EP. 10 Evolving in a System Not Designed for Meaning ft. Professor Bryan Hong

With the Great Resignation, “quiet quitting”, “lying flat” or Hikikomori phenomena across the world, how do we make sense of work and meaning? In this guest episode, I talk with professor Bryan Hong who has taught for over 10 years in business schools across North America and authored the book Evolution to Purpose. Why is it that so many people are unhappy at work, if they choose the work they do? We discuss the problem of meaning in our modern society – how the system is not designed for that, the role of culture and why we have to evolve to our purpose.

Xin Lei: Hello everyone! Welcome to another episode of Unbox Your Life. Today, we have a special guest from the USA, and he is Professor Bryan Hong. Hi, Bryan.

Bryan: Hi, Xin.

Xin Lei: Thank you for being here. Today we are here to talk about a very big topic of meaning and let me just give a short introduction of Bryan. Bryan has worked for over 10 years teaching in business schools across North America and he wrote a book called Evolution to Purpose. I read his book and it’s not just a typical career self-help book. I’ve read quite many books of this genre, being a young adult myself who is figuring out about my future. But I like how in your book, you acknowledge how difficult it is actually for an individual to find meaningful work because the system is designed against that. Yeah, so I appreciate that point of view because I feel that to be true. And it’s really interesting to me because you offer the point of view as an educator and I know you make some critique in your book about the education system so I thought it would be really interesting for our audience to hear your perspectives on it. If you’d be willing to share, Bryan, what led you to write this book?

2:11

Bryan: Oh, okay. I’ll start with a short answer and Xin, thank you for having me on your podcast. The short answer was that it wasn’t planned. So in other words, when I became a professor, I never thought I’d write a book and that I want to write about a book about purpose, for example. It’s that what happened throughout especially the early years of my career as a professor, and actually it still happens now, is I get a lot of students who come to me for career advice, because I wasn’t always a professor and I had done a lot of the jobs that many of my students aspired to do like banking or consulting and they wanted advice for how do I get this kind of job, whatever that job might be or how do I figure out like what type of job is right for me.

And what became very obvious right, and I only really figured this out as I got older, is not only did particularly undergraduate students, but actually you’d be surprised, even sometimes MBAs, don’t have a very clear idea of what they want to do with their lives. And when they’re undergraduates, many of my undergraduate students would actually have this really strong sense of confidence that they knew what they wanted in life and that they would go get those jobs and they would do them and then they wouldn’t be happy. And that was the feedback loop I kept seeing, that there was this cycle that happened very often, and it had nothing to do with how smart they were or what grades they got, but there was this kind of perpetual pattern.

And I started to think, well, there’s something wrong with that, right? That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. That’s certainly not what we as a school, regardless of which school I taught, and I’ve taught at multiple schools. It’s certainly not what we promised the students who graduate every year. I mean, the idea on some level implicitly is that, you know, you follow the rules, you get good grades, you’ll get rewarded by the education system and then you’ll go get a good job. And the reason you want that on some level is because you’ll be happier. I don’t know of any students, undergraduate or graduate, who ever graduated with the idea that I want to be miserable. That is not something that anybody, of course, aspires to. So everyone’s got this idea that they want to be happy in some way, shape, or form, or at least satisfied, right, in some way, shape, or form.

But what I found over and over again is they weren’t getting there. And not everyone, but many of them were not getting there. And it wasn’t because of intellect. It wasn’t because of lack of capability. It wasn’t because they were lazy. There was something else going on. And it didn’t take very long before it dawned on me that a huge part of the problem was actually us. Those of us that work in education. And the fact that we weren’t teaching them actually, the types of things that they would need to know if that was their real goal. What we were doing instead, I think, most of the time, was telling them what would make them happy, them trusting us that that actually would be true, and then discovering it wasn’t true. And I think this has nothing to do with any particular school. This is actually how the system works. And once I really put those pieces together, learning this actually by watching my students year after year, I really, really got the sense that something was very wrong.

And of course, the question is, well, what do you do about that though? I’m just 1 professor in 1 school in a big system. And it’s not like I didn’t know what they were going through, because I had also, you know, struggled to figure out what I wanted to do in my 20s. But at that time, I really thought that was mostly just me. So I didn’t conclude that there was a bigger systemic problem just because I was going through something. And then later I realised that, oh, it is systemic. Like it is actually a bigger thing. And I think the part that bothered me the most was not just that it was happening and there were these feedback loops where I was seeing it happen over and over again every year, but also just that no one was talking about it.

Xin Lei: Right. It’s such a big problem. But why is no one talking about it?

Bryan: Well, that’s a good question. I think it’s a product of a couple of things. One is on the educator side. I’m saying this with complete, total honesty. I don’t think it even occurs to most people in the system that there is a problem. And this is not to sort of suggest that people aren’t smart enough to figure it out or any of those things. I think I had a little bit of a unique angle because I had good relationships with a number of my students who kept in touch with me after graduation. Imagine being a professor and your students who graduate never come back and say anything to you. So you can really live your whole career thinking you’ve done all the right things in terms of education. And they will make you think that, too, if your students like you. And then, if you never see what actually happens to them or what the consequences might be of what’s been happening or what you’ve done or contributed to, you can live in that bubble knowing that or thinking that you’ve done all the right things. I couldn’t because they came back. And then, I cared about these students, and then I really started to have this kind of conflict in my mind about what is going on here. And so, I think many of my colleagues aren’t even aware, to be candid, that this is actually a bigger issue.

And then, on the student side, I think it’s pretty unique. I will say at least it’s not the norm for many students, at least in business school but I think this is generally true, to be aware enough to even have the sense that there might be something wrong with the system. Because so much of educational conditioning. Right Xin? If we look back to our education, is from a very young age being told that there’s this system of rewards, like, you know, the best will achieve, get an A grade, for example, right? Like we learned that at a very young age. And you get so used to competing in some sense or being compared and being called things like smart, even though this is a very narrow definition of anything we might consider smart. And even though, especially now, the value of what we teach, depending on what you think it is and depends on the subject, of course, I think it’s really questionable, like how valuable a lot of that stuff is and how much it translates into life success. And I think that’s becoming more true as time goes by, not less. So there’s even a bigger disconnect in terms of these things. But when you’re growing up in it, that’s all you know. There isn’t like the school system that tells you one thing and then someone else from the outside says “Hey, by the way, the real world looks like this so you don’t need to worry so much.”. That second voice, for most of my students, never shows up. And so it’s in some sense quite natural and what you would expect given that there isn’t more of a discussion. But it’s a product of this sort of very weird system that we’ve built up that way.

Xin Lei: Yeah, I can relate to that because I feel that up to the point I graduated, I was inside the system, like maybe I had an intuition that the reality could be something different from what I was told, but I never actually had any opportunities to experience that because I haven’t gotten life experience outside of school. So, I think for a student, it’s really hard to to realise that at least until they graduate, maybe?

Bryan: Yeah, I think that’s the first moment that reality starts to hit. So, you know, my personal opinion, in a perfect world, the way this would work is that the transition from school to work wouldn’t necessarily be a dramatic kind of like I didn’t know it was like this kind of moment. Like it would be that actually you’d be prepared for that in a way. And then that would be smoother than I think the way many people actually experience it. Right. And so yeah, I would agree. It doesn’t surprise me at all that your experience would be that you would have this feeling that there’s probably more than this, but because you can’t see it, you don’t know if that’s true. Yeah, so it’s hard, I think, in that situation. So yeah, that’s getting a little bit better as time goes by, but it’s still a problem, I think, with our education system.

12:39

Xin Lei: And I think you’re quite a special professor in the sense that you’ve built up a relationship with your students such that they will actually come to you and tell you about how they’re doing. So maybe well, I’m just curious about what are some encounters you had with your students when they came to you. Like any stories that you have to tell about your students?

Bryan: Oh, yeah. Well, there are many. And all different kinds of stories that come back. One of the things I’ve learned as a professor, and then now being old enough that many of my students come back and talk to me, is that, I had a feeling about how some of my students might turn out, but I would only have a vague idea. And then it’s not like I could really predict how their lives would turn out. So, if you add 5 years after graduation or 7 or 8 years after graduation, now I feel like I see so many, like the real variants of life. Some people, they may have, for example, made a lot of money, but then it turns out that they didn’t really find fulfillment. So they’re looking for that, right? There are other people that very quickly got off the beaten path because, like you, they may have had an intuition, but then they just couldn’t deal with going down that road anymore, and they felt like they had to try different things. But without guidance, they really kind of went off and did something completely different. And so, I’ve seen people kind of take those roads as well, take big risks.

And I really appreciate now, kind of, the variance of all the different forms of human experience. You know, for the typical business school student, especially if you go to a good business school, you really get tempted to believe this idea that the more money you make, the more successful you are, and in some tragic sense, the more you’re worth, right? And that’s literally true monetarily by the way, in that system. But getting to know many of my students who’ve graduated, all these different outcomes, I feel like that there’s really so much more going on than that. Even if they’ve made a lot of money, it is not true that they are happier necessarily, which would have been one of those things that you would think at least you might get that out of it if you’re in business school. Like why work so hard for so much money if you’re just as miserable as if you hadn’t? There’s something odd about that, right? If we think about that kind of scenario.

And so I’ve really learned to appreciate that everyone has their own personal struggles, even when they’re doing well, there’s still a challenge. There’s always a challenge for every single person. There are absolutely time periods where some people have more challenges than others. And I’ll be candid about this. There are some students that, when I talk to them later, I’m amazed kind of how rough they’ve had, their path has been. And I wonder what that means sometimes and what they will become because of that. Because I’m only seeing them at 5, 7 or 10 years out, right? Because I haven’t been doing the job that long. I would love to know where they end up in 20 years. Because I will make a bet that many of the students that have had some of the most difficult paths at the 20-year mark are going to be doing something very interesting if they just keep going. That there’s something that’s meaningful at the end of that.

So it’s sort of like seeing in real time the story of many people’s different lives unfold which is really unique because I get the privilege of that being a professor who has done this with batches of students who are always generally the same age when they come into my classroom and then getting to see what at least some of them do when they go out there. And there are not a whole lot of jobs where I get to see that sort of progression. Most of us, like if we work in a company or some place like that, you just see your world, but you don’t know what the rest of the world looks like. But I get to see a little bit more of that. And so that’s been an interesting way of seeing things.

Xin Lei: I’m sure you have learned a lot from that as well. Like the amount of insights that you have from like a kind of huge database, looking at your students’ lives.

Bryan: Yeah, I’d agree. It certainly made me think about a lot of things I wouldn’t have, like I would never have written the book if it weren’t for those former students coming back. I just never would have known. It would have been one of those things that if someone had fully explained it to me, I would say “That makes sense.”, but I never would have come up with it on my own without seeing them come back and then seeing the pattern. So yes, I think that’s right. I am, let me fully admit, I am still learning this as I go. The database is getting bigger, but life is very complex as I am sort of beginning to see. Like I would love to say, “I’ve seen it all” and it all comes down to 1 simple rule. But I don’t think I can actually say that, at least not yet. I’m seeing some patterns enough to write 1 book. Maybe at some point I’ll see more patterns enough to maybe write a second book. But this is a fascinating and complicated kind of thing. Like life is that way, I think.

And I think in education, what we really should be doing is getting people ready to tackle those challenges. Because that’s the 1 thing, by the way, that everyone has in common — that there is a challenge. There’s no one that I’ve seen who comes back and says “Yeah, no, I actually don’t have any problems at all.” or like “I don’t have anything I need to worry about in any way, shape or form.”. There’s something that everyone’s got to deal with at all times. Regardless of what we might think of their success or anything like this. So in some sense, it’s a never-ending journey. So I think that’s a fundamental part of how life works. And part of what education, what we were supposed to be doing, I really think is helping people be ready for that in so many more ways than what we actually had done. So I’m still learning about that.

19:25

Xin Lei: It’s okay. I think it can be a lifelong process. I mean, first and foremost, this is a very big problem. So the fact that you and I could be having a conversation about this, even though I’m from Singapore and you’re from the US, that points to the fact that it’s a global problem, right? We can see it in the trends that are happening across many countries now, like the Great Resignation and “quiet quitting” movements in the US, the “lying flat” movement in China which is called Tang Ping, and the Hikikomori phenomenon which used to be unique to Japan but is now slowly spreading to other countries as well. So I think that just shows like the scale of the problem. Yeah?

At the same time it’s also complex because there are kind of maybe different factors in each context that contribute to the problem, like for example cultural factors. So I personally feel that in Asia this problem is even harder. I feel from my experience it’s kind of there are some cultural factors that set back one from finding meaningful work. It’s like how you shared about how the culture at business schools encourage students to look for prestige and wealth more than perhaps meaning. So I believe that culture definitely plays a part as well. So what are your thoughts on it?

Bryan: Em, I would agree. I think, you know, there’s different ways to think about this. So 1 way of thinking about it is that it’s not maybe fair to say it’s exactly about culture. It’s not necessarily my opinion, but 1 perspective one could take is that maybe it’s the product of the fact that countries in Asia, for example, developed more recently than some western countries in terms of economic development so there hasn’t been the same amount of time to figure out how to solve some of those. Now that I don’t have to worry about feeding myself or having a home or meeting basic needs, what do I do now? That problem has come to Asia kind of more recently than it would have been in some Western developed countries. So that would be 1 way to think about it. It wouldn’t have much to do with culture. It would just have to do with the timing.

That being said, I do think that there is a cultural component to this because individuals and their path to finding meaning is absolutely shaped by the culture that they grow up in. There’s no way that’s not true. So when, you know, if we think about, let’s just go with stereotypes for a moment for lack of a better way to think. So a lot of people say America is a very individualistic culture, right? By sort of comparison, if you compare it to Asia, for example. And so the question of meaning and purpose, and all these things, in the U.S., very naturally, an American will think of this, if we go stereotypically, it’s in terms of “Well, what makes me feel really good? I need to go find my own journey, my own path.”. Right, like the individual part of that. What sometimes gets missed in that, is that ironically what tends to give almost everyone a sense of meaning and purpose that’s very strong, is a sense of contribution to community. So it’s actually not that common to find someone, possessing an incredible sense of meaning and purpose, all by themselves in a corner where they’re not interacting with anybody, right? So it’s that second part that is a little bit trickier, I think, if you’re going the purely individualistic route. But that first part, where you start asking yourself, “Well, what are my values and what do I want to do?” tends to fit the culture here better.

And again, stereotyping here, but in many collectivist cultures, like some countries in Asia, or cultures with a more collectivist kind of bend, there’s less kind of thinking around that naturally as part of the culture, like “What are my values?”. There’s more of maybe an idea of duty to a collective or duty to a family. And these are very common themes. And that’s not to say that that’s better or worse, but it does make that first step of “What do I want? What matches me?” harder to take because it doesn’t naturally fit into other notions like duty or all these things. The way it actually, in my opinion, should work is that you figure that out first, and then you will find the collective that you feel the sense of duty to, which is the same kind of outcome that an American would reach, or should reach by the end most of the time. That there is a belonging to a community at the end and a contributing in the same way that there would be in Asia. But culturally, there are different strengths and weaknesses. If you start with, well, “This is about me, the individual”, or it’s about “Oh, it’s about us, the collective”, both have strengths and weaknesses and helping and hurting this process. And I think in Asia, just even getting people to sit down and think about “What matches up with me?” can be more of a struggle because the culture doesn’t lend itself as well to that.

That being said, for the subject that we’re talking about, I mean, I live and work in the US, right? I didn’t write the book for an Asian audience. So it’s not like we don’t have that problem in the United States. We absolutely have this problem where individuals don’t reflect enough. But it’s not because of, again, I’m going to generalise here, but it’s not because there’s a collectivist culture that’s pulling us away from it. It tends to be more just that nobody’s telling us we need to care about that or helping us cultivate it. So it’s a lack of help in that regard. Especially now, and this is not unique to Asia or the US, it’s all over the world, in modern society we are bombarded with so many distractions, whether it’s from your smartphone, whether it’s from things that you watch. Everything is designed to be addictive and get your attention, that it is actually exceptionally, it takes work to actually kind of sit down and isolate yourself, even for a length of time where you might start noticing things about yourself. And that’s no different in the U.S. than it is in Asia, right? But in Asia, you’ve also got the collectivist pressure or family pressure sometimes where more is expected of you in terms of sacrifice. So I think those things are going on.

Xin Lei: Yeah, I guess speaking from what I observed, people are held back by the fear of being labelled selfish if they’re thinking too much about themselves. so maybe yeah like what you said about the duty to community, duty to parents. For example, if your parents prefer that you are working in a certain job then if you try to do something else that’s not that but it’s meaningful to you, then it’s considered not being very dutiful to your parents. We call it filial piety in Chinese culture. So I see that hold back a lot of people around me. And yeah, I have to acknowledge that it’s a really difficult thing to overcome.

27:39

And also what you said about the timing of development, it’s true. I think the older generations may still have the notion that talking about meaning is very luxurious, it’s a very privileged thing to even talk about meaning in your job. Although I think that we have progressed to that level where we can talk about meaning already because I’m not like struggling for survival immediately now. But there’s still this mindset that like, Oh you should just be grateful for what you have, meaning is a first world problem. So, yeah, what do you think about that?

Bryan: No, no. I bet I guess I’m biased because I wrote a book that suggests the exact opposite. But the analogy I would draw is the following. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it goes in the direction. Let’s say that you and I have completely socially isolated lives, right? And so we’re lonely, but we have as much food as we want. We have shelter. We have security. We have all the other needs of that type met. And let’s say we were to complain to someone. It’s like, you know, I just don’t feel good because I feel like I’m really lonely and I would love more social interaction. And what if someone were to say to us, “You should be grateful that you have food on your table, that you have a home, and that you don’t have to worry about safety at night, you shouldn’t be worried about being lonely.”? That argument sounds bizarre to me on some level, because the loneliness is not an imaginary thing. It’s an actual human need that we know that humans have because we’re basically built to be social creatures, right? And so this is why many times, for example, in ancient societies, a punishment worse than death was you would ostracise someone. You would make them leave the community. And that was such a terrible thing to do to someone, right?

These have real effects because they actually affect human needs. We also know that, I mean, if you look at the research, being lonely has equivalent health negative effects that would be similar to lots of other really terrible things that you can do to your health, such as you know eating exceptionally poorly with a horrible diet. Depending on which study you look at, probably even other, what we think of as classically bad health habits, loneliness will actually tend to create similarly bad health effects. So telling someone that they should just be grateful doesn’t make them healthier. It just makes them miserable and feel like that they should be grateful, which isn’t the same thing. So I think meaning is actually the same thing, and the reason why I think it’s the same thing is because it’s a need.

So when you compound, it’s just less obvious, right? Xin, if you and I, we missed three meals, it becomes really obvious very quickly there’s a problem and that we need to eat. If we have security issues, we don’t feel safe, very quickly we know that there’s a problem. If we tell someone else that, they will understand. They won’t say, “Well, you should be grateful.”. No, that’s not the answer. It’s like, “Go find security and let me help you.” or “Let’s get some food.”. But with meaning, it’s a little bit trickier, I think, because it’s not as visible and we can hide it. So I have noticed that very frequently that there are many people, particularly in my world who are older, whom I’m not sure how much meaning they have or they feel when they go to work, but they have managed to get to a certain level and they kind of have accepted that life. But I also know for a fact that there’s absolutely a price they paid for that and it’s not just an imaginary price but one that takes a toll on their health, their wellbeing in other ways. Like all kinds of things, but that stuff tends to be hidden because you can fake it. The way that you can’t fake skipping three meals or feeling unsafe.

32:02

Xin Lei: Right. That reminds me, well, maybe the symptoms of not having the need for meaning could be like mental health issues. We’re seeing now in modern societies a rise in depression, anxiety, things like that. And that’s something that I care about, that I see among youths. I think that is a symptom, right? But because it’s also very complex, it’s also linked to many other factors, but I feel that the lack of meaning is one of them.

Bryan: Oh, yeah. I mean, this one actually, it’s not even that big a question. Within the last year, I think I saw an article on this. So Harvard did a study, actually, of basically people around undergraduate age. I think it may have even been undergraduates, I’d have to go back and double check. But it was certainly people in that age range. And they were asking them, basically, it was a survey, like what is your biggest challenge? And it turns out that meaning, a lack of meaning, was one of the biggest things that was coming up. And a huge percentage of the respondents were coming back saying, “I just don’t feel like I have a very strong sense of meaning.” They didn’t use the word “purpose” but it was “meaning” I believe. And so then the question is, well, how big a problem is that? And, you know, if it’s just for a day and you’re in the process of figuring it out and within a year or two you will get there, then it’s not that bad because we can just say you’re on the journey. If you never get there, so you just go through life never finding this, and this ends up being your defining state — not having this sense of meaning, I think over a long enough timeframe, this is extremely problematic, right? I mean, this is the sort of thing that… If you sort of wonder why sometimes people commit suicide for example, and that’s a very complicated field and I know it’s a very touchy subject, but if someone had a very strong sense of purpose or like a strong sense of meaning, would we think that they would go do that? And logically, probably not right? I mean, there’s something that needs to get answered for everyone. “Wait, why? Why am I here?” Because there’s a whole bunch of things that people will be experiencing, many times very negative emotions, things like traumas, you know, other things in life. But if you always know why you’re here, then you never ask that question. You find a way to kind of get through it. And I know I’m very much simplifying a much more complex issue. But to get to your question of, do I think meaning has anything to do with mental health? I mean, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we just don’t know how much of it is coming from that only versus many other things that are also happening at the same time. But it’s a big component and there’s no question about that in my mind.

Xin Lei: I see. Yeah, actually, one of the most influential books that I’ve read, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl…

Bryan: Yeah.

Xin Lei: …like he survived the Nazi concentration camp, right? And he said that, you know, with a meaning, men can power through anything, even like the worst circumstances. Yeah, and that was such an inspiring read that I think inspired me to find my purpose. And I truly believe so, that if you have a big enough Why, you can go through anything. And yeah, you won’t lose hope to the point that you commit suicide.

Bryan: Yeah, I mean, I will also say, you know, without being an expert on this particular issue with mental health, but I can imagine that this wasn’t as much of a problem a long time ago because we grew up in families and communities where we didn’t move around a lot, where we grew up around the same people over and over again. So we naturally had some sense of community and what our role in it would be. So that doesn’t mean that we didn’t have other problems or that, you know, we didn’t feel trapped sometimes in those existences. Now it’s sort of like, well, many of those things don’t bind us anymore. You have more options, more choices. But I think part of the tragedy is that. Many of the voices that are supposed to guide you in a way that would help you through this aren’t. Like they’re basically, for example, business school telling you to do a certain job and telling you that it’ll make you happy without even bothering to figure out who you are, right? And I think when you have a world that looks like that, it’s not surprising that there would be a bunch of people who would struggle with questions of meaning then later, right? And so I think that’s a huge part of the tragedy.

37:20

So one of my former students whom I just interviewed for my latest podcast episode, I asked her a question that I’m always nervous to ask every one of my guests, which is “What is it you feel like that we could have taught you that we didn’t or tell you in school?”. Yeah, and her answer was basically, to summarise, “I wish someone would have told me it’s okay to do what I’m doing now. That it’s not an undesirable thing”. The job that she does now, she’s a founder of her own startup, which, when she graduated, was not viewed as one of the sort of ideal things that you could be doing as a graduate. And that “It’s okay to follow what you want to do.”. So these were simple things. I thought she was going to talk about a more complex subject matter but she was really just saying these simple things. And so before, Xin, you talked about, well you know, this is a really big problem. It is. It is a big kind of thing. It’s systemic. There’s all kinds of things we can attach to it as words. But when I hear something like that, I mean, that doesn’t sound that hard right? To do. As something to say. So maybe the first step is actually remarkably easy and we don’t even do that.

Xin Lei: Hmm. They just need like a different narrative to affirm.

Byran: Yeah.

Xin Lei: They just need affirmation. Actually, that’s one of the reasons I want to create this podcast. To feature just different narratives. You never know when it can just give someone the confidence or affirmation that it’s okay to be different, to be doing something different. It’s okay to just do what is meaningful to you. I think we need more narratives like that.

Bryan: Yeah, I think, and it’s not like, for example, if you get on YouTube, you can find thousands of videos of people who will say something like that right? I don’t know how well it works because there’s a whole bunch of people out there who still feel like that’s not true. And I think what makes all the difference in the world is someone in their own environment who can be a guide or they would look up to, to say those same words. And then suddenly it becomes very impactful.

Xin Lei: Ah, okay. There needs to be some personal connection maybe.

Bryan: We can say personal connection, but more like someone that they believe that they can listen to or have permission to listen to. Permission is actually a big word. And when I talk to a lot of my former students, a lot of their roads were potentially longer than maybe they would have been if someone had just told them, “You have the permission to do whatever you want” on graduation day. If they’d said those words instead of “No, you really need to do this.”. And then even when they started to go off, there was always the sense that they sometimes needed permission from someone to go do it. So they needed to hear someone say “It’s okay for you to do this.”. So there’s really a lot there if you think about kind of why does it work that way? Why is it so strong and why is it so extreme? And so yeah, as free as people are in their minds, I think we actually see a lot of people who don’t feel free at all.

Xin Lei: Hmm, I see. Perhaps it’s got to do with authority. I think we’re so used to handing over authority to maybe our parents or teachers. And maybe what we really need to do is to have that authority in ourselves. I mean, even the person to give permission, they have authority when they give themselves permission to do the things that other people may not encourage.

Bryan: Yeah.

Xin Lei: So I think it has to start from yourself, yeah. And it can be quite difficult to do.

Bryan: I would agree. And that’s a particular issue that I probably should think about more. Because if we think about, okay, let’s use Asian culture as an example. A lot of the authority right, it can come from parents, it can come from school institutions. Like these things are designed to teach you that you don’t have the authority and they do. When you grow up, and as much as it is definitely true at some point that when you become an adult at some age you’re technically free, that transition oftentimes doesn’t really translate into the way that the people think when they get to that point. And that is something that I think is is worth thinking about. Like why? It’s not to say that when you’re 5 years old, you should have all the authority in the world to do whatever you want. Of course, you know, when you’re 5, there are boundaries. When you’re 10, there are boundaries. When you’re 16, there should be boundaries. But at some point, you’re really free, right? But by that time, I know plenty of people at that point who still aren’t. Even well into middle age. And there’s something going on with that.

Xin Lei: Conditioning, perhaps.

Bryan: So certainly conditioning, but also a failure to transition. A failure to transition is a very key part of that. And, you know, why does that happen? I think it’s an interesting question.

43:24

Xin Lei: So Bryan, I have a question for you.

Bryan: Sure.

Xin Lei: Why do you think it is so important that we should evolve to our purpose?

Bryan: Oh, you’re just taking the title of my book.

Xin Lei: (laugh)

Bryan: Okay, hmm, so it’s interesting. When I thought about writing the book, I actually wasn’t exactly sure what the title even would be. And even before I was thinking about a book, I was just noticing the pattern about many of my students who graduated being unhappy. And I was trying to figure out, what is it that they’re missing? If I had to draw a common line through everyone that wasn’t happy, what would be the common line? And the common line, I discovered, was a strong sense of purpose. That’s what was missing. And so that’s why it’s an evolution to purpose. And it is an evolution. It’s absolutely part of growing up, which in this particular dimension, some people never get to do, by the way, or never do. There’s both categories. But it is an evolution because you are growing into a different version of yourself when you start to become the person that’s more purpose-driven as opposed to, call it what you will, duty to others driven, expectations driven, following rules driven, however you want to phrase the alternative. There is an evolution in kind of growing into your own, right? And so that’s why I titled the book the way I did. It really is kind of both coming together.

Xin Lei: I find it interesting that you use the word “evolve”/”evolution” because evolution is something kind of inevitable. Like whether we like it or not, we will evolve. Like something that has a meaning on a collective scale for collective growth. So I’m just wondering how you view the importance of this like for the collective.

Bryan: So assuming that humanity continues progressing, which is something that we all generally have grown up to believe is the overall trend. It is definitely an evolution. So if we think about, I mean, let’s do a just kind of a sharp compare and contrast. Like a thousand years ago, if you think about our ancestors, by today’s standards, they didn’t live very long. They were spending most of their time just trying to meet basic needs. And then things like safety and security, absolutely not even comparable to what we would see today. There’s a whole bunch of things that have absolutely shifted in that timeframe. And so then imagine trying to go back to see your ancestors a thousand years ago. Let’s say you could meet them and they don’t know anything about your life. And then you tell them about your struggles. And then you tell them about what your day to day is like. They would have no concept of what you’re talking about whatsoever. It would be mind-blowing. They just couldn’t wrap their heads around it. And the reason why is because, on some level, we have evolved from that. We actually have evolved as a collective from everyone living that way, especially in the last, let’s call it 200 to 300 years. We’ve really kind of exploded in our growth in those trajectories.

In that same way right, if this progression keeps going the way, this is now my opinion, if we keep progressing, it’s kind of inevitable that we’ve got to evolve to a better place where people then start to figure out kind of what’s more fulfilling for them. Because it’s not about being safe or having enough to eat or these basic questions that keep us going. It’s about something much more. And that’s that evolutionary step, which I think we absolutely will take. The only way that that doesn’t happen is that somehow safety, food, all these things disappear. And then we need to focus on basic needs again. But as of now, there’s not really much evidence we’re going in that direction for sure.

Xin Lei: Right, but now there’s still a lot of issues going on in the world.

Bryan: Yeah, but I would actually say, you know, interestingly enough, if you get away from the news headlines and you look at the overall trend, what I often pay attention to for this kind of stuff is what younger people are doing. So, for example, think students in high school, students in undergraduate programs. I think, rather than the things that one might be worried about in the newspaper, there’s a lot of other questions about things like meaning, right? There is absolutely the uncertainty and things like this. There’s a huge shift that’s taking place right now. Institutions are basically no longer functioning as well as they used to and basically need to be restructured. All of society is going through a version of that. But underneath that is still this very clear desire to progress to something better, right? And that’s really clear from watching younger people. And I think that’s the true trend once you get past everything.

Xin Lei: Yeah, we need people to take up these causes, right, for there to be progress. Yeah, and like you said, a big part of meaning or purpose is contributing to something greater. So yeah, I think that’s what I’m seeing in my generation as well, like the Gen Z. I think I see that many of them are taking up causes that the previous generations wouldn’t really think of. So, I’m quite optimistic about that. Yeah.

Bryan: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, looking at younger people, actually, it’s like night and day compared to reading the newspaper, right? Like it is actually really, really optimistic. I think if one looks at younger people and kind of how everything is shaping up. Yeah, I think we should see that. That’s not to say that there aren’t mental health issues and other things to be dealt with. But I do think that this is indicative of a bigger societal shift. So let me phrase it this way. Society up until now maybe didn’t really have to worry too much other than to figure out how to keep things kind of safe and make sure everybody can eat and you’ve got a job and all these things, right? Some really basic ideas. And for the longest time, that was always what we thought society would do, or governments and these things. We’re kind of worried about more than those things now, right? But the problem is that society itself hasn’t reformed at all to match this. So we’re trying to figure that out in this phase. And so it’s natural that you suddenly would see a lot of younger people, especially, have a crisis of meaning because the society has just not reshaped itself yet. And I think it will. I think it will get there.

51:09

Xin Lei: Right. Um so I have one more question for you. What advice do you have for young adults, including maybe university students or those who just started working, who want to find meaningful work but find it hard to do so in the system that is maybe still not very encouraging towards that.

Bryan: So a couple of things. You know, some students, for example, at university that I’ve seen, have an incredible sense of confidence about what they want to do for their career path. I think a low single-digit percentage of them are going to be correct. And the rest will find out that that actually isn’t true. And so, if you are someone who has this incredible sense of confidence, I think the first thing I would say is tone that confidence down. Don’t have the sort of presumption that you actually know yourself so well that you actually have all the answers already, because that’s going to be going too fast, right, for this journey.

For the students who don’t necessarily have a clear idea, what I would say is your first job is really a version of just more school. So it’s not literally school, but it’s your first step to figuring out in the real world what it is that you’re going to want to do. So don’t view your first experience, either positive or negative, as final or defining. It’s just yet another stepping stone to kind of find your way.

And I think the really important thing to keep in mind is when you graduate afterwards, you need a compass that’s internal, meaning you need to be checking in with yourself as a guide to see how things feel as you go through kind of, you know, Do I want to take this job or that job? Do I want to switch careers? Do I want to go back to school? There’s a whole bunch of questions that are going to perpetually come up, particularly through your twenties. Cause that’s really the most exploratory decade. And you want to be making sure that your compass is internal and not external. If it’s external, what’s happening is that basically you’re looking at someone else who’s got an arrow pointing somewhere. And if you follow that and you’re ignoring your internal compass, this is very unlikely to lead to a happy ending. It doesn’t matter where the compass is pointing. It doesn’t matter how much money you’re making. It just doesn’t matter because if you start ignoring yourself on that journey, you’re really going to start going in the wrong direction.

Xin Lei: Yes, following the inner compass!

Bryan: Yeah.

Xin Lei: Okay, so do you have anything to add on?

Bryan: I think that’s it. I mean, the main message here, I feel like we’ve talked about a lot of things, Xin. Basically, that meaning and purpose really do matter. I don’t think it’s actually a luxury, truly. And so, if you use that as a starting point, then it becomes really important then to figure out, at least directionally, What is my purpose? Am I going in a direction that’s taking me there? And I think those are very important questions to ask and check in with yourself to find out on a regular basis.

Xin Lei: Hmm. Okay, so thank you Bryan for your sharing. Finally, would you like to share how people can find you if they are interested in your work? Maybe share a link for how can they get your book?

Bryan: Sure. So the book, I mean, everybody these days goes to Amazon, right? But the book is widely available. It’s called Evolution to Purpose, Choosing a Life of Authenticity with Work. And in terms of other things that I do, I have a website bryanhong.me that anyone is able to visit. And lately, I’ve been playing with YouTube. The name of my channel is actually Rebel Professor, and I’ve just started a podcast called The Anonymous Professor Podcast where I interview former students of mine to have some of these kinds of conversations. People can find me at any of those places.

Xin Lei: I see. I like the handle Rebel Professor. (laugh) Anyway, thank you so much for your very insightful sharing. I’m sure the audience will find a lot from what you have shared. So, yeah, goodbye everyone.