Imagine for a moment what your life would be like if your vocation were truly your vacation; if you loved what you did and were paid handsomely for it; if your work appeared to you as the fullest possible expression of what you valued most. Would you want to retire? Join Dr John Demartini and learn more about why vocation vacation splits occur and how you can recognize your most meaningful dream and inspiring vision, and take the action steps to make them come true, and lead a life you won't want to take a break from.

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The Breakthrough Experience

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Those that have a purpose in life and it's something that's meaningful in life,

something they want to do that contributes, that makes a difference,

they keep their body and mind active. You don't use your muscles, the atrophy.

You on't use your brain, it atrophies.

If you don't use your body and you don't use your capacities, they atrophy,

The topic today is, are you sure you want to retire?

Now,

some of you are very young and you're probably not even thinking that along that

lines, some are older, and some that may be pertinent,

usually around the fifties and sixties and seventies,

that becomes more important. But really also in your thirties and forties,

because you can play in your life. But the question is,

are you in a job,

a career that you're so inspired by,

that you love, that you don't even think about retiring? You know,

when I meet people who are musicians or singers or performers or people

that are business entrepreneurs, many of them do it right up to the last age.

I mean, we think of Buffet, Warren Buffet, he's ,

he's in his nineties and he is still cranking.

And Charlie Munger the same thing. And you see,

many great business leaders and great entrepreneurs and great singers

and actors and even sports personalities. .

I saw a guy the other day that he's still on television and I remember him when

I was a kid and he's still cranking. And these are up in the sixties, seventies,

and even eighties sometimes. The question is, are you really want to retire?

And the question is,

is are you doing a job that you are looking forward to

a break,

looking forward to a vacation and looking for retirement

and counting the days until then?

Are you doing a job or career or a mission that you can't wait to do?

You hope to do as long as you can do?

Because if you are having a Monday morning blues, a Wednesday hump day,

a thank god it's Friday and a week frigging end type of function,

and you go and work to earn an income, and then you want to escape it,

with a vacation or a break or a vacation or a retirement to spend your money

on it, you may want to question that.

Is that really how you want to live your life? You know,

when you're doing something that's so meaningful, so inspiring, so,

something you love doing, you don't think about a break.

Think about when you are doing a job that you're really, really engaged in.

You don't want to take a break, you don't want to stop. You're on a roll.

And I think about that. I've been doing speaking now for 50 years.

I don't think about, Oh, I want to get a vacation away from that.

I love doing that. I probably would do that any day.

I'm can do it seven days a week. So the question is,

what is it you're doing on a daily basis?

Are you doing something you love to do?

Or are you doing something you got to do? There is a scale in life.

The top of the scale would be something you 'love to do.'

And then right underneath that would be 'choose to do.' Then underneath that is

something you might 'desire to do.' Then underneath that would be 'want to do.'

And then you'd have underneath that 'need to do,' and then 'should,' 'ought to,'

or 'supposed to do,' or 'got to,' 'have to,' and 'must.' That's the lowest

level.

That's because you've got a friction and you've got resistance and you don't

really want to go to work at the bottom level. At the top,

you can't wait to go to work. In the 1980s,

while I was doing consulting across America, predominantly, some into Europe,

where I was going into doctor's office and helping them revamp their office and

make them more productive and help them grow their practice. In those days,

I was noticing the language of how engaged people were when they were working.

When they were really engaged and really inspired they were saying, Man,

I love it. I love my job. This is what I'm doing. It's inspiring.

And they were working and they didn't think about breaks.

But the people that are going, Man, I got to do this, I got to do that.

They just had to get a break.

They had to escape something that they're fighting inside.

If you can't see what you're doing is on the way and you see it in the

way, you got resistance, you've got a break pedal on all the time.

And what's interesting is they've done studies where people can work

literally 16 or 18 hours in a day doing something they love and there's

no inflammatory response.

The cytokines in their immune system are stable and their heart rates are

dropped and there's no signs of distress.

It's actually eustress and it's invigorating to them.

But the second they're doing something they've 'got to do',

'have to do,' 'must do,' 'should do',

'supposed to do,' 'got to do,' that kind of stuff, now

the cytokines are on because they're distressed and they

down and then the cardiovascular system's affected.

It's almost like our physiology is trying to tell us to do something that's

meaningful, something that's inspiring to us, something we love.

I always tell people, What is it you'd absolutely love to do?

How do you get handsomely paid to do it?

What are the obstacles you might run into?

What are the action steps you can take?

And what are the obstacles you might run into and how do you do it more

efficiently? You know,

there's questions that help you move in the direction of doing something you

really love in life.

I really believe that no matter what it is you really love to do,

there's a way of making a great living doing it. And even a fortune doing it.

If you structure it and think it through.

That may mean you need to be an entrepreneur and create something new,

but it's your life.

But I see some people that are just living from paycheck to paycheck.

They want to escape. They go off on a vacation to, you know,

have some fun because they're not having fun in their life and they're having

doldrums. And I look at that and I go, Why?

Why not prioritize your life?

I always say that you've got two ways of handling your job.

You either can go and do something you really love to do and delegate lower

things as an entrepreneur,

or you can take the job you have and link how those job responsibilities are

helping you fulfill what you value in life, so that you have meaning in it.

I've had people that are maybe not inspired by their job and ask a new set of

questions and found out what they really valued in life and found out how their

job description is helping them get that.

And now they're engaged and all of a sudden they're inspired by it.

I do that in the Breakthrough Experience program many times.

And so your values dictate this.

If you don't know what your values are and you're going through life and you

feel like you have the dole drums and you feel like you've got to go to work and

you just want to take a break and go to a stand in a line at a Starbucks or

something like that, an OD on sugar and, you know,

and just to keep up and engaged just to kind of keep yourself alive,

to me that's just, that's insane. That's a crazy way of living.

I can't imagine doing that every single day.

I just think that that's a routine and a rut. That's the,

I think it was Ernest Becker who wrote The Denial of Death,

and he talked about how, specifically, you know,

people who are basically fitting into the herd and just going through the herd

instinct and impulse and just living as a repeated, you know,

automaton, is not the way to exist in your life, not the way to function.

So you want to ask yourself, what is it I would absolutely love to do?

How do I get beautifully and handsomely paid to do it?

What are the action steps I can do today to make it happen?

What obstacles might I run into, how do I solve them in advance?

Wwhat worked and what didn't work today?

How do I do it more effectively and efficiently tomorrow? And how did,

no matter what happened today, how's it helping me get what I want in life?

So you're engaged. You know, I see people,

when they're not living in their highest values and they're not inspired by

their career, then what they do is their blood, glucose,

and oxygen goes into their amygdala. Their amygdala comes online.

Now they want immediate gratification.

And that's why they want something to quick fix, quick sugar, quick food,

quick something,

to override the doldrums and the unfulfillment levels.

And then they just basically want to,

they're thinking about what the next break is.

They're thinking about what the next meal is.

They're thinking about the next shopping spree.

They're feeling about what they can do that's a consumer item.

The amygdala is into consumption of food or sugar or clothes or shopping

or porn or who knows what. And in the process of doing that,

we're basically distracted from doing something that's meaningful, productive,

that allows you to move ahead financially and move ahead in life and feel

fulfilled in life. When you're doing something that's high in priority,

at the end of the day, you go, thank you. If you're not, you go, Whoa,

what a hell of a day.

And then you end up taking some of that frustration down onto the teams below.

So I'm a firm believer in asking yourself the questions,

How is it I can do what I love in life?

And how is whatever I'm doing helping me fulfill what's meaningful?

If you don't take the time to ask that question,

you may be sitting there in frustrating job and having a Monday morning blues

and weekends type of mentality. So the question is,

do you really want to retire? If you're wanting to retire,

maybe if you're a hundred years old and you're ready to retire, that's fine.

I know some people literally a hundred years old, still cranking.

I have a friend who's in Monaco and he is in Toronto and he is also in Sydney,

Australia,

and Melbourne Australia and he travels all over the world and he is 90 something

years old and he's still running a major company and still cranking and still

alive and still focused.

He doesn't have the senility that some people have because he's inspired by

something. And I think that's an inspiration. So, you know,

we arbitrarily, I think it was in the 19 early 19 hundreds there,

we had a bit of a political issue, we had a whole bunch of unemployment.

And so in the process of doing that,

they had to figure out how to get some people off the streets to lower the

employment. So they just set up this artificial retirement thing at 65.

And then they had this kind of pension for it,

which is called Social security they started.

When they started the social security people only lived to 63 .

So they figured we'll give it to you at 65,

if you only live the average age was 63.

So there was no real cost and it was a way of getting money into the company,

into the government. Then people started living 65, 70, 75,

now 85.

And so that backfired a little bit and that cost the government more than they

expected. But the people got in the habit that you're going to retire at 65.

Okay, that may be true. Maybe you want to do that, but what are you going to do?

Many people when they retire they end up having their,

they accelerate their aging process and die.

I think there's a very common stat in actuarials that show about 18 months after

a person retires sometimes they go, they don't live.

I always say that those that have a purpose in life and it's something that's

meaningful in life, something they want to do that contributes,

that makes a difference, they keep their body and mind active.

You don't use your muscles, they atrophy. You don't use your brain,

it atrophies. If you don't use your body and you don't use your capacities,

they atrophy.

I had a friend who decided that he was going to be financially independent at a

young age, and I'm all for financial independence, you know,

I wanted to be financially independent, not so I could retire.

I wanted to have financial independence so I can do what I love and love what I

do without having to work. So I'm automatically in that love zone. And,

but this guy basically, you know,

reached a certain level of income and he decided he was going to retire and go

golfing and everything else.

And he was late fifties going on 60 and he decided he did that.

And then about three years in, he goes, I can't handle this.

Now I talk to my buddies and they're still in business and they're keeping

current and I'm behind times and I'm living in the past and I'm not as driven

and my wife's telling me what to do around the house and I'm used to being in

command and used to running a business and now I'm feeling like I'm just

drifting and dying out. And he said, he says, I can't do this.

I'm going back to do some work.

And I remember working with a guy also in Melbourne, Australia that, you know,

was he going to retire at 63. And he said, No, I can't do that.

And he just realized that's not where it's at. Some people think, oh,

there's a greener pasture out there,

but that's only because they never did something they really loved to do.

When you're doing something you really love to do,

you don't think about 'I want to get away from it' .

So if you haven't prioritized your life and organized your life to do something

you really love to do, then it might be time to do that.

Because if you're young and you build momentum, you know,

if you're doing something you love to do and you become great at it and become

an expert in that,

you build momentum and it pays off and you end up probably making way more

income in your life too than just a job. But at the same time,

you want to make sure that you're doing something that's meaningful.

When I ask people, How many of you,

go to the moments in your life where you have the biggest fulfillment in your

life, people are going to put their hands up.

They're going to say at the moments,

that I actually got thank yous from people that I've contributed to life and did

something that was meaningful that helped them.

And so work is not something to be drudged,

work is something to be looking forward to.

Work is a magnificent thing to do in life. Something that's a service to people,

it's a fulfillment source.

So I'm a firm believer in asking yourself the question,

what is it I really absolutely love to do? And how do I go do that?

And how or how can I take whatever my job is and help me find out

how it gives me meaning? Because you can do that.

You can take your job description and ask,

how specifically is this job duty helping me fulfill what's most important to me

and meaningful to me? And if you make the links,

your brain will automatically start to be inspired to go to do that job. I mean,

why would you want to go through a life and just have a drudgery when you could

at least go in there and do that?

You can at least take the job you have if you know you're going to be there for

a while and you're not ready for entrepreneurship, you

what is that job description that I'm doing every day and how is it helping me

fulfill what is meaningful so I can be engaged? You'll be more productive,

more inspired, you'll have better health,

you'll be more engaged in helping people. You'll be more present with them.

And you won't have this Monday Morning Blues, Wednesday Hump day,

thank God it's Friday ends. You know, in the Breakthrough Experience,

I have people,

a great number of people that come into the programs and some of them are really

doing what they love to do and they're just taking off and they just want some

new catalyst and they want dissolve some emotional baggage and want to get even

more clear on it. And they just, they're really sailing and you can see it,

you can see the people that are engaged and loving what they're doing.

And then you can see the people that are having a job.

I remember in New York,

I was in a back of a taxi one time because I used to sometimes take taxis back

and forth in different local areas. And I asked the taxi driver,

How long you been driving a taxi? And they'll look in the mirror and they'll go,

about three years. I said, Do you love it?

And they'll look in the mirror and they go, You kidding man?

And their car is usually dirty if they're not engaged. And I said,

So you don't love your job? And he goes, got to pay the bills man. And I think,

Wow, what an interesting thing. And then you get in another taxi, it's spotless.

And I said, So, how long you been doing the cab? He says, 28 years.

My father did the cab and my grandfather did the cab.

We've been cab people all through our family. It's part of our thing.

I know every street in this city. Here's my card, anything you need,

anywhere you want to go, you call me, I'll take you there,

and I know how to get there as quick as is possible in this city.

And he was just engaged and we started talking and he engaged me in there.

And so I got his card and I called him back the next time I wanted to go

somewhere. So it's interesting that, that somebody who's engaged,

they get more opportunities. They get, they're more inspired by what they do.

They look fresher, they respect their property, they take care of things.

It's a difference. So the question is, , are you sure you want to retire?

Are you sure you want to do something that you want to escape from?

Where you're having to get breaks and holidays and things like that?

Not against those. You know, if you want a break, great. If you want a holiday,

great. But not because you have to, but because you just choose to do it.

You choose to be efficiently managing your time that way and that's how you want

to do it. But not because you just got to escape.

I don't think living a life by escapism is the answer. You know,

I think that people are just going, I can't wait till it's Friday. Why?

You know, my case, I I work pretty well all the time.

I love it and so I do it Saturday, Sunday, It doesn't matter to me.

I don't care what day it is.

Really I don't have artificial days that I put in there, Monday morning,

Tuesday, I don't even know what day it is half the time.

When you're doing something you love to do, you don't care about that.

That's not meaningful. You don't measure your days by a cycle like that.

You measure your days by how much contribution and

And that's where it's at. So the question is, is what's really priority to you?

Are you structuring your life and living your life with the objective of

retiring and just taking a break and doing it? And if so,

what are you going to do?

Now if you have something really inspiring and meaningful and it's now the next

level of something inspiring,

you've been doing something you're inspiring for a while,

and now you're thinking, Oh, I want to do something even more inspiring,

fabulous. You know,

some people want to get off and they want to travel the world or go and do the

things that they've dreamed about doing for a long time that they didn't have to

do, that's fine. I'm not against that.

But just make sure that you're structuring your life in a way that's meaning and

fulfilling in your life. You know, if you're not, you're holding yourself back.

My opinion, you're holding yourself back from something that's great.

So you want to prioritize it. You know, in the Breakthrough Experience,

when people come into the Breakthrough Experience,

I try to help them find out what's really in priority for them.

Cause if we know exactly what their priorities are,

we know what'll give the most meaning, most fulfillment,

and to help them have more, I mean, literally,

when you live in your highest value and you activate the telencephalon,

the executive center, you also live by your telos, which is your highest value,

your most purposeful, missionful state.

You also add telomeres to the genes to increase

longevity, to help you live a longer life, to help you fulfill a longer legacy.

So your body is guided to do that. And when you're living by priority like that,

you have more fulfillment, more meaning, and you're more philanthropic.

You're more contributive. People that are not fulfilled,

they look for immediate gratification,

I always say a business or a having a purpose with meaning leads

to philanthropy and having no purpose and no meaning leads to debauchery.

So you want to make sure you fill your day,

making an income doing something that's meaningful.

So the Breakthrough Experience, when people come in there,

I help them organize and prioritize their life and determine their values and

structure their life. I help them come up with a master plan,

a love list about how they would love their life.

Because most people don't realize that if you don't decide, design your life,

other people do. If you don't decide how you want your life,

somebody else decides.

And if you don't fill your day with high priority actions,

you fill up with low priority distractions,

you're going to be bombarded by everybody else's expectation on you,

if you don't do that. So that's why in the Breakthrough Experience,

I have people coming in to make sure they get clear about what they want to do.

I also show them how to dissolve the distractions.

A lot of the distractions come from not living by priority. But when you do,

anything you have infatuations with or resentments, anything you're, you know,

proud of or shamed of,

anything that's distracting you from being present and purposeful and patient

and productive, you're missing out on the fulfillment of life.

So that's why in the Breakthrough Experience,

I teach people the Demartini Method to dissolve all the baggage that distracts

them.

And then I teach them how to be on priority according to their hierarchy of

values and how to delegate things and how to link things.

I teach them how to not subordinate to all the people around them,

which are the ones that distract them and cause some of the chaos.

I ask them to make sure that they look truly at what their life is about and not

compare themselves to others and confuse themselves about what they think they

should be doing, ought to be doing, instead of what they love doing.

I help them structure their life so they can master their life.

Because otherwise you're going to go through life and miss out on the

magnificence of it. So the question is,

are you sure you really want to retire ?

Are you sureyYou don't want to structure your life in such a way where you have

no desire to do it, but you have the capacity to have financial independence.

Like I said,

I wanted to have financial independence not for the sake of relaxing on a beach

somewhere, which I've done and I can do if I ever want.

But I did it because I want to do what I love and love what I do and get paid to

do it and do it because I don't have to work. I do it because I love doing it.

I think that's the objective of financial independence, to continue doing it.

I don't think Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos,

very wealthy individuals, I don't think they have to go to work .

I think they're pretty well off, but they're still cranking.

And that that's an inspiration, they may not like all the things they do,

but that doesn't matter., they're still active.

And you want to be able to active,

because if you're not using your brain and your life, it's going to decay.

And I think that that's why you want to have the bucket list ready to go.

I'm a firm believer in master planning your life out and have it for beyond your

typical years, a hundred, 120 year plan.

Because you just might live it and you might want to have a goals that go beyond

your life and things that you could be working right to the very last day of

your life.

So I'm thinking that that's a pretty smart idea to have something

to live for. If you don't have something to live for,

you have something to die for. And I've seen it,

I've seen people literally decay.

I had a gentleman who ran a major railroad company in America and I watched

him when he sold his company and all of a sudden he retired.

I watched him gain weight, I watched him start drinking more.

I watched him start to treat his wife a little differently and a little more

roughly. He was a bear. He wasn't inspired.

And I thought, wow,

here's what happens when somebody doesn't have something meaningful,

fulfilling their life, that's a contribution, that's

So my advice, if you're going to retire, have something so meaningful there,

waiting for you. Don't get there and find out, Oh,

I don't know what to do with my life. Or you could deteriorate pretty quick.

have something to do it. I've seen it and I've known people that, like I say,

want to just go and escape, but I don't want to escape.

I want to do something that's so meaningful that you want to,

you can't wait to do it. I was just chatting with yesterday on a,

in a message thing with a guy who's an Academy Award, no,

a Grammy award-winning singer and music performer. And he's cranking,

he's still going, he's still doing it and he loves it.

And he's got massive plans at what he wants to do into as old as he can do it.

And he hopes to do it a hundred years old and do a performance.

That's the same way, I'd like get a hundred years old,

I'd like to be doing my presentations. So ask yourself,

are you sure you want to retire?

Are you sure you don't want to structure your life in such a way that can help

you master your life? So you're not having Monday morning blues,

Wednesday hump days, thank God it's Fridays and week frigging ends.

So you don't have to go to the Starbucks every few hours just to survive to get

a sugar fix, which is unhealthy in itself,

and then come back and then to have drudgery and rise and then crash again.

And then you have to go do that again. A volatile life like that,

that's unfulfilling isn't where it's at.

But think about the times when you've been most engaged, most inspired,

most fulfilled,

and you're doing something you love to do and the day goes zipping by and you

come back and you're fulfilled and you're thankful and you've prospered and you

made a difference. That's what I'm interested in helping people do.

I want them to be fulfilled in life.

That's why I teach the Breakthrough Experience.

That's why I help them to organize their priorities and their values.

That's why I show them how to dissolve the baggage

that weighs them down and makes them feel burdened.

How to not subordinate to outer authorities so they

to be the authority in their life and to live by design, not by duty.

That makes a huge difference in your life. So if you want to retire, great,

but if you do,

get and get something that's more meaningful the next step,

have the next chapter ready to go,

that's more inspiring and you're ready to go to the next level.

And make sure you invested in yourself,

invested economically so you can go and live that.

But don't just get by on mediocrity and settle for less and then retire and then

decay because I don't think that's where it's at.

My observation shows that that's not the most fulfilling path in life.

Do what you love and love what you do on a daily basis.

If you need help with that, come to the Breakthrough Experience.

I'm certain that what I teach you there is going to help you on that path.

And I certainly love watching people who make that difference and make that jump

and stop doing something of mediocrity and go do something with extraordinary

objectives so they have something meaningful to do. Again,

philanthropy is far better than debauchery and you'll do more with your life if

you do something that's meaningful and inspiring and prioritize your life.

So come to the Breakthrough Experience. Let me help you do that.

Don't subordinate to the world on out there. Design your life from within.

When the voice and the vision on the inside is louder than all opinions on the

outside, you begin to master your life. So that's my weekly presentation.

I look forward to seeing you at the Breakthrough Experience.

I am absolutely certain that what I share there will help you in that path.

Now you may be young right now,

but time goes by pretty quick and you want to plan your life and not all of a

sudden be coming towards the end and go, Oops, I didn't plan it.

Those that fail to plan, plan to fail as they say.

So give yourself permission to take command of your

a long, prosperous life. I'll see you next week.

Join me at the Breakthrough Experience. Thank you again. Have a great weekend.