We meditate. We journal. We notice our breath. We have done some of the inner work, or at least we have started it. And still, when Monday morning comes and we sit down at the desk, something does not feel like ours. The awareness is there. The alignment isn't. So what lives in that gap between knowing yourself and actually building a life that reflects what you know?
In this episode of The Mindful Living, global impact investor and purpose strategist Florian Kemmerich joins Sana for a deeply human, gently confronting conversation about vocation, the inner child, and the moment most ambitious people quietly realise that fame, fortune, and power are nourishing the ego but not the self. Drawing from his own pivot out of corporate life at 33, his framework of vocating, and his work mobilising nearly a billion dollars toward purpose-driven enterprise, Florian invites us to stop being the absent subject of our own education and start building a life worth living, not merely a living.
About the Guest:
Florian Kemmerich is a global impact investor, purpose strategist, and author of On Vocation: How to Align Your Purpose with Your Profession (Routledge, 2025). Based in Geneva, Switzerland, he is Co-Founder of Human Planet (formerly KOIS Advisory) and Resilienture, founder of Vocating.ai, and serves on the boards of organisations including ForAfrika and the Green Digital Finance Alliance. Across his career, he has mobilised close to one billion USD in impact capital across global health, economic empowerment, and climate resilience. A former paratrooper and judo champion, he is a father of five, speaks five languages, and lives by the principle, Impact Lives, Share Profits.
Key Takeaways:
- You are the absent subject of your own education. Society teaches us to make a living, not to know ourselves. We accumulate skills for the inner adult and rules for the inner parent, while the inner child quietly goes unheard.
- Fame, fortune, and power nourish the ego, not the self. They feel like success from the outside, but they cannot self-realise you. When the spotlight fades, the unaddressed inner life is what breaks through as burnout, midlife crisis, or quiet collapse.
- Purpose is built, not found. It does not arrive at the end of a search. It begins the moment you stop performing what you are supposed to want and start listening to the quiet pull underneath.
- The earliest childhood memory is a clue, not a wound. Between the ages of two and six, something registered that didn't sit right with you. That imprint, properly understood, is where your vocation often quietly began.
- In the AI era, two kinds of people will thrive. The neurodivergent and the purpose-driven. Everyone else risks outsourcing the architecture of their own life to an algorithm that does not know what they actually want.
- Your career is no longer linear. With white-collar work shifting at unprecedented speed, vocation, not job security, is the more honest foundation for a life worth building.
- Dare to go out of your comfort zone, just for yourself. You do not have to justify your pivot to anyone. It is only your life, and you are free to live it.
Connect With the Guest:
Episode Chapters:
[00:00] Cold Open — The Gap Between Knowing and Living
[03:30] Welcome to The Mindful Living and Meet Florian Kemmerich
[06:00] The Pivot at 33: From the Corporate Ladder to the Inner Child
[09:30] Why Education Leaves Us as the Absent Subject of Our Own Lives
[12:00] The Inner Child, the Inner Adult, the Inner Parent
[16:00] Imprint, Script, and Where Your Purpose Quietly Began
[19:30] AI, Algorithms, and the Risk of Outsourcing Your Life
[22:30] Why Surface-Level Frustration is Actually a Signal
[26:00] The Three Forces Reshaping Work, Education, and Identity
[31:00] Neurodivergent or Purpose-Driven: The Two Paths That Thrive
[34:00] One Invitation Before You Close This Episode
[36:30] Closing Reflections and How to Connect
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