Good morning,

How are you this morning, compadre?

Here’s what I have for you today:

• One big thing. How Michelangelo, John Lee Hooker, Navin R. Johnson, Sweet Loren, and Scottie Scheffler can help us find purpose in life. 🗿

• You have to check this out. Talking about loss with Stephen Colbert. ☸️

• Tools and tech. Imagine you are in a room with 100 strangers. How average are you? 📊

Are you ready to jump in? 🦘

1️⃣ ONE BIG THING

Revealing your purpose in midlife.

I.

In 1504, Michelangelo completed the statue of David. If you have seen it in person (as I have), you understand why it remains an icon.

Michelangelo said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

II.

In 1948, John Lee Hooker wrote the blues classic Boogie Chillen'.

One of the verses said:

One night I was layin' down

I heard mama 'n papa talkin'

I heard papa tell mama

"Let that boy boogie-woogie

It's in him, and it got to come out"

III.

In 2006, Loren Castle graduated from the University of Southern California. Three months later, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Loren had a sweet tooth, but she had to eat healthy while undergoing chemotherapy. As a recent college grad, she was also trying to figure out her career path.

When she recovered, her doctor told her, “Go be normal and get a real job.”

Loren replied, “I can’t be normal anymore. Life is really precious. I want to make sure I find something that I’m super passionate about.”

She spent three years trying and failing to find a job she loved, working at a restaurant, a PR agency, and a wine business.

While undergoing chemotherapy, she had been frustrated by a lack of wholesome cookie dough brands. So, while working those other jobs, she began testing new ways to create health-conscious cookies.

At 26, she made the leap and started the company Sweet Loren’s. Today, her cookies are in 35,000 supermarkets, and she is on target to generate $120 million in revenue this year.

Loren “wasn’t inspired to start Sweet Loren’s because of her love for baking—in fact, she did little of it before her diagnosis. While her friends were out partying, her illness had forced her to change the way she lived, including the way she ate,” this Forbes article explains. “But surviving cancer—and wanting to turn the nightmare of the illness into something positive—was the push she needed to finally start her own business.”

Loren explained, “Life is short. I don’t want regrets. I was so keenly aware of my feelings. If I wasn’t in love with something, it was really hard to make myself do it.”

IV.

At 26, Navin R. Johnson left home.

“Mom, I’m gonna go out there and see the world. I’m gonna find my special purpose!” he said at the time.

Initially, he chased sex, possessions, and fame.

“You should have seen me with my special purpose… it was the most wonderful thing in my life!” he exclaimed.

Over time, emptiness crept in. He realized his purpose in the world was being clouded by attachments to material things, so he denounced them—well, not all of them.

“I don’t need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game, and that’s all I need… And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need… And these matches. The ashtray, the paddle game, the remote control, and these matches. And this lamp. The ashtray, the paddle game, the remote control, the matches, and the lamp. And that’s all I need!”

In the end, he discovered that his life’s purpose had been inside him all along—the capacity for love.

“It’s not about money. I don’t need money. I don’t need things. All I need is you. And this ashtray. And that’s all I need. And maybe this lamp.”

Asking, What’s the point?

Have you had moments you wondered, "What's the point?"

I have.

These moments seem to come more frequently as we get older, don’t they? For example:

Someone close to you passes away. A relationship ends. You or someone close to you loses a job or faces a serious illness or injury.

These events don’t have to be all negative. For example:

Early retirement. Kids leave home. Recovering from a health scare. Achieving a life milestone. A financial windfall.

Sometimes, what makes you ask “What’s the point?” is more of an internal realization than an external event.

These realizations can happen well before midlife.

Take 29-year-old Scottie Scheffler, the world’s number one golfer.

He recently gave one of the most surprising and vulnerable press conferences I’ve ever heard.

Describing the fleeting satisfaction of success, he said, “What’s the point?... Because if I win, it's going to be awesome for about two minutes.”

He was talking about a common experience called the arrival fallacy, which I have written about several times in these letters, including The Success-Happiness Dilemma and The U-Shaped Curve of Wellbeing.

It doesn’t take a passion for golf or sports to find Scheffler’s press conference remarkable. Even achievements at the highest level can ring hollow.

I've included a few highlights below. As a postscript to this letter, I added a longer transcript (and video) if you are interested.

The arrival fallacy is so jarring because of the realization (and let down) that often comes after significant achievements.

If you work incredibly hard to achieve something that only yields a moment of satisfaction, it’s natural to ask, "What’s the point?"

The question then becomes, what would be fulfilling from, as Scheffler said, the deepest places of your heart?

Where is your purpose?

A helpful step in answering the question, "What is my life's purpose?" is to change the question to, "Where is my life's purpose?"

Some people search for their life’s purpose out in the world.

“Mom, I’m gonna go out there and see the world. I’m gonna find my special purpose.”

This is the treasure map approach.

But your life’s purpose is inherently about what’s inside you.

"Let that boy boogie-woogie. It's in him, and it got to come out."

This is the Michelangelo sculpture approach.

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material,” Michelangelo said.

It can be fiendishly hard to free yourself from this superfluous material.

One factor I'll return to in more detail one day is the audience effect.

“The mere presence of others fundamentally changes what we choose to do and who we choose to be, and we become different people when we know we’re being watched,” explains Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

What other people will think about you is just one layer of superfluous material to chisel away to reveal your life's purpose.

This is why major events and realizations can accelerate inner revelations (such as Scheffler’s).

Look back at what Loren of Sweet Loren’s said after being freed from cancer: “Life is short. I don’t want regrets. I was so keenly aware of my feelings. If I wasn’t in love with something, it was really hard to make myself do it,” Loren said.

“There's this idea that we all have this higher purpose, and it's our mission in life to go out and find it. I think that's bullshit. This is why: Purpose is just a concept that describes the feeling of knowing what you want to do with your life. And you don't find that, you create it,” Mark Manson says.

Chiseling away superfluous material.

I will leave you today with one set of chisels to use in this process—seven questions you can ask yourself as one step in the right direction.

The questions come from author Daniel Pink, whose work is always research-grounded, and (thankfully) do not include asking yourself “What’s my passion?”

I’ve summarized his seven questions below, but watching the video will help you far more since it explains why these questions are so illuminating.

Daniel Pink's 7 Brutally Honest Questions to Find Your Purpose

1. What made you weird as a kid? The quirks and obsessions that set you apart.

2. When do you lose track of time? Activities that fully absorb you.

3. What do people thank you for? Your natural contributions others notice.

4. What’s your sentence? One line that sums up the impact you want to have.

5. Where can you make your most significant contribution? Where your strengths meet real needs.

6. What would you do if money didn’t matter? The work you’d choose in a world without financial pressure.

7. What will you regret at 90? The chances you’d be most sorry you didn’t take.

Here is the short video:

Thank you for opening and reading my letter to you each week.

See you next Sunday,

Kevin

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P.S.S. - Scroll down for the longer Scottie Scheffler press conference transcript and video.

Longer Scottie Scheffler press conference transcript (July 2025):

What's the point, you know?

This is not a fulfilling life. It's fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of like, the deepest, you know, places of your heart.

There's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and then you get there and all of a sudden you get to number one in the world and they're like, "What's the point?"

I really do believe that because, you know, what is the point?

You're like, "What? Why do I want to win this tournament so bad?" That's something that I wrestle with on a daily basis. It's like showing up at the Masters every year. It's like, why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win the Open Championship so badly? I don't know.

Because if I win, it's going to be awesome for about two minutes and then we're going to get to the next week and it's going to be like, "Hey, you won two majors this year. How important is it for you to win the FedEx Cup playoffs?"

And it's just like we're back here again, you know?

We work so hard for such little moments and, you know, I'm kind of a sicko. I love putting in the work. I love being able to practice. I love getting out to live out my dreams, but at the end of the day, sometimes I just don't understand the point, you know?

I love the challenge. I love being able to play this game for a living. It's one of the greatest joys of my life.

But does it fill the deepest, you know, wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.

That's why I talk about family being my priority because it really is.

I'm blessed to be able to come out here and play golf, but if my golf ever started affecting my home life or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or with my son, you know, that's going to be the last day that I play out here for a living.

This is not the be-all end-all. This is not the most important thing in my life. And that's why I wrestle with why is this so important to me?

Because, you know, I would much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer. You know, that at the end of the day, that that's what's more important to me.