Discovering Where Your Deep Joy Intersects the World’s Deep Needs

What is your Deep Joy?

My beautiful and brilliant wife, Maureen, and I have three sons, who are now young men. When they were younger, every day I was in town (my jobs always required a lot of travel), I insisted on driving them to school.

As they got out of the truck, I always said precisely the same thing to them:

“One more step in the journey of discovering where your Deep Joy intersects the World’s Deep Needs.”

I swear I said that to them… And they preferred to take the bus!

My point—then and now—is that all of us should start with our Deep Joy.

Our deep joy may well be the single most important key to happiness and success in life.

There is plenty of work to do out there—-after all, the “world’s deep needs” are infinite, often unfathomable, and constitute a well without a bottom.

But what is your Deep Joy?

What gives you joy in life?

Call it your North Star, calling, sense of purpose, motivating “Iit,” or any one of a hundred other ways, but Deep Joy works best for me—-and for many of the people I have had the honor and privilege of addressing over the arc of my life.

Taking On a View of Deep Joy

Viewed this way, even a bad day, a bad experience, a lousy lecture in school, a failure— (we’ll talk about “Making Failure Your Fuel” in a subsequent newsletter)-—all of these can serve a great purpose if we look at then through the lens of, “Great! I just learned one more thing which isn’t my Deep Joy!”

I am an emergency physician, a career which is at the top of the scale when it comes to pressure, stress, and unpredictability; we never know what might come through our doors each day. (emergency physicians and nurses have the highest rates of burnout in the house of medicine.) Yet for me, that is precisely my Deep Joy.- I love my work dearly and couldn’t imagine another career. What is insanity and cataclysmic chaos for others is a source of fulfillment and, yes, Deep Joy, to me and my slightly off-kilter colleagues who love this life and this way of serving others.

Finding Your Deep Joy

How do you discover your Deep Joy?

First, know you are on a constant search for it.

Each day, regardless of the work you do, ask yourself at the end of it: “What did I leave in there? Did I make a difference? Were things better-or worse-for my having been there?”

Second, in my experience and that of many people I have coached and mentored, it is rarely a “lightning bolt” moment, but an arc of constant questioning which gets us to the realization that epiphanies are much more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Be prepared for a voyage of discovery, learning at each turn what precisely it was that gives us a sense of satisfaction and joy.

Third, be prepared for your Deep Joy to evolve over the course of life.

For example, you might well decide that your Deep Joy is in serving others-—living a life of “servant leadership,” as the great Robert Greenleaf described it. (And I highly recommend reading-and re-reading his essay on the subject, which can be found here.) But how and where you serve others not only is likely to change over time but also is almost certain to evolve over time if you follow the habits of gratitude and questioning (which are addressed in a later newsletter.).

“It’s a journey, not a destination.”

Wise words there.…

Fourth, the most miserable people I have encountered in my life (who often spend a considerable part of their day making others miserable) are those who never discovered their inner Deep Joy or took a job based on someone else’s expectations. (Trust me, I’m a doctor and the most unhappy doctors I’ve ever met are those who became a doctor because Mommy and Daddy wanted them to!)

Fifth, even if you’ve done all this, there may come a time when you feel a lost sense of purpose-a sense that you’ve lost your Deep Joy.

When this happens, how do you get it back?

Well, two ways…

First, get a picture of yourself in the younger days, when you were on a quest to discover your Deep Joy. Talk to that person, tell them how and why you’ve strayed from it. Ask them how to find the way back.

Or write a letter— (preferably hand-written-remember those?)— from yourself to yourself, pouring out how and why the path has become more obscure. That will help you find the way back…

So, what’s my Deep Joy…

It’s simple…

My Deep Joy is helping others find their Deep Joy and how to fully embrace and embody it each day!

Good luck and reach out if I can be of help.

Best,

Doc

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Thanks for joining the conversation and connecting with me.

Good reading, good leading, and let’s learn and have fun together!

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Doctor Thom Mayer has been a leader in times of crisis for over 25 years, navigating some of the most significant challenges imaginable.

He is the Medical Director for the NFL Players Association, as well as an emergency physician-sports medicine leader of international renown.

He served as the Command Physician at the Pentagon Rescue/Recovery Operation on 9/11, Incident Commander for the inhalational anthrax outbreak in Washington, DC that same year, and led a Team Rubicon Mobile Emergency Team in Ukraine following the outbreak of war.

He is among the most widely respected leaders in times of crisis and is a highly sought after speaker and consultant across many businesses and industries.