obligation to society, like that was the permeating ethos of culture. But in today's world the permeating ethos is I am the center of the universe and I'm creating my own reality and my feelings basically dictate everything else, and I expect my feelings to kind of dictate everybody else's behavior towards me, and that's fundamentally different. And so we have to decide at the beginning of this quest of purpose and I think this will be helpful for you as you talk to others about this topic of purpose is we have to fundamentally decide am I living in God's world truly, do I believe I'm living in God's world or do I believe that I get to define reality on my own? It's a very binary starting point for this exploration.

Speaker 2:

Our culture is post-Christian, so if we're taking our clues on topics of purpose and gifting and what matters, they're not going to direct us correctly. Aw Tozer famously said this. He said listen to no man who has not listened to God, and I think that's a good warning for us in this era. So here's what I think about this topic of purpose. Uh, I think your purpose is going to be centered around your designer, right? Therefore, purpose is to be discovered, not designed. That's probably point number one. If I had a point there is purpose is to be discovered, not designed. If we believe we have a creator, if we believe he knows us, if we believe he's sovereign, if we believe he's good, then we can trust him to have a purpose that we get to discover, as opposed to feeling like we're the ones who have to architect this and figure it all out on our own. That's a pretty common message.

Speaker 2:

If you spend time online is five easy ways to do everything. Perfectly right, and I can go down that bunny trail. Often when I get discouraged, distracted, anxious, it's often because I'm taking my eyes to go create my own world as opposed to discovering a bit more. So I think one of the first ways that we can really zero in on being effective towards that glorifying God concept is looking at our gifts. Personality profiles are very helpful for this. I happen to like the Enneagram quite a bit. Some people are weirded out by it. I'm not. I find that understanding how I'm made personality-wise has a lot of value, especially when working with teams. Helps me know my strengths, helps me know my weaknesses so that I can have other people cover those weaknesses. A high-performing team leverages each other's strengths and covers each other's weaknesses. These personality profiles whether it's working genius, disc, all those things I think they contribute a lot towards people getting a sense of how they're hardwired. I think our energy level that we bring to our tasks does a lot to inform where we're gifted and where we're not.

Speaker 2:

It's not likely that God has called you to excel in an area that you hate. You're just not going to do it because we are joy seekers, and so if we believe that God knows us, we believe that God knows what gives us joy and what gives us energy. It's hard for me to believe that God wants me to have a steady diet of something that I just find miserable. Now we could debate that theologically, and I'm glad to, because I'm sure there is sacrifice, right. We know, in Christ himself. It says you know, for the joy that was set before me, endured the cross and the shame of that right. So there are hard moments in life that we got to go through, but there's tremendous joy when we find our spot.

Speaker 2:

You know, one little quote that John Maxwell shared at a conference I took my daughter to one time was he says you know, take a look at where you have strengths and weaknesses and say maybe you're weak in an area like you're a four. He says you know, if you've put a bunch of time into an area that you're a four, he says you know what's the most that's going to happen. You're going to become a six, maybe a seven. He's kind of like that's not very interesting. But if you find somewhere that you're a seven or maybe even an eight and you put the energy into perfecting and growing in that area, he said well, now you can take that strength and you can become a nine or a ten, and his quote that I'll never forget. He said people will stand in line for a nine. And so this idea of don't obsess over your weaknesses, figure out how you're uniquely gifted with strengths and then invest in those strengths, I think is a better strategy.

Speaker 2:

You know, one quick scripture here is from 1 Peter 4.10. It says each has received a gift. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. You see, we often think of God as a God of order, and that is true. He is a God of order, but he's also a God of variety. As many flavors and combinations you can think of, god has created that and more. It's helpful to understand that every one of us is a little bit different for a reason, and I believe that those gifts that you have relate to your purpose. And sometimes, you know, it takes somebody on the outside to help us understand where it is that we're actually gifted, because we don't see it Now. I tell people when they're in their, you know, 20s and 30s you're just trying to figure out how God made you, what you're gifted at, what you hate, what might be a career for you, maybe meeting a spouse, you know, but by the time we're in our 40s and 50s I really think we should be dialed in, and if we're not, I think it's because we haven't tried too much to understand how it is that we've been made.

Speaker 2:

I want to share an exercise that I learned years ago and I've put it into practice several times. I've refined it a bit and I keep it around my brain for helping me stay on track with the things that align with what I believe my purpose is, and it's called an XYZ and it's pretty simple but it's hard Because it's sequential and it's logical and it's I do this X, I doX for Y, which would be these people, so they can Z do or become this. So I do this for these people so that they can become this. And so I think, certainly professionally, but I would even say almost personally, for me, getting clear on what that is for a season of life can be very liberating because I'm sure, like me, you have a lot of opportunities that come your way that you have to filter somehow. This is one of those ways that I filter them so that I can understand where I should be spending energy and where I shouldn't, and I can also understand why, if I get into a funk, perhaps why I've fallen into that funk, and it's often from getting.

Speaker 2:

I started this by bringing them wisdom, resources and connections so that they can reach their potential. That was my framework when I first started this exercise. I was a connector. I knew that much. I knew I wanted to work with high potential leaders. That was the why so that they could achieve their thing. You know, over time, as I've wrestled with that, I realized, ah, what you really are, is you? What you aspire to be is a mentor. You know if I took all of those things and I boiled it down to one word that described it.

Speaker 2:

So I would encourage you to take some time with this. It's not easy. It'll probably take you a good hour to get a first draft and then, over the weeks that you wrestle with this, you'll refine it a bit more. X, y, z. I'm going to share another framework that has helped me, continues to help me. It's the ugliest slide ever created, but it will be memorable.

Speaker 2:

So I've been thinking a lot about these words and I heard a great Jordan Peterson quote the other day he's talking to this guy about. He's like hey, you kind of need to pick your area to focus, be an expert in a certain area. And the guy's like man that feels kind of disempowering, kind of constraining. Pick your area to focus, be an expert in a certain area. And the guy's like man that feels kind of disempowering, kind of constraining. And Jordan's like no, he goes, don't look at it like a box. He goes, look at it like like a garden. Right, it's a walled garden. On the outside of your walled garden there's snakes and dragons and it's all poisonous, but on the inside things can grow, it's safe, there's peace. And the guy who looks at me, jordan, goes pick your damn box, just pick it.

Speaker 2:

And I actually think that's a challenge for many of us, because if you look outside of this box, here in the red and the oranges, this is where I spend way too much time. I'm really curious. As a personality, I'm impatient, so I'll grab my smartphone a bazillion times a day and I like Twitter because I can get all this new stuff from people I find interesting, and pretty soon I'm all stressed out and weirded out and I'm like what the heck happened there? Well, you just spent a bunch of time in your curious zone and wasn't that rewarding. Of course, I'm concerned about a lot of things. I'm concerned about our country, I'm concerned about Israel, I'm concerned about taxes, I'm concerned about the unborn. I'm concerned about all these things and, like you, I have a hundred other people trying to get me to be concerned about the things they're concerned about.

Speaker 2:

But as I go a little further, I need to say but what am I actually committed to? Committed to it because I didn't have a choice like spending time with my mom. I love my mom, but I also have a commitment to spend time with my mom because my dad's no longer here, right? Or I'm committed to things in my community, committed to my church, I'm committed to my family. Those are things that just are.

Speaker 2:

Now, I would argue, sometimes we're committed to things that we shouldn't be. We're committed because we said yes, and our word matters, but we've got stuff inside of our garden that we're like I don't really care if that lives or dies. I'm just doing it because it's inside my garden and then there's in the middle of that. I'm going to call that. Those are areas where, when you lay your head on your pillow at night, you know that you're called to do it. Between you and God, you have a sense. Not only am I called, but I'm going to actually give a count for this. That's right in the center of the garden. And if I would add one more C to this in my own mind, I put Christ in the middle of that. If I can get my attention zeroed in like that, I'm a happier camper than if I let myself be hanging out in the land of curiosity and concern, the garden of attention.

Speaker 2:

So you know, relative to the topic of gifts and calling, you know I find a lot of people my age 50s, 40s had some sort of an experience, some sort of a belief that they had a calling or direction in life and at some point many of them kind of tapped out. They got redirected, they ran into tragedy, they ran into delay. Maybe they messed up and they have the sense that maybe they're disqualified at this point. That's certainly been the case for me. I felt very called to be in ministry when I was younger and a bunch of things happened and I ended up in other places.

Speaker 2:

There was times I thought you know you're never going to have that opportunity again. That's not my decision. I would say that's not your decision, unless God has specifically told you the thing he put in your heart is not to be. It might very well be something that he will bring about in the right time. I find I often have the feeling and the thought and the clarity right, but I almost always have the time wrong, and so if you feel like you've been disqualified for something that you feel called to, I would just challenge you, don't give up on yourself. God is a God that is outside of time, and that thing that he put on your heart that maybe you've shared with your spouse, maybe you haven't, you know could very well be where he wants to get you. It's just now is a season of life where perhaps you're ready.

Speaker 2:

So, when it comes to purpose, I don't think we can design it, but I do think we can discover it. Once we discover it, there's this process of kind of laying down our worries and our fears and almost surrendering to it. You discover it and then you have to surrender to it. I'll be honest, as I think about speaking and doing things like that compared to the world of commerce. I know I can like that compared to the world of commerce. I know I can make more money in the world of commerce, but I actually feel like I'm drawn to other things and I have to trust the Lord that he'll work out the details, financially and otherwise, right. That's where the rubber hits the road for me. But if I believe that God is sovereign, if I believe that God is good, if I believe that God is good, if I believe that God loves me, if you believe that God loves you, then we can trust him with those details. As we start to wrestle with and think about our purpose.

Speaker 2:

I want to finish with a warning here, just in a couple short minutes. So you know, we're at the time of the year where we're in the beginning of the Bible. If you're going through a Bible reading program or at least we were a couple months ago and I was reading about the section where the children of Israel have been brought out of Egypt they're going through, you know, the Red Sea. They're finally at the stage where the law is going to be revealed to them. And God calls Moses up to Mount Sinai. And so Moses goes up to Mount Sinai. He's there for like 40 days, right and about then the children of Israel kind of start freaking out because they're like where is this guy, where'd he go out? Because they're like where is this guy, where'd he go? They don't know. It's pretty intense. And so Moses gets the tablets. The finger of God writes on the tablets. Moses is cruising back down the mountain and he hears a party and he can't quite figure it out what it is. He gets a little closer and he sees them having this party and they're worshiping a golden calf.

Speaker 2:

So the question I had is all right, these guys were slaves, they didn't even have enough straw for bricks. Like where did they get the gold? And if you study that story, you know that God moved on the hearts of the Egyptians to give gifts to the children of Israel. He said ask them for clothing, silver and gold. And the children of Egypt just gave to the children of Israel. And so they're carrying this gold, these treasures, with them. But in this moment where they lose confidence that God's going to finish what he started, moses had been gone for 40 days. They melted their blessings into an idol.

Speaker 2:

And so the warning for many of us in the world of business is we've been gifted. We've been gifted in the world of commerce. People look to us and they think, oh, you're so successful, you can do this, you can vacation, you can put your kids in private school, you can speak, you can do all these things. All of that's true. Those are blessings. But if we're not careful, rather than use those blessings in the service of God as they're intended, however, that is for you, that's between you and God. Many times we elevate those blessings. We make it about the blessing. We make it about I'm just going to chase more, I'm just going to achieve more, I'm just going to earn more. Make it about I'm just going to chase more, I'm just going to achieve more, I'm just going to earn more, more, more, more, more, more.

Speaker 2:

I actually think that's one of the ways that we melt our blessings into idols is we take all the gifts that we have and all of a sudden, we're too busy to spend them in the service of God.

Speaker 2:

And the way that we service, we use our gifts to serve the Lord, isn't melting them into an idol.

Speaker 2:

The way that we use our gifts for the Lord is using them in the service of others.

Speaker 2:

See, he gives us these varied graces and the practical application of those gifts and graces is to serve the people around us with the right motivation, right with the attempt to bring glory to God. And the byproduct of that is actually the thing we're chasing in the beginning. We're chasing joy, but so many times we redirect our attention towards the things that the world says are going to make us happy the achievement, the accolades, the wealth, the security from our financial planning and acumen and we find that, yeah, I'm doing that stuff pretty well, but it's still not giving me the joy. Why is that? Because I think the joy is linked to using our gifts for the service of others, to bring glory to God. That's our purpose. And so, as you think about garden of attention, as you think about your own X, y, z at this stage of life, you know, may you use your energies and your talents for the purpose of bringing glory to God, and I think you're going to find that joy that you're looking for.

Speaker 1:

Well, I hope this episode was helpful. If you are like me, you've struggled time in and time out with your purpose in every area of your life. I can't tell you how often I've had to rethink this as I've gone through my 46-year career. Well, I think Seth did a remarkable job in laying out the ways that you can clearly understand your purpose as it relates to your business or your family, or maybe even your finances. I want you to take just a few minutes now and think through this valuable message and how it applies to your personal life. You know.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for tuning in today from View From the Top podcast. It's been a real joy to have you with us. If you've enjoyed today's episode, I'd love for you to take a moment and leave a review. It really helps us to reach and inspire more people just like you. And if you're curious to learn more about Iron Sharpens, iron Brotherhood and the incredible community of faith-forward, family-first business leaders we've built, just go over to isibrotherhoodcom and check us out. And hey, don't forget, if you want to catch future episodes and continue growing alongside us, make sure to hit the subscribe button below. We're honored to have you in our corner and until next time, stay strong, stay focused and keep making a difference, so that you too can have a view from the top.