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How to Find Your Life’s Purpose

2025-10-20 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Joe Hudson · recording, 53:30 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Goals, purpose and life design (also: Work and career) · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Ali sets out a five-step roadmap to finding your life's purpose from his conversation with executive coach Joe Hudson: audit whether you live your purpose, think creatively about money, experiment with being authentic in your current job for 30 days, cut the self-criticism, and find purpose in the present.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why waiting to find your purpose leaves you lost; Joe Hudson and the five-step roadmap

  • ★★ Ali introduces Joe Hudson as an executive coach to some of the world's biggest companies, including Apple, Google and OpenAI, which pay him to help their CEOs and executive teams. — 00:00:29 · Apple, Google

00:01:20 — Step 1: a purpose audit — the billion-dollar test, living for a future reward, the shoulds

  • ★ Joe Hudson recalls sitting with his wife in a hot tub at the end of one of his week-long retreats, which Ali has attended, after seven days of work from 7.30 in the morning to 10 at night. — 00:01:20
  • ★★ Joe Hudson tells his wife he is glad they did not make a deal that would have brought them about $70 million, since with that money they might not have started their business. — 00:02:22

  • ★★★ Joe Hudson's test of purpose: if you have an idea you want to pursue and cannot be bought off, even for a billion dollars, you are living your purpose. — 00:02:50

    “you can't be bought off then you're living your purpose”

  • ★★ Ali does not take Joe Hudson's billion-dollar test literally: he reads it as asking whether you do the work for the money, since work done mainly for money is unlikely to be your purpose. — 00:03:30

  • ★ If someone offered a billion dollars for Ali's business, there are parts of it he would sell and parts he would not. — 00:04:01
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson says life is like a piece of music to enjoy, not a race to its crescendo, and one of the clearest signs you are not living your purpose is living for a reward in the future. — 00:05:27
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says that telling yourself you should or have to do things is a strong sign you are not living your purpose. — 00:05:55
  • ★★★ Ali's first step to finding your purpose is a purpose audit: ask whether you would sell what you do for a billion dollars, whether you are living for a future reward, and whether you feel you should do it. — 00:06:23
  • ★★ Ali says most people have a gut response, a felt sense, when asked whether their work is their purpose. — 00:07:07
  • ★★★ As a doctor Ali had the Sunday scaries and dreaded Monday mornings, but looked forward to teaching medical students, such as physiology supervisions, which told him his purpose lay more in teaching than in practising medicine. — 00:07:34

00:08:10 — Notion sponsor read

00:09:34 — Step 2: the money problem — endless ways to make money, binary thinking as fear

  • ★★ Joe Hudson says there is nothing wrong with not living your purpose, and it matters that people do not beat themselves up about it, since that will not get them there faster. — 00:09:58
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson says there are endless ways to make money, so refusing to live your passion and purpose because of money makes no sense. — 00:11:07
  • ★★ Joe Hudson: To someone who says their one trained job pays the bills, Joe Hudson advises keeping it to pay the bills while finding another way to make money. — 00:11:40
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says binary thinking, such as keep my job or quit it, means you are deciding out of fear, and fear will not get you to your passion. — 00:12:01
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says there are a thousand ways to make money even within accounting: which company, using AI, innovating, whom you do the accounts for, and whether you love your team. — 00:12:01
  • ★★ Ali's second step to finding your purpose is to think creatively about the money problem, since there are ways to make money following almost any purpose. — 00:13:09
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says being passionate about your work and living your purpose go together, and living your purpose is a felt sense, never a checklist. — 00:13:39
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says you can only feel whether you are living on purpose in the present moment, never in the future. — 00:14:36

00:15:26 — Step 3: experiment with being authentic in your current work for 30 days

  • ★★ Joe Hudson says people burned out in a job they feel no passion for often have a problem with the way they work more than with what they do. — 00:15:56
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson: Before leaving a job, Joe Hudson advises being completely authentic in it: for 30 days, in every meeting, ask how you would act if you were acting from your purpose. — 00:16:23
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says people who try acting from their purpose at work often find they were living their purpose all along but not being themselves. — 00:17:14
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says that when you work authentically your own way, 80% of the time the world starts rearranging to support you. — 00:18:09
  • ★ Joe Hudson means this without magical thinking: like a drummer heard by a guitarist next door, people who like what you do come towards you and others leave. — 00:19:13
  • ★★ Joe Hudson uses a timer app, Yap (as heard), that dings seven to nine times a day as a reminder to ask how to live on purpose right now and take 20 seconds to do it. — 00:21:02
  • ★★ Joe Hudson: A client of Joe Hudson's, an engineering leader in autonomous vehicles, decided to be herself in a job she disliked; her boss wanted her fired, her boss's boss wanted to promote her, and an outside firm recruited her. (hedged) — 00:22:27
  • ★★ Joe Hudson: At her new firm Joe Hudson's client compromised on her purpose in choosing her position, a mistake that kept her from the work she wanted for years. — 00:23:18
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says that if you do not abandon yourself for the world, people value you and what is uniquely awesome about you, as with someone you date. — 00:24:56
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says that if being yourself brings bad consequences you are in a world not suited to you: leave it, or accept living in a compromise; there is no third choice. — 00:26:04
  • ★ Joe Hudson says the choice to be yourself becomes easy after about three experiments. — 00:27:06
  • ★★★ About six months earlier, asking what would give him more fulfilment, Ali began running in-person events in Hong Kong, booking a room for 100 people; the events made no money. — 00:27:06 · Hong Kong
  • ★★ Ali found the fulfilment, ideas and energy from his Hong Kong events worth the loss, and the next phase of his business stemmed from them. — 00:27:35 · Hong Kong
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson finds that AI engineers burn out when they stop doing the core research they love, and advises them to keep about 30% of their time for it. — 00:28:00
  • ★★ Joe Hudson still coaches one-on-one, though he does not need to and it pays less than his business and courses, because it fuels his passion. — 00:28:38
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says the fear of rejection pulls people out of themselves, and practising living your purpose moment to moment is the training ground for a career that serves it. — 00:30:19
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says that once you live your purpose you must keep choosing what feels right much of the time, even against sponsors or at a small loss, or it falls apart. — 00:31:09
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says your wants are ridiculous and will change, yet following the want right in front of you is your evolutionary call, as children who follow their wants show. — 00:33:14
  • ★★ Joe Hudson: For a want that does not serve you, Joe Hudson advises asking for the need behind it, again and again (a gallon of ice cream, to feel calm, to feel safe): the first want is only a strategy. — 00:34:26
  • ★★ Joe Hudson: To people who say a workplace does not let you be yourself, Joe Hudson answers that they know only their own workplace, not what the workplace is like. — 00:34:55
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says that if you are not special at what you do, you are not living your purpose: people living it become a special talent at it. — 00:36:06
  • ★★★ Ali's third step: before quitting your job or making drastic changes, be completely authentic in your current work for 30 days, to learn whether the problem is what you do or how you do it. — 00:36:06

00:37:11 — Step 4: cut the self-criticism; the tyranny of purpose

  • ★★ Ali's sister-in-law founded a nonprofit to reduce human suffering, but Ali does not think he cares about anything that much and does not know his grand vision. — 00:37:37
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson says that most of the time asking "what's my purpose?" is self-abuse, a reproach for not having found it, done in the head without experimenting. — 00:38:25
  • ★★ Ali's fourth step to finding your purpose is to cut the self-criticism people heap on themselves for not living their purpose, which does not help them find it. — 00:38:55
  • ★★ Citing the Tyranny of Purpose chapter of Anne-Laure Le Cunff's Tiny Experiments, Ali says people who rejected the corporate ladder replaced it with an equally restrictive need to find one true purpose. — 00:39:53

00:40:19 — Step 5: purpose in the present — experiments, wandering, broad passions

  • ★★★ Joe Hudson says purpose is not found in the future but lived now: even while searching, be in your purpose, authentically yourself. — 00:40:19

    “Purpose isn't found in the future. Purpose is found right now.”

  • ★★★ Joe Hudson says purpose comes from a series of experiments: as Steve Jobs's interest in calligraphy became the Mac's fonts, his own wanderings in venture capital, music and film feed his work. — 00:40:48 · experimental mindset

  • ★★ Joe Hudson says purpose is how you do things, not one specific job: a purpose like helping people be financially sane has dozens of possible forms. — 00:42:03
  • ★★ Joe Hudson: At 24 Joe Hudson worked in international stock lending, with three promotions and three raises in 18 months, earning more than any of his friends but miserable. — 00:42:28
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson: After seven years working his way into film and television towards directing, Joe Hudson saw it was the same as international stock lending. — 00:43:08
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson then said yes to any work that sounded good (welding, rebuilding cars, drywall, loan modifications, a venture business); opportunities grew until he became a venture capitalist. — 00:44:20
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says that when you live your passion day to day, people want to work with you. — 00:45:07
  • ★★★ Instead of applying to 200 jobs, Ali advises picking the two or three you really want and putting in 100 times the effort, such as taking the hiring manager or their reports out for coffee. — 00:45:31
  • ★★ None of the many ways someone could get hired by Ali would involve generic job boards or mass LinkedIn applications; all would need passion. — 00:46:04 · LinkedIn
  • ★★ Joe Hudson calls the question of whether to follow your passion a false dichotomy. — 00:46:32
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says people with a narrow, fixed passion, such as large-scale black-and-white charcoal art only, often set themselves up for rejection. — 00:47:22
  • ★★★ Joe Hudson advises living your passion, but broadly: an aim like having an impact and a creative life has hundreds of ways to do it and make money. — 00:48:07
  • ★★★ Asked in his Lifestyle Business Academy how to pick a niche from your passions, Ali says not to define passion narrowly: a business is people, a problem and a solution, and you can be passionate about any of them. — 00:49:43
  • ★★ Joe Hudson says people who achieve a very narrow goal often lose their passion once it becomes a job and an obligation, because their real passion was broader. — 00:50:38
  • ★★★ Ali's fifth step and key takeaway: purpose is lived now and shows in how you do things, so it is about experimenting, wandering and being yourself, not finding one job or career path. — 00:51:25
  • ★★★ Since secondary school Ali pursued interests beside his studies, such as web design, coding, graphic design and illustration, which came in handy at medical school and in his first business. — 00:51:54
  • ★★ Ali feels he lives his purpose far more today than when he followed the set path of medical school and being a doctor. — 00:51:54
  • ★★ Ali says that by exploring what energises you, you craft your life's purpose without noticing. — 00:52:44
  • ★ Ali points to his think day method, about four hours of journaling prompts, to figure out what you want to do in life. — 00:53:13

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: experimental mindset · Joe Hudson

Also: People: Anne-Laure Le Cunff · Steve Jobs (entrepreneur)

Projects: Lifestyle Business Academy

Works: Tiny Experiments

Organizations: Apple · Google · LinkedIn · OpenAI

Concepts: think day · tyranny of purpose

Places: Hong Kong

Also centred on Joe Hudson: How to Get Ahead of 99% of People (Discipline Isn't Enough)

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