Decoding Purpose: The Foundation of a Fulfilling Career

Clarence Bongalos: Hello everybody and welcome back to another season of the Align Engage Fulfilled podcast. Now, I want to say I'm truly, truly so grateful to be able to say that we're now in our third season because I've really enjoyed doing this show. It has brought me so much joy and fulfillment to be able to talk to so many people who have shared their stories and to learn from their experience. And I don't know if I've said this on the show before, but once upon a time I swore that I would never do A podcast, and yet here I am on my third season. So I do want to say thank you to everyone who has empowered me in and has been a part of this journey. Now, if you're just joining us for the first time, I want to say welcome. I'm glad that you're here. If you've been with us for a while, thank you for your continued support. As you probably already know, this isn't just another podcast about careers and business. It's about the human forces underneath both of those things. And what it actually takes to move from just showing up to truly thriving. I've talked about this on the show before, but the global pandemic changed us in ways that we never had a chance to understand. The impact of the forced isolation and silence forced a lot of people into a kind of reflection at scale that they never had time to do. It caused millions of people to question what they want out of their lives and their careers, and they could no longer fight it. And ignore it the way that they had been for years. Now, for most people, they just see it at face value. They believe that the Great Resignation was about a fight for more pay and better treatment. And it was, largely in part, but for those of us who are deep in this work of career and organizational alignment, we've come to really understand that there was something more underneath that. A strong burning desire for people to find more meaning in the work. That they do, to feel human again, to be energized about what they do, to be able to go home at the end of the day with some sense of joy and ease and satisfaction. Now, if you've ever felt the gap between the work that you do and the life that you want, you're in the right place. And this season, I want to start by being precise about the word that's going to carry us through all of it. Purpose. Now, purpose isn't just a job title. It isn't a mission statement on your website, and it's not just some singular mystical thing that you're supposed to discover one day and it's like it's been hiding from you your whole life. The way that I've come to understand it through my own work for myself and for others, purpose is an anchor. It's the thing that keeps you tethered to yourself when everything else about work is pulling you in a different direction. Alignment is knowing who you are, but purpose is what keeps you pointed toward that. even when the paycheck, the title, or the pressure to just keep climbing is telling you to drift. That's the premise of this season. We spent season one on alignment, understanding who you are. Season two was about engagement, acting on that alignment. This season is on fulfillment, and my argument is this: you cannot get to fulfillment without purpose doing its job first. Purpose has to be the anchor. Fulfillment Is what becomes possible once you're actually holding it. Joining us today to help us set the premise for the season is Suneet Bhatt, author, executive coach, and professor at Rutgers University. He's the founder of My Authentic Story, and his new book, Making Sense of Purpose, is available today, August 25th. Suneet has spent over 25 years and 10,000 plus hours helping thousands of people and dozens of organizations get unstuck. Find purpose and build momentum across public, private, and nonprofit sectors. At Rutgers he created a purpose framework that became a pillar of the university's five-year strategic plan. He's also a certified EOS implementer, bringing the entrepreneurial operating system to leadership teams as part of a network used by over 275,000 organizations worldwide. If I'm being honest about how I see our two bodies of work, I would say that Suneet is the purpose guy. That's his lane and he spent 25 years in it. My work focuses more on alignment and how purpose functions as the anchor that keeps you there. Of course, we both talk about a lot of the same things and how they play into those things and play into each other, but we're really working opposite ends of the same journey toward fulfillment. And today we're going to meet in the middle. We'll talk about some of the concepts in this new book to help us set the tone for the season and understand the part that purpose plays in all of it. So let's get started. Suneet Bhatt, Welcome to the show.
Suneet Bhatt: Thanks for having me. this is great. I love the intro, the the COVID flashback, all of it. so thank you and thanks for making the time for me.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah, no, I'm so excited for you to be here. And like I said, at during our introductory call, I'm excited to see where this conversation takes us. before we get into it, Suneet, I want to acknowledge something that was really clear to both of us after our introductory call, but our listeners don't know yet, which is that you and I are dangerously aligned. Some people
Suneet Bhatt: Yes.
Clarence Bongalos: might hear that and think that it's a risk for this episode that we might just end up sitting here and validating each other for the next hour. So I do want to name that directly and be intentional about it. I want us to actually push each other and dig into where either of our thinking diverges, not just where it agrees. Are you up for that?
Suneet Bhatt: That sounds great.
Clarence Bongalos: Perfect. Now before we get into the framework, I want people to understand why you're the one telling us this. You've said to me in our introductory call that you knew in high school you wanted to do purpose-driven work, whether it was Peace Corps teaching, and then you spent two and a half decades doing the opposite of that. Walk us through that gap between what you knew you wanted to do and what you ended up doing. What was actually happening in those years?
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, so I knew in high school, you nailed it, and we talked about I knew in high school that I wanted two things I really wanted to explore and do. One was the Peace Corps and the opportunity to just serve. and second was I knew I wanted to be at the front of a classroom because some of the best moments I had were inspired by some of the best teachers I had. And so that was something that I really wanted to do. but I had two immigrant parents who can moved to the US so that I could, you know, thrive financially and build something. And, you know, for them, table stakes was the ability to support yourself financially. And the the better you could support yourself, that was success and fulfillment for them. That's why they moved here. They didn't realize that they had done such a good job of providing for our family, my sister and I. that they actually made me think about, you know, the next level in Maslow's hierarchy of thinking about self-actualization and thinking about growth and purpose. However, you know, I was a teenager and so I listened to them. And so I went and I just did the traditional stuff, you know, corporate work, you know, and sort of worked my way through. And what was fascinating about my journey was I You know, the first job I had, I mean, did it for four years and you know, everything was new. And so at the end of that, I felt like, okay, maybe this job isn't for me. Let me try another job. And I did that, and I did it for a shorter period of time. And then, you know, fast forward 20 years later, and I exit my last business. And I my wife looks at me and says, Suneet, this isn't working. Like every time, every time you leave a job. it's been a shorter period of time than the last one and a more acrimonious departure. And that like was a much needed, kind but direct slap in the face for, hey, you gotta figure this out. And so I did. And I, you know, did that, you know, on the other side of COVID after we built an amazing business and You know, after I reached outside of myself for everything, I do what everyone else does. You talk to mentors, you talk to friends, you talk to former bosses, you talk to people that know you, and you look outside yourself for these answers, and none of them resonated. And then I started doing career assessments and none of them landed. And I realized that the reason none of them landed is I hadn't done the work to know what really made me and mattered to me before I could connect it to all the perspectives that people were so generously willing to hand. To me. And so I had to do the work from the inside out. And a few things happened there. The first is I realized that it was never the jobs I had that were the problem. It was always the work. And because I didn't love the work, it didn't matter what job I had. ultimately, I was just not going to be happy. And so it was always the fundamental work that I wasn't aligned to. If you go back to what I wanted to do in high school, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something different. Took me 25 years to find myself at the front of a classroom. And it was the best feeling I ever had. And I think that's important. And I then just started codifying it. So, you know, I turned put it into my executive coaching, had some experiences where I was like, why are we waiting for people to feel uncertainty in midlife to give them some of these tools? So I designed and pitched a class to Rutgers. It worked there. Then I had guest speakers coming to my class at Rutgers, which is "Find and Evolve Your Purpose." And they would be, you know, successful in their career and say, Suneet, can I do this? So I started doing it with, you know, older cohorts. Now I do it high school kids and it just expanded ultimately to the point where someone was like, Hey man, like turn turn this into a book so everybody and get it in the hands of as many people as you possibly can. And that's where I'm at today.
Clarence Bongalos: I love that. Thanks for sharing that. And I think you touch on so many important points. One of the things that I think you brought up here in sharing your story and your experiences, something that I think is really important for people to understand is like we at 17 years old are told to make a decision on what we're gonna do for the rest of our lives. At 17, when we haven't yet had any life experience that would be transformational in any way. we have no idea really of who we are. We're just kind of moving into the next stage of life where we're going into that discovery. Yet at that age, we're asked to make a decision on what are we gonna do for the rest of our lives and invest money in that. And for a lot of people, and I think the statistic is somewhere in the 60% range, they don't end up staying in that. Like to your same experience, and shared this with you, my experience was similar. We go and we complete our studies, we invest all this money, and then we maybe work in that field for a year or two, if that. and then we go into a whole nother trajectory. And somewhere at 30, 35, we are in a completely different career than the decision that we made at 17. and I think what you perfectly expressed is that the experience is necessary for the discovery, for you to understand what you like, what you don't like, what you're Passions are, what are the things that are aligned with who you are and who you have become? and I think that's the part that so many people miss out on because of so many different kinds of pressures, whether it's financial pressure, pressure from our parents, or we're just kind of forced into a lane. So I appreciate you sharing that because I think that is important for us to hear and understand as we expand what we are understanding when it comes to purpose.
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, I think you hit it, right? People say, I think when people enter college, it's all about what do you want to do. I think there's some people that have that luxury. They know what they want to do. Like they have a calling, they've identified, they've they've got it. But for majority of the students in college. What we need to do is teach them how to feel safe exploring and understanding who they are so they can connect ultimately with what they want to do. And that's the best. Look, the best feedback I get from my surveys at the end of class is not people who say, I figured out my purpose. It's the people who say, you know what? I know I'm gonna be okay. Like I'm gonna figure this out and I'm gonna experiment and I'm gonna try, but I'm gonna be okay. And that's what we need to give people first is a free you know. feeling especially these these kids like we've got to give them a feeling of security and clarity and confidence in who they
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: are and then they'll be able to figure out what they really want to do and more important it's not even what they want to do it's what they want to contribute to the world they're gonna live in and what impact they want to make that's where we need that's what we need to help these students figure out not what they want to do
Clarence Bongalos: Yes. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. So my question to you that really just came up right now is we're seeing this shift in the value of living purpose driven lives. And
Suneet Bhatt: Sure.
Clarence Bongalos: it you know, it's it looks like a generational shift. What do you think is driving that shift? Because you shared that, you know, you're you're you come from immigrant parents, and so do I. Thankfully my parents were not You know, the the the kind of Asian parents that were like, go into something medical, do nursing, do something that pays the bills. They gave me freedom to make that choice. But for a lot of people, they do have that experience where purpose to them is what pays the bills, right? But as we're seeing with Gen Z, and then the incoming generation of Gen Alpha, it is more about redefining what purpose-driven living means. What do you think is driving that change?
Suneet Bhatt: So I have a I have a thesis on this.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: and my take is look, I'm I'm a you know I'm an old man, right? And I think for most of my life we spent We spent all of our time trying to make human beings more like machines. And it started with the assembly line and it moved forward to data-driven management principles, it moved to the employee scorecard, it moved to turning employees into order takers and executors of algorithmic-driven learning. So you go back a hundred years to the Model T, or you go to Uber, you know, They don't even know who they're picking up. They just they just execute. So we have taken, spent all this time turning human beings more and more into machines. We've left the humans in the work, but I say we've taken out the humanity, right? So that's the first thing. Now we're finally at a place where we're trying to turn machines more and more into human beings. So this is the advent of the AI era, which is fascinating. But look, the the one thing that machines can't do. is like make meaning, right? And I think so in this shift from you know from humans to machines to machines into humans, the thing that is most distinctly and powerfully appropriate for us to focus on is our humanity. And nothing makes us more human than our unique perspective on the world. And as a result of that, our unique purpose and contribution to the world. So like That's sort of the arc of the story as I see it. And I think the urgency that you raise is what's interesting is now you look at just the way people spend their time and anxieties on the rise. and how many people are happy at work? 50% since the dawn of Gallup Employee Engagement Survey, since it started. People like to talk about the engaged versus disengage number. It's usually between 20 on one and 30 on the other, right? The number I care about most is 50% are apathetic. 50% are just disconnected from work. The middle 50% has never shifted. It's I don't think it's ever been less than 50% apathetic at work to Gallup. And so what's interesting for me is people could still go to work and Hide for nine hours, do busy work, get a paycheck, connect socially, get status. There's all these principles of work, right? In terms of what you get, it's not just a paycheck. But here's what's really fascinating: AI is coming for that work, right? And less and less people are going to be able to hide for their day or hide it all. And so there's a void that is going to be created. And There is a discussion to be had about what fills that void. If you think about it, like we have legalized gambling, we have increased the number of legal substances, you have access to porn everywhere, you basically have the equivalent of the Las Vegas strip and the red light district on your phone at all times. So like Vice is there. It has always been there. And it is easier than ever. And if we aren't intentional,
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah, it's amplified.
Suneet Bhatt: if we aren't intentional about filling that void with people having clarity on who they are so they can purposefully show up in those moments, it's easy to just slide into. What is ubiquitous and available to us at our fingertips? And so that to me is the arc of you know the human journey of the last hundred, hundred and fifteen years and the urgency of purpose. I say like. Purpose has gone from this nice aspirational conversation you have, you know, over coffee, over over drinks, you know, fireside, like campfire, like these aspirational discussions to becoming like an existential imperative. And that is the shift in the evolution that I see happening, where it's purpose is no longer like nice to have. or something people can choose, it is essential to navigating this next wave and phase of human experience.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I well very well said. And I appreciate that. I think to really kind of pull that in together, at least for me, what's really fascinating about it is, and you kind of alluded to this, is that there is there are all these things that are converging all at once. That like yes, people want purpose, people or purpose has become more of this essential thing that we need in our lives and that people kind of strive for. But at the same time, all these things that are converging are making it a much harder process to attain it. and that to me is what's really fascinating about this because people want it. And I think even when they don't, they're not aware that they want it, it's truly what they're searching for. but the capacity is very fractured. It's very like it's standing on a weak foundation where I can say I want purpose driven work, but it's hard for me to even get started. It's hard for me to really pursue that because I'm so inundated with noise from different angles from AI, from the economy to the political landscape to technology and just all of these things converging all at once at this specific point in time. And so that's what I've centered my work around is how do we figure out how to navigate that? And the same is true for you. So I want to make sure we dive into that. But there's something that's really interesting to me about what you shared earlier as well. You said that your wife was the one who named it for you, that your time at each of the jobs that you had kept shrinking and your exits kept getting more acrimonious. What did it feel like to hear that from her? And why do you think it took someone else saying it out loud before you could see it yourself?
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, look, when you're when we're you know, your coach or a consultant or an advisor or mentor, when you're like helping somebody zoom out, one of my favorite phrases it's hard to s it's hard to see the label from inside the jar. And so I was living it and spinning violently inside of it, and I needed the release. So it felt sharp, it felt clear, and then like when you give yourself some space and grace, it felt liberating because the other thing she said. Is you've done enough for our family. Go figure this out. And one of the big problems with feedback, and you probably you see this as a coach, if you think of this the science and the psychology of feedback, the reason it fails nine out of ten times and is counterproductive four out of ten times. Is because the mechan people haven't studied the mechanics of feedback. And the important thing about feedback is one, you have to believe that the person understands you. Second, you have to believe that the person has your back. Third, you have to believe that there is something you can action based on that feedback. And so she understands me better than anybody else. She has my back more than anybody else. And She didn't just tell me like it wasn't working. She then said, take some time and figure this out. And so she gave me this, she didn't just burden me with more failure. She said, now take the time. She called it, named it, named the beast, and said, Now go slay this beast. And that is the perfect environment for feedback. And look, like quick tip: if you're listening to this and you're struggling to give somebody feedback. before you go do that, ask yourself those three questions. Do you understand them fully? Do they think you understand them fully? Do they think you have their back? And are they going to be able to do something about this? And if the answer to those three things isn't a confident yes, before you give them feedback, go fortify those three pillars and then give them the feedback. And I think that's
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: important. And even some of the feedback guidance could be, hey, look, there's nothing you're gonna be able to do about it this time. But for next time, just be aware that this is whatever the feedback is. So it gives them hope to action it as opposed to just carrying it and having no place to put it.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I love that. And it resonates because one of the things that I teach people is the opposite of or on the opposite side of purpose when it comes to anchors, the things that need to keep you grounded. On the opposite side of purpose is people. And the
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah.
Clarence Bongalos: people have to serve as your feedback loop to your point where they have to be able to give you not just honest or direct feedback, but they need to get try to give you unbiased feedback and feedback that's actionable, that's critical. And we're taught to, you know, go network, build a network, and it stays for most or for a lot of people very superficial, where you have to really kind of take a step back and understand that you have to build communities where you don't just have people in your circle, but they're giving you feedback that is actually valuable and actionable for you. So I I love that you bring that up because I think that is really important that like it's not just about purpose. You also on the other side have to have. people piece of it for both of these things to effectively anchor you. You had a thought.
Suneet Bhatt: And I think yeah, it's look, I I love that you say that. Like there people are the balancing force, but The fulcrum of that has to be your self-awareness. And so
Clarence Bongalos: Yes.
Suneet Bhatt: it is hard to have people balance you if you haven't balanced, centered, and understood yourself first. Because then you just
Clarence Bongalos: Thousand percent.
Suneet Bhatt: you j then it just becomes more noise. You feel like Neo in in the matrix with all of those bullets coming at you and you don't know how to you don't know how to make sense of them, right? So you start backing away from it. But if you are confident and clear on who you are, whatever comes at you, you know how to take it and where to put it. Am I integrating this? Am I is this yours? is not mine. I want to think about this so it becomes interesting. So I love how you balance that like and that creates a per it's like a pedal on a bicycle, creates a perpetual motion machine where you have the purpose, you get the feedback, and now you're closing the loop and making progress. So that's neat.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. Absolutely. So the reason why I asked you about, you know, your wife naming it for you is because there's there's something in my framework that I call the purpose paradox. And I will acknowledge that there there are versions of purpose paradox throughout psychology, but my definition of the purpose paradox from the work that I've done is that the thing that we're really meant to do for other people, what we define as our purpose, is almost always the very thing that we struggle to recognize in. or do for ourselves because we're naturally blinded to our own needs. And Suneet, you could probably see this clearly in a in in a colleague, a friend, a client, but it took your wife naming it before you could see it in yourself. That's not at all a coincidence. That's what I call the paradox at work. And it connects to something that you've said about your own work. You've described yourself as trying to be the most honest, authentic mirror for the people that you work with. But here's the thing about mirrors. Most of us struggle to actually see ourselves clearly, even when we're staring directly into a mirror. Why do you think that is? Why is it so hard for us to see ourselves even when we're looking right at it?
Suneet Bhatt: because we don't see the world as it is. there's a you know researcher, Dr. Jessica Witt, who says we do not see the world as it is. We see the world based on our ability to act. And as a result of that. we don't just see the reflection. if we haven't emptied our backpacks and what we're carrying, well, we see all of the regrets, all of the doubts, all the unclaimed wins. We, those are the glasses we wear, and that's what we're looking at in the reflection. So the the the important thing about sight is that it we do not see the world as it is, and we do not experience it as it is. We see and experience it based on our Perspective on our ability to act on it. And I think that's that's why those reflections, we don't see them the same way. They're filtered through all of the baggage that we're carrying. And baggage can be good, right? Baggage can be the tough stuff, right? But we forget that baggage is also the good stuff that we haven't taken credit for. We haven't locked in our wins, our accomplishments, our moments of happiness and joy. So it's all of that that we're just floating around. And that's biasing and obstructing our perspecti our perspective and perception.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Okay, let's let's pull on that and unpack that a little bit because that that mirror concept is really what anchors your whole body of work. Before you can make sense of purpose, you have to make sense of yourself. So let's unpack that. What does making sense of yourself actually require practically, not philosoph philosophically?
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, look, we are the most complex beings that have ever walked the planet. And as a result of that, there's not one single perspective or lens that is going to fully capture that complexity. And so as a result of that, I think the challenge is we need to put ourselves in position to see ourselves holistically from a variety of different perspectives and acknowledge that. And wholly, Britt Frank says We optimize for goodness instead of wholeness. And so we need the opportunity to see ourselves fully. And that requires being intentional about seeing yourself through as many different lenses as you possibly can. And only after you've you know developed a library of information do you step back and look for the patterns and through lines. And so seeing yourself wholly is like that 360 mirror, right? Sometimes we it you talked about it when we look at ourselves, everybody knows they have an angle that makes them look great and an angle that makes them look not so flattering. So whenever we take a picture, whenever we look in a mirror, we look at we look for the flattering angle. And again, that's optimizing for goodness and not wholeness. If you want to understand yourself first, see all of it. And then do not judge. There's no judgment in the work that I try and do in my book. I talk about in my classes, in my coaching. No judgment, just awareness. What does life feel like when you're fully aware? First question is: are you aware of this thing or not? Yes or no? Then, if you're aware of it, how do you feel about it? Is it serving you or is it doing a disservice to you? If it's doing a disservice to you, are you ready to explore fixing it and addressing it? Yes or no? And so, like that, it it cascades from awareness versus not. But that's the premise of all of my work. So, you know, find and evolve your purpose at Rutgers is 15 individual three-hour classes. We don't talk about purpose until class 14 and 15. We, for the first eight classes, they do nothing but explore themselves through a unique lens. And then they see that, they get it, they dialogue, they wrestle with it. They come in the next class, they do the same thing, a totally different lens. And then at the midpoint reflection, I say, step back. What patterns do you see? What keeps showing up? And I say, look, if you see something show up once and you've written about it, that's just chance. If you see it show up twice, that's a pattern. If you see it show up more than three times, three times or more, that's a choice you're making about how you live your life. Think about that. And that is what I mean when I say, like, I want you to make sense of yourself before you can make sense of your purpose. And to your point about the mirror analog, like I always say, you know, especially if you're doing this work early, I'm like, it's a seed, it's a plant growing. Like you do not expose it to the harshest elements when it's just poked through the soil. You nurture it, you protect it. You watch the sun, you water card. And then as it grows and it stands tall and clear in its purpose as a plant, a flower, whatever it is, that's when you say, All right, now I'm gonna expose you to expose yourself to the elements. Now with withstand, right? And become resilient. But you don't teach resilient at infancy. You teach clarity and you teach identity, and then resilience comes. And so, you know, by the end of the class. We do an entire section on co-perception, reframing feedback, but I want people to ask for feedback, but they don't get feedback from anybody until class 13, where I'm like, all right, you all now know yourselves really, really well. Now go and invite some information. and watch what these students do with that information when they invite it in, but they have a clear sense of self, they crave they crave the feedback. They want it. But that's that's kind of that's kind of the arc and the journey of of how it works.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I appreciate that. That's powerful. Like you said something to me during your introductory call. You said that frameworks like Ikigai are great, but they start one step too late. So tell me more about that, 'cause I think this ties perfectly to what you just shared. What is the the step, the the kind of non negotiable step that everybody skips?
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, I you know the what I what I say is people right now, people looking for purpose, meaning, fulfillment, happiness. It's the equivalent of people going grocery shopping while hungry. they need something, they crave something, they want something, but instead of making a list or thinking about what's necessary, they just reach for what's going to satiate them in the moment, what's just gonna fill them up in the moment, not what's gonna nourish them over time. And there's tons of great like frameworks out there on purpose and meaning and fulfillment. Like these are extraordinary people, and they are way smarter and more brilliant and well researched than I am, right? But they all presume that you're showing up to their work with a healthy, clear understanding of who you are. And we know, based on all the research, that a majority of people, 85-90% of people, are not self-aware. So When you embrace that framework and you appro open that book, Design Your Life, Ikigai, whatever it is, you're approaching it the way you are in the moment. And so you're gonna approach that book and tackle that book based on whatever's top of mind for you right now. And we know that what's top of mind for most people right now is anxiety. know, is depression, is negativity bias, is whatever urgent pain prompt in the moment pushed them to do that, to tackle that book. How many people do you think approach and open up design your life when they're flying high and have conquered the world? Like, no, that's not when people turn
Clarence Bongalos: Mm-hmm.
Suneet Bhatt: to these books. They turn to these books when they need something to grab onto. And we're giving them empty calories. And that's my
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: challenge. I think all of those books are extraordinary. All the content is extraordinary. But I just want people to show up to them with a clear sense of who they are. So we turbocharge that work for them.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I love that. And I think I think I shared this with you during our introductory call. the reason why I went into the work that I do is because for so long I saw what we were doing as organizations where we knew that engagement was a problem and we were trying to fix engagement. And despite all the pizza parties and free sodas and happy hours, n the needle wasn't moving. And so that I as a natural problem solver, I was looking at that and I was like, What are we missing? and that's how I arrived at the a similar conclusion as you, where there there has to be a missing prerequisite. And what is that? And the pandemic really kind of made that clear, at least for me, where I didn't even really see the word alignment in that sense until I saw everything that we all experienced as a result of the pandemic. And I started to dive deep into that work and understand a new meaning to what it means to even be aligned. And this is coming from somebody who spent 20 years in leadership and leadership development and and really learning what it means to be a leader and like working intentionally on my self-awareness. But even then, after all that, I didn't even realize the importance of what it means to do aligned work or be aligned with yourself. and so now I'm like, I I need to be part of the the solution here of helping people find that alignment. and I think that. You know, it's important to understand why that step is the one that everyone skips, but has to be the foundation to this whole process because you cannot find or you cannot ask someone to find their purpose, to be engaged in their work, or to even feel fulfilled if they don't first know who they are. Every framework that skips that step is asking someone to essentially build on sand. So this is actually where I have to
Suneet Bhatt: You have it.
Clarence Bongalos: admit. Just how aligned you and I are. Your book moves people through three steps. Gain clarity, and in that step you uncover the patterns, strengths, and values that shape who you are. Then you build momentum. You move forward with simple steps that stick, and then you find your kiran your lay of your ray of light, and reconnect with what gives you energy and meaning. So clarity, momentum, kiran. In my framework, alignment, engagement, fulfillment. And it's not a loose parallel. So he that's the same map but with different labels. So walk me through what that actually looks like with a real person. You've talked about an like doing an origin story exercise, 10 different lenses, looking for through lines. And then you mentioned earlier in the episode that once is chance, twice is a pattern, three times is undeniable. So let's give our listeners the real version of that, not just the summary.
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, I mean I think the first part is if you look at you know, where how are you seeing yourself? So the how many lenses can they look through? the first is, you know, we we focus on first actually even precursor to seeing yourself through a lens, it's telling the truth about where you are and where you're starting from. The only way to identify and measure progress is to know your point of origin. If you don't know point of origin, we will confuse ourselves and delude ourselves into thinking we've made less progress or no progress at all. Right. So it gives you a factual measuring point. Then there are a bunch of prompts, third-party assessments. You know, in the book, I really tone it down because I want I need people to be able to navigate through the book, but in the course we do a bunch of third-party assessments as well. But you think about the ways you're gonna see yourself. You're gonna see yourself through what makes you happy, you're gonna see yourself. Through what gives you confidence, you're gonna see yourself through where things you wanna prioritize. You see yourself through your motivations, see yourself through your behaviors, you see yourself through your dreams, your strengths, your values, areas of energy. That's all like gain clarity. How do you all the look at yourself all these different ways? What through lines do you see? Well, then the next part is, okay, where do I apply this? Like what do I, what do I, what's holding me back? Right. What what what's getting in my way? And so we do an entire exercise and set of exercises and chapters on build momentum is actually the inverse of getting unstuck. I wanted to frame it positively. Original book was get unstuck. I wanted to say actually no, I want you to build momentum. And that is like telling your truth. What's the truth? And and the example I give is I've had 10 eye surgeries. I've had like corneal transplant, I've had experimental like surgeries on my eyes, so much so that like Ophthalmologists like love my eyes for exper experimental reasons, right? And
Clarence Bongalos: Mm.
Suneet Bhatt: I'm end of life on my glasses. So my next eye doctor visit, they will likely tell me you're beyond help when it comes to glasses and we don't know what we're gonna do, right? But I don't wake up every day and complain about my vision. I get up, I put my glasses on, and then I get to work. And all of us has this tension between a limit and constraint that. we believe we can work with or can't. And so part of the job is helping people identify those and then move past them, right? And then I give them tools on like how do you get unstuck. There's a great, you know, trauma creative exercise, trauma exercise for people who are stuck on something and dirty faucet is the the premise. But the goal is just to write for for a period of time. And as you write, you'll write through the bad and unclear to the clear and and intentional. And so you give people these exercises and they write their way to their own solution. They just never had the prompt and the space and the timeline to do that work, right? So we do that. And then we use like James, like best practice, James Clear, Brit Frank, optimize for the starting line, right? Like when you're when you can't like create an environment you want to work in, atomic habits, like how do you do that work? But do that all through and while fully aware of what makes you it matters to you. And that becomes sort of the second arc of like build momentum is about acknowledging the things that are holding you back, self-forgiveness, so that you, you know, one of the most powerful, the three most powerful things human beings have when it comes to the bouncing back are community, religion, and self-forgiveness. Community is great, but we know that we are more and more fragmented and less and less social. So do all of us have community? I don't know. There are a lot of people out there that would want more or think they don't. Religion is, let's just call it what it is. It's very complex for many people. and there it's not for everyone, right? So can everybody turn to religion? No. Self-forgiveness is something we all have the capacity to do. All you need is the willingness to forgive yourself. And it increases your resilience and your ability to bounce back more than anything else. Right. And so we teach them that. And then we and then we say, make set your intentions. Britt Frank says this amazing thing, which is identify micro yeses, the the thing that's easiest to say yes to so you can start making progress. Identify three and then pick one and just say yes and get going. Optimize for the starting line is James Clear. Micro yeses, Brit Britt Frank. And then We get to this find your kiran. And this idea of kiran was also my father's name who passed away. This book is like my reconciliation with him and his legacy. and like it's the light forward. It's just shining a light forward. And part of that exercise is acknowledging that things are going to change. Like you have found your purpose maybe for now, or maybe for a little while. The likelihood that you found one unique purpose forever. Something we all aspire to, but let's acknowledge that the world is going to happen, right? And life is going to change. But here's the thing: you have a way better library and foundational understanding of who you are. So when the world changes, you don't crumble. You just turn the page and you build atop everything you have, and you find and then you evolve your purpose based on the information that you have. And that Is the journey and maybe the most important thing is we talked a little a little bit about, you know, Kaufman, Scott Barry Kaufman, and Maslow and Kaufman is the preeminent thinker on human potential. And he reframes Maslow in a beautiful way that changed my life and helped me think about purpose as evolutionary and iterative and not singular and monolithic. And I think that that's what the exercise looks like. If you go through the book. That's the journey. And then I'll say one other thing, which is, you know, as someone who's curious about curiosity and like how people learn, everybody learns differently. Some people learn academically, knowledge, facts. Some people learn sympathetically, story. Some people learn empathetically by doing, right? And existing. And some people just learn eccentrically. They need quirky ways of getting information for it work. So each chapter in my book is structured in that way. It starts with a prompt, follows up with research. There's a story of someone I've worked with whose life has been changed by that topic in the book. And then do a song analysis. I don't tell you, I don't do a lyrical analysis of Lovely Day. I tell you why Bill Withers wrote Lovely Day, right? And what he wanted people to understand when he decided to write that song. And that becomes kind of neat. So you ask me for like a journey, that's like, that's how it works, right? Like that's how
Clarence Bongalos: No. Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: the book and the code and the class and like just my philosophy works.
Clarence Bongalos: No, I appreciate that. And I wanna touch on or add to what you said about Kaufman in our initial conversation. and I because I I think I need to add or I wanna offer a new layer of nuance to what I said then. Because I said that, you know, in my framework, the pyramid isn't meant to represent a one time climb, that alignment is the foundation that the fulfillment sits on. And of course that's still true, but I also want to be precise about what that foundation actually is, because I think that when people hear foundation, as they assume
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah.
Clarence Bongalos: it means something that you build once and then stand on forever, but it doesn't.
Suneet Bhatt: Mm.
Clarence Bongalos: Alignment isn't a state of being, it's an ongoing process. So you will you'll align, realign more than once over the course of your life, and you might find yourself doing something that once fulfilled you completely, and then it just doesn't anymore. Not necessarily because you failed, but because you changed. You grew, you adapted, and your
Suneet Bhatt: We changed. Yep.
Clarence Bongalos: purpose might stay exactly the same, but the context thor that you're acting on it in has shifted from under you.
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, I I think people do change. I I don't use change as much anymore. I try and focus on evolve. And let me tell you why. Change one change is hard, right? Change also implies different, right? And I don't think people change as much as they grow and integrate new information and evolve, right? and so I that's why the class is find and evolve your purpose. And the last chapter of the book is evolution, right? and like it's that like let's acknowledge that things are going to change. There's two, two of my mentors, their stories are in the book and like how they like where they started and how their careers evolved and what stayed the same throughout, but how like they could never plan for anything because left turns, right turns, life is nonlinear. They evolved. They didn't change as much as they evolved. And the benefit to evolution is the core fundamental of who you are remains. You don't have to shed it, you don't have to lose it, you just evolve it. You reckon with it, come to terms with it, and evolve it. So I think that's that's more of the posturing and positioning that we I try and focus on is evolution, right? Is we evolve, we get new information and we evolve. And I am not, I will never know myself fully. Why? Because even if I know myself fully as of eight AM this morning, as soon as I woke up and got to life, new things happened and I'm different. And I have evolved and I there's some part of my perspective or understanding has evolved. And so I gotta get back to knowing and building on myself tomorrow.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I think that's so profound and I appreciate you sharing that perspective because I think that is a important nuance for us to to understand. Now we've we've we've been talking about purpose. Obviously, this season is about fulfillment. So I want to ask one question that kind of helps us turn the page a little bit here. Are purpose and fulfillment one and the same? Could someone do all of this work, find their purpose exactly the way that you've described, and still not be fulfilled, or does purpose guarantee fulfillment?
Suneet Bhatt: that's a good question. I so when you outlined your steps and said that we were in sync, I was actually gonna say that I don't think that I do any work on fulfillment. I don't think I touch fulfillment. I think I set people
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. Nor do I.
Suneet Bhatt: up to make fulfillment, authentic, sustainable fulfillment possible. But
Clarence Bongalos: Yes.
Suneet Bhatt: I have not I'm not focused on fulfillment as fulfillment is like a state of completed, like being fulfilled when you right? When you experience fulfillment when you are fulfilled. And I don't touch, I don't, I don't touch that. I set people up for that. so if we were to play out that exercise, I would say that purpose is the precursor to like True fulfillment. You cannot be truly fulfilled until you truly know yourself what makes you and matters to you. And then you have to act on it. And I think what you do, at least my understanding, is you execute you focus on building that bridge and getting to fulfillment. Like I'm like, all right, you you know yourself. You are the horse and you have been led to water, right? Fulfillment is when you drink. And I think that might be like a place where my work stops and your work shines even brighter. But I would say that that's the difference is like purpose is leading the horse to water, and fulfillment is when it is led to the right water source and chooses to drink. That's like it takes action, right? And I do
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: a little bit of work, I prompt action and we inspire action. There's a lot of ways we do it, but I'm more focused on like making fulfillment possible with that
Clarence Bongalos: Yes.
Suneet Bhatt: sense of of awareness. And part of the reason I do that. is I think there are a lot of great folks and research and producers and experts out there that are focused on all right, now you know here's what you need to do and you will you will get there. I think I tried to fill the step that was missing. And the reason I thought it was missing is because I felt it. It was missing for me.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I think we're very much aligned on that as well. Cause most of the work that I do is focused on alignment and that and helping to build that as the foundation, the precursor that allows engagement and fulfillment to follow. because my whole kind of belief from again, my own experience and what I've learned with my through my work is that when alignment exists, engagement naturally follows. And when you are engaged, then the fulfillment most of the time naturally follows. There is some kind of things that there's things you can do to help kind of move that along. but you have to have the alignment piece as a as a natural foundation. so I think we're aligned in that. there is another burning question because you looked at over a hundred definitions of purpose before landing on three criteria. You said it's personal, it's forward looking and it has to be about something beyond yourself, which I think is great. I wanna press on the first one, the the personal piece, because you also told me that your purpose was legible to you at seventeen before you had done any of this excavation work. So is purpose something stable that you're born knowing and then spend your life returning to, or is it something that you have to kind of keep re earning?
Suneet Bhatt: It's it's different for each person, right? I think life comes at everybody differently. And so, you know, I can look at the fact that I wanted to be a teacher a few different ways, right? Like one great example to look at it is to say I knew at 17 that I wanted to be a teacher, but I wasn't ready for it. I needed to go live life to be ready for it. Cause what kind of teacher would I've been at 21? Not teaching the kind of stuff that makes me a matters to me today, not teaching the stuff I'm motivated to teach right now. And so I think purpose is something that you have to keep feeding, experimenting with, iterating on. It is like that's that's how I think your purpose happens. I got lucky. I think the best stories are also sometimes told in reverse, right? Like, yeah, I remember that moment, but I can probably also remember a bunch of other other things I said I wanted to be as well, right? So I think there that memory exists because it fits the story that I choose to tell. But I do I mean, it's the truth. I I knew that's what I wanted to be. I have evidence of it. and so it it is the truth. But I think purpose is something that you iterate on and I think you run a bunch of experiments and you find some threads you like to pull. Some people find those threads sooner and then they start building, you know, the tapestry from that. but I think it's it's an ongoing experiment. And I think it changes. Like purpose is it it truly evolves. And I think, you know, I had somebody, a coaching client of mine who said her purpose when she came into my class was she wanted to write a book. She's like, I wanna write a book about this thing. And what she learned when she finished the class was actually she didn't want to write a book. She wanted to get more stories into the hands of more people. She started running pop-up bookshops. She started like she reimagined what she really loved was stories and what they meant to people and did for people. And she thought she had to write it. And what was beautiful was when she realized maybe she has she can write it, but that's not the only way. To deliver more stories to people. She could curate,
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: introduce, write, recommend so many fascinating ways. The key thing for me is purpose is not singular and monolithic. It changes and evolves because we get there's the complexity is us and the complexity is the world around us. And if it doesn't change and respond to that, then I don't know. There are very few people that can pull
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah.
Suneet Bhatt: that off.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I think that's a perfect answer. Okay, so I wanna ground it a little bit into as as we get close to the end of this episode, I wanna ground it a little bit in what people are experiencing right now and in in the real world. so I wanna get your take on something before I share mine. But I I create a lot of content about alignment and building purposeful careers. And the most common pushback that I get isn't agreement, it's some version of Really in this economy, what a privileged perspective to tell people to find their purpose when people are just fighting to survive. So I'd love your honest reaction to that before I tell you where I land on it.
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, I I think we talked about this when we and this isn't it's a it's a perspective that I will share, but is really deeply informed by the work of Scott Barry Kaufman and his interpretation of Maslow. So Kaufman's take, and and and I'm c tell you why I'm sharing this, is I think context matters a lot, but I think purpose also you can have a purpose for now, a purpose for some time, or a purpose forever. And your purpose for now can be I just gotta stay afloat, right? Like that's a fair purpose for now. But the benefit of naming it as your purpose is you then feel self-concordant and connected to it. And as a result of that, it's a decision you made to operate that way. And you're more likely to be resilient because it's a choice you made as opposed to a choice imposed upon you. What Kaufman talks about is he says, look, and it's his research, he's a Maslow expert. And he says Maslow never intended the hierarchy of needs to be a pyramid. it was never supposed to be singular model. Think when you think about a pyramid, what you think? It never changes. It stands to the test of the time. It goes from the ground up like it's just that's it. And he said, No, no, no, it's more like a sailboat on the ocean. And there's a variety of factors to that. There's the ship itself, there's the sail, and then there's the waves and the water, and there's the breeze and the sun and the and the wind and the environment around you. And Look, there are days where it is stormy and the waves are high and cra and and like really just difficult, and the wind is blowing aggressively in an unsafe way. Your job is to make sure your boat stays afloat. That's your job. And so he talks about security, decoupling the hierarchy of needs from security into growth. And then he says there are days where. The sea is calm and the wind is blowing beautifully, and it's time for you to unfurl your sail and sail, catch wind. And he said the biggest mistake, what I love about that, is it's not just the boat, it's also the ocean and the wind and the weather and the elements. But there's also this neat thing, and I don't he doesn't I I don't like I this is my take on expanding sort of what he talks about, but you know. The neatest thing about that analogy is when it's stormy and you try and sail fast and unfurl your sail, your ship is going to capsize and turn over. That is not a healthy decision, a smart decision. And when the sea is calm and the wind is blowing, and you don't unfurl your sail, you're gonna miss the moment. So the most important thing about purpose in your journey is the truth about where you are. In the moment. And that I say the truth is undefeated. Like get to the truth, the real truth, right? Not the truth that I'm blind and can't see, the truth that I'm gonna put my glasses on now I can tackle what's in front of me. Like the real truth of what's in your control and what's not, what what the context of your situation is. Get to the truth. And if it's stormy, like this economy for many people, then I'm not here to help you find aspirational forever purpose. I'm here to help you find your purpose for now, which is I gotta feed my family, I gotta do this, so I'm gonna take whatever job I need to take to stay afloat. But the next beautiful thing about it is the weather's gonna change, things are gonna change, and you're gonna ebb and flow infinitely. between putting your sail up and taking it down over the course of your life. And so if it's rainy, it's gonna clear. If it's sunny, the storm's coming. Just be ready to be observant, no judgment, just awareness, so you can respond in the best healthiest way possible.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. No, I think that's that's a really powerful way to put it. And the only thing I'll add from my perspective is I agree. I don't think that those people are necessarily wrong. I think that the state of the economy is very real. Not I think the state of the economy is very real. And the pressure in the job market is a genuine global problem. But I actually believe that this exact moment, this kind of specific vulnerability that we have that we're in right now. is the opportunity to do this work, not a disqualifier from it. Because right now we're stuck, but we're also more willing to fight for ourselves and what we want than we've ever been in a long time. And I think that that combination creates the right conditions to live more purposeful lives and start reshaping what work and and life looks like going forward. Because if we don't use this moment to do that, then we just stay in the same cycle. And so I think that and the nuance that you just offered of it doesn't have to be about the aspirational s sense of purpose, but what is your purpose right now? I think that is what people will need to really if there's one thing that people can take away from what do I do after listening to this episode, I think that's an important takeaway of purpose doesn't have to be this big magical mythical aspirational thing. It's what is your purpose today? and that can be Something small, that could be something large, but you define it. So I appreciate I appreciate that nuance. last question or last conceptual question before we bring this home.
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Sure.
Clarence Bongalos: Can someone live a genuinely happy life without ever finding their purpose?
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, I think happiness is not happiness is its own sort of emotion and its own feeling. you know, people separate happiness from joy. you know what I will say about happiness is if purpose is the pre so precursor to fulfillment, happiness is the precursor to purpose. happiness makes purpose possible. we know that happiness is a precursor to success. We know happiness comes as a precursor to meaningful, etc. But the thing that people get wrong about happiness is and the reason it works it works as the precursor is when you are happy, you embrace the nonlinear nature of life more naturally. You're less fatalistic about it, you take more things in stride, as a result, you bounce back, as a result, you stay the course, and as a result, you make progress, right? That's how happiness works. And so the the one thing I'll say about happiness is there's probably a lot of people who are like, nah, like happiness where human beings are terrible predicting happiness. That's what like everybody says. Human beings are terrible at predicting happiness. and I will say yes. And then they will say, so focus on contentment, and I will say no, because happiness is a precursor to everything we want. Here's the challenge with happiness: we make happiness a prediction. When we should make happiness a reflection. Happiness as a prediction without any input and understanding of what has made us happy in the past makes terrible at predicting the future. We would not predict anything without doing deep research and at least building a model to inform that accurately. We don't do that for happiness. We just try and chase it. And so happiness starts as a reflection. And I think that's something I whenever somebody talks about happiness, I'm gonna say that. But happiness is the precursor to purpose. So yeah, you can live a fully happy life without explicitly connecting to purpose. What I would then say is if a person did live a full happy life and said they never live with purpose, I would have them see themselves all those different lenses. And likely happy life was their purpose. And like that's kind of amazing. And like, give me more of those people.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. All right. Thank you for that. All right, Suneet. For someone listening right now who has done real alignment work, they know who they are, maybe they even know their purpose, but they still don't feel fulfilled. What's the first question they should be asking themselves this week?
Suneet Bhatt: what I would do I think it's it starts with a reflection, first and foremost. if they've I just I just did this with a woman taking my current cohort and she's like, you know, how do I get off the hamster wheel? She's like, I've done all this purpose work, I've been doing therapy forever, I've done like and she is one of the most incredible and positive people I know. She's a model for happiness I've known for 22 years. She's like a model for happiness, but she never gives herself the same happiness that she inspires in other people. And so we're doing this co-journaling. So co-journaling is how we do my course. They journal and I journal alongside them. That's where the mirror comes from. I want to journal with them because I want to make sure that. I'm the most flattering mirror, honest but flattering mirror they look into. I don't want them to go off the rails in their journaling. I want them to stay on track. And I want to hold up a mirror and say, look at the cool things you're doing. And so she's like, Suneet, how do I get like I gotta get off the hamster wheel? How do I get off the hamster wheel? And was like, you know what, bud? Like, look at the list of things that you just wrote down that you did and that you've accomplished in the last year. Get everything that made you happy, everything that made you proud. this framework called Happy Proud and Not Get Satisfied that I make people start with. And and I was like, what if the problem is not that you're in a hamster wheel? What if the problem is that you're actually driving a Lamborghini, but you're only focused on the tire going round and round and you're not paying any attention to how fast and far the car is actually moving. And that her words, she was like, I literally never thought about it that way. and her the That is the big thing missing for all of us. Is we're not locking in progress. We're not reflecting. We're just focused on the future. And so what I would encourage those folks to do is take stock. Tell the truth about your accomplishments, but like decouple, what makes you happy? There's a bunch of props. What makes you proud? Gives you confidence. None of it's accomplishment driven. And then what do you want to build on? And I think if you do that work, it's really hard to ignore the writing on the paper of like what you do. And the second thing I tell folks is it's really hard to do that kind of work. And so if you're struggling to do it the first time, I say this in the session, see yourself through the eyes of somebody who loves you. Like what do your parents want? What does your spouse want? What does your friend want? What do your kids want? What does your boss want? What does your mentor want? What do they want you to say for yourself? And that becomes, that helps the reflection sort of take shape. And I think that's really, that's really important.
Clarence Bongalos: Yeah. Hmm. Powerful. All right. Before we go, one last thing because I think it's important. And then I I will let you go here. I want to make sure that we at least touch on this from an organizational standpoint because you and I both do this work with organizations too. And we spent the entirety of this episode talking about this from the individual standpoint. And for me that was intentional because even though we do this work with organizations, it is important to recognize that the leaders in those organizations are people too. And in order for them to lead a purpose driven organization, they have to first understand what it means to be purpose driven themselves. So what does it actually mean for an organization to be purpose driven? How can companies help create a culture that is what I call PCPD, people centric and purpose driven?
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, I think the, you know, there's this is a this could be a whole nother episode, right? we
Clarence Bongalos: Right. Yep. That's why I just said one question.
Suneet Bhatt: talk about EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. I do this because it's so aligned with the work we do. It starts with values. And I think the most important thing to be purpose driven is to be really clear on your values first. First, what are our values? Second, integrate those values everywhere that you possibly can. Integrate them into your hiring. Do the people match your values? Not are they just a good fit for the job description, do they match to your values? Integrate that into the products you build, do they and services you offer? Are these values aligned? How do we make the values aligned? Integrate them into the clients you choose, right? Like are these clients' values aligned? Integrate them into you know strategic decisions. them like you should be talking and living and breathing your values all the time and that is critical if you integrate if you define your values evangelize your values integrate your values then you will be purpose driven like you will be because your values will reflect your purpose ideally and you will make sure that your purpose shows up and your values show up in every aspect of your business and if you don't do that and if you don't recalibrate and revisit those Organizational entropy happens. So even if you write the greatest purpose statement, draft the greatest values, and do an amazing job in your first quarter, if you don't tie those, lace those back together every quarter, entropy will happen and things will fray. And so the important thing is connect your purpose to your values to your purpose, integrate those completely, and then avoid entropy by constantly revisiting and tightening and relacing, right? Like you don't put your laced up sneakers up on one time and just wear them that way forever. You unlace them, you lace them back together every time to make sure the fit is right. And that's what you have to do for your values and your organization. For one question, that's what that's what I would say.
Clarence Bongalos: I know. No, that was a good cliff notes version. So thank you for that. Well, Suneet, I wanna thank you for joining me in this conversation to help our listeners make sense of purpose. It's truly, truly been an honor and a pleasure. Before we go, please tell our listeners how they can get a copy of your new book, Making Sense of Purpose, which is available now.
Suneet Bhatt: Yeah, so you can go to makingsenseofpurpose.com and there's an order order link there. Otherwise it's available. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, Books A Million, all those places. just look for Making Sense of Purpose from Suneet Bhatt. not by. I'm not a guru, I'm just the deliverer and conveyor of of of a life experience that I had. so look for the look for the book there and then let me know what you think. connect with me LinkedIn. I'm an old man, I'm finally on Instagram. Suneet on purpose is my handle. So feel free to connect with me there. and the one thing I would say is I'm really trying to get this book in the hands of as many people as possible. And so working on finalizing some nonprofit partners but the dream for me is that we're able to get this in the hands of children aging out of foster care and people re-entering their communities post-incarceration so i've got good conversations going on with leaders in both spaces but you know spread the word but i also I am working on ways to collect donations so that we can gift as many and get them into the hands of people who truly need them.
Clarence Bongalos: That's beautiful. Thank you, Suneet. I will put all the links to the website, the book, and Suneet's LinkedIn in the show notes. So make sure to go check that out. thank you, Suneet, for being here. I really appreciate you sharing so much of your insight and perspective with us here today.
Suneet Bhatt: Hey man, thanks. Thanks so much for making time for me, squeezing me in. It's been a crazy, a crazy month for everybody. and I just appreciate you believing in this message and this work so much that you went out of your way to help find time to make this happen. And so that's not lost on me, and I really appreciate you.
Clarence Bongalos: No, likewise. All right, everybody. That conversation is exactly why I wanted to open the season with Suneet. Purpose isn't the whole journey, but it's the anchor. Everything else depends on your North Star. And I don't think that you can get to real fulfillment without it. we started the season here on purpose. On purpose. Over the next several weeks, we're gonna build on this. We're gonna get into what fulfillment actually looks like on in the day-to-day. what gets in the way of it and how to know the difference between a life that looks good on paper and one that actually feels good to live. So stick with us because we've got new episodes dropping every Tuesday. And if this conversation gave you something to think about, do a few things for me. Hit follow so you don't miss an episode when it goes live. Share this with someone who needs to hear it. Help Suneet get this in the hands of as many people as possible. anybody who is stuck, somebody who's chasing the next thing without knowing why. And if you've got 60 seconds, leave us a review because it's genuinely one of the best ways to help the show reach more people who need it. Thank you again for being here. I'm your host, Clarence Moore, and this is Aligned Engage Fulfilled. I'll see you next week.