Why Purposeful People Outlast Tough Times

Ever feel like you're walking through mud while everyone else skips effortlessly through life? You're not alone. When unexpected challenges hit—whether economic pressures, health concerns, or relationship troubles—finding solid ground seems impossible.

The secret isn't that some people don't have problems. It's that purposeful people navigate difficulties differently. They understand that purpose isn't some distant treasure to be discovered but something we actively create through daily choices. Your purpose at 25 may look nothing like your purpose at 50, and that's perfectly normal. What matters is identifying what brings you connection, peace, and satisfaction right now.

Consider the ancient fable of the oak and the reed. When fierce storms came, the mighty oak was uprooted while the humble reeds survived by bending with the wind. "You were destroyed by fighting against the storm," explained the reed, "while we survived by yielding." This wisdom applies directly to our modern challenges. Fighting circumstances beyond our control exhausts us, while learning to bend—adapting while maintaining our core values—allows us to withstand life's fiercest winds.

Like a captain navigating through a storm, your purpose becomes the destination that keeps you oriented when visibility is poor. Each day, ask yourself: "What is my purpose today? What small action can I take that aligns with my values and brings me peace?" This daily practice of purposeful living builds resilience that withstands even the most challenging circumstances.

Remember, you have a sacred birthright to happiness, peace of mind, and well-being—but that journey starts with you. Tough times don't last, but purposeful people do. Your human mess is simply part of the process of shaping your purpose, in your own unique way.

Subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice and join our community as we navigate life's challenges together, finding purpose even in our most difficult moments.

Chapters

• 0:00 It's Okay Not To Be Okay
• 4:24 Being Purposeful During Challenging Times
• 9:12 Finding Calm Amid The Storm
• 14:48 The Oak and Reed Fable
• 19:30 Yielding Instead of Fighting
• 22:26 Your Birthright to Peace

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

It is okay sometimes to not be okay. It is okay to think about things from a perspective of like, wait a minute, this doesn't sit right with me and how do I deal with this and what's the next move for me and what are the answers. So I want to share this conversation together because I feel that way. I have moments where I feel doubt, I feel fear, I have some insecurities, I get anxious about things and not knowing what the next day is going to hold. And, with that being said, there is something that I use that allows me to not be perfect, to not feel like I have it all together, but to feel like I can make it through this day and get to another day. And that's called my purpose, my purpose of being here in this present moment, and I want to share this with you today. You don't need to pursue purpose to be purposeful. I'm Adrian Starks, known as Mr Purpose. I'm a speaker, voice narrator, comic card and superhero fanatic, book lover, martial artist, health enthusiast and just a fellow human seeking purpose. Join me and our guest as we navigate the chaotic journey of life, of what I like to call the human mess, to discover how we can craft and share our purpose. There's no single path, but together we'll explore the diverse perspectives to uncover the tools to help you shape your purpose your way. Let's get it and let's create. Welcome back to another episode of your Purposeful Life, and I'm your host, adrian Starks, and it has been a minute, folks, but I am back, and today's episode we're going to get right into this here, and it's called Tough Times Don't Last, but Purposeful People Do. Now, this title may sound familiar to you, and I hope it does. It comes from a book, robert Shuler, and it's called Tough Times Don't Last, but Tough People Do, and I've read this book a number of times and it felt so fitting for this conversation today, because there's a lot of tough things that are going on and everyone is dealing with them on their own level, but sometimes we don't feel like we're tough because, let's just be honest, life can really throw us for a curveball and you just get tired of every single day. What is it going to be? Today, I have to look over my shoulder so I don't get hit in the back of the head with a curveball from life, and this is coming from things like the economy, your workplace, your health, your finances, your personal well-being. Everything seems to be coming to you all at once, and I'm here to tell you that it is okay to feel vulnerable, it is okay sometimes to not be okay, it is okay to think about things from a perspective of like, wait a minute, this doesn't sit right with me and how do I deal with this and what's the next move for me and what are the answers. So I want to share this conversation together because I feel that way. I have moments where I feel doubt, I feel fear, I have some insecurities, I get anxious about things and not knowing what the next day is going to hold. And, with that being said, there is something that I use that allows me to not be perfect, to not feel like I have it all together, but to feel like I can make it through this day and get to another day, and that's called my purpose, my purpose of being here in this present moment, and I want to share this with you today. You don't need to pursue purpose to be purposeful.

Speaker 1: 3:54

For a long time, I thought that I had to go around and find my purpose. What happens if I don't get my purpose in? And what is it exactly? And if I get it, will it make my life seem so much more easier to understand? And here's the catch that doesn't happen. Some people will tell you that, hey, I know my purpose, I know my calling in life. Great Good for them, awesome Claps. But we all know that doesn't apply to all of us and a lot of times you find yourself repeating multiple mistakes, wondering why the changes are not occurring and why you just can't catch a break. And that happens. That's part of the human mess. But what we can do about being purposeful is to navigate through that process of the human mess, and that is by being purposeful. And what I mean by being purposeful is finding things that allow you to feel connected to your happiness, to your well-being, to your peace of mind, to your sanity, because here's the thing we cannot control the outside environments.

Speaker 1: 5:00

There's a lot of things happening right now, and I will address the elephant in the room a little bit. There's a lot of things going on in politics, and I will address the elephant in the room a little bit. There's a lot of things going on in politics. I'm not going to talk about politics in this podcast, but there's a lot of things going on that are impacting a lot of people across the planet in multiple ways, and everyone is feeling it, and some of you may not, and that's fine, great for you. But I have to talk about the real here.

Speaker 1: 5:24

There's a lot of people being impacted by a lot of decisions that are being made and they don't really have any control over it. So it puts them into a bind, into a corner of feeling like what do I have to do to catch a break? You and I'm telling myself that sometimes we can't wait for that break to happen. We have to break through that mental state of feeling like we can't make a move. That's best for ourselves. So we have to create our own purpose. We have to decide what's good for us right now. What things do you want in your life? What things can you do that brings you a sense of joy?

Speaker 1: 6:04

Now, I'm not saying you have to ignore what's going on. What I'm saying is that we have to find things that allow us to navigate through this blurriness of what we call reality. And if you were to actually ask a captain on a ship this is a good example for you right here hey, what's your next port of call? What's your next port of destination? The captain could tell you. But if you tell the captain, hey, there is a storm coming through, there's going to be turbulent waves and winds, you may not make it, the captain would tell you one thing we have all the resources we need, we know where we need to go, we'll navigate the storm and I'm telling you today that you can navigate the storm.

Speaker 1: 6:52

This is not a motivational speak, folks. It's not. This is an encouragement to wake up the human spirit, to wake up inside of you, that thing that knows the answers, and that answer is being purposeful in 2025. Deciding on what things you want to do. That will enhance your value, that will enhance your happiness, that will enhance your health, your well-being, your knowledge base, and it's up to us to do that Now. I'm not saying that this is going to take away your problems, but it will help us to look at our problems a lot differently.

Speaker 1: 7:33

When I was sitting down a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I was in this area of just uncertainty, like I was walking through mud. I don't know if you have felt like that, but I was walking through mud, like I was walking through mud. I don't know if you have felt like that, but I was walking through mud and each step felt like it was just a lot of energy required. And then, as I'm looking around, I'm seeing other people just skipping through, just running through, having a good old-fashioned time, and I'm thinking like what is happening with me right now? Why am I going through this? Why can't I just walk through this moment in time? And the reason for that is because some people, they have different perspectives on how they deal with things. It's not to say that they don't have problems. It's not to say that they don't have any challenges. It's to say that they are looking at it differently and they are moving through it differently, and I want to share that with you today.

Speaker 1: 8:31

It's time for you to move differently, and this doesn't happen overnight. It happens one thought, one belief, one action at a time. Just the idea of waking up in the morning and having gratitude is a first step, even if you feel like you're not getting everything your way and you shouldn't. Life is about growth and we can't grow without challenges. However, everything is not going to be set in stone for you. Every day is not going to be a perfect day. Somebody's going to get on your nerves, whether that be in traffic, be at your workplace, be at home. Somebody's going to push a button, somebody's going to push a button, and when they do, you have to ask yourself why is this button so easily pushed in the first place? There was something going on inside of you at that point in time that was already there, festering, and they just needed to add a little bit of gasoline to it to light it up. And this is why we have to have introspection.

Speaker 1: 9:28

I love learning about philosophers because they were big on this. They didn't sit around trying to find answers to everything. They wanted to understand how things worked and why things didn't work. And I think it's time for us to look back at what has worked for you so far and what is not working now. And this is not to chastise yourself, to make yourself feel like, oh, I'm not doing anything, I'm not good enough. Please don't say that you are good enough. You got this far and you got to look at what you've accomplished so far. What have you done this year that you're proud of? What have you done last year that you're proud of? What was the biggest challenge you got through last year and how did you get through it?

Speaker 1: 10:13

You have to understand how we work. As humans, we are designed to get through tough times, but we have to have a reason to do that. We have to have some purpose behind our movement. And to be purposeful is to take action, to have some things that you're looking forward to and you're acting toward those things. And I want to go back to this idea of purpose, because a lot of us think purpose is just something that we have to already know or that if we're old enough we should have it figured out. There is no age bracket to have purpose figured out. Your purpose changes with time, it changes with your age, it changes with your experiences. It just changes and it adapts to wherever you are. And that's why I mean that we have to, in these challenging times, adapt to what our purposes are and what we want them to be, and by doing that you can change how you feel, you can change how you see things.

Speaker 1: 11:21

One of the things that I like to do that I picked up is playing the bass guitar. I started the bass guitar about eight months ago and I look forward to learning new notes, learning new songs, and I remember when I was a kid, my dad used to always play his classical guitar. I could hear it from the living room. He'd go into his office, close the door and he'd just start playing melodies on it, and I never understood why he would do that. Right, why not just come out into the living room and watch TV with us? Why not just come out into the living room and watch TV with us? He was working through certain things and that melody soothed him. It allowed him to feel connected to himself.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Fast forward, years later, I'm playing the bass guitar. It soothes me. The melody brings a sense of calmness to me. And what brings a sense of calmness to you? Do you have something that you want to do or that you're interested in that can help you to rebalance your mental frame of mind? Your peace of mind? That's what really matters. And as the world continues to spin and does this crazy thing, and as the world continues to spin and does its crazy thing, you don't go spinning with it. You just look at it and say mm-hmm, okay, that's happening right now. All right, I guess we're doing that. And then you just keep doing your thing.

Speaker 1: 12:49

And this is what it means to be purposeful about getting through the challenging times or the tough times. It's not about barreling through it, it's not about ignoring it. It's not about just being tough and that's why I didn't like that phrase, tough people. It's about having something that you do that allows you to adapt, and that's what I mean by having some type of purpose that you've created for yourself. Having some type of purpose that you've created for yourself, something that you look forward to doing, because you can actually change how you feel about your environment, how you feel about the people around you, and it allows you to have better health. That way, too, your stress levels go down, your blood pressure changes, your body changes, you change, and that's what we want to do for ourselves.

Speaker 1: 13:39

I want to share with you today a story that really inspired me, that actually brought up this topic for the episode. Tough times don't last, but purposeful people do, because, as I was reading through this, I started thinking about why this is such a pivotal story and it's an Aesop fable, but some people say Aesop, some say Aesop. However you pronounce it is up to you, but I'm going to say Aesop fable, and this has a lot of simplicity to it, but it's also very deep, and one thing about us as a society is that we tend to take simple things and try to complicate them, make them be something that we can't resolve. That way, we can just sit back and be like see told you and we shouldn't do that. You take something simple and you say, okay, oh, this is really cool to listen to. How can I take this and implement it into my life? So I want to share this with you, and it's called the Oak and the Reed by Aesop, and as you're listening to this story, just think about the words behind it. It's very simple.

Speaker 1: 14:48

An oak that had been uprooted by a storm was carried down a river to the banks where many reeds were growing, were growing. The oak was astonished to see that things so slight and frail had withstood the storm when so great and strong a tree as he himself had been uprooted. It's really not amazing, said a reed. You were destroyed by fighting against the storm, while we survived by yielding and bending to the slightest breath that was blown. The Oak and the Reed by Aesop.

Speaker 1: 15:48

I've read that story so many times and I've been reading it a lot recently, going through these tough times that you are going through, and I feel what you're feeling and I continue to feel that and this is what I have learned when we resist things, when we fight against things that we have no control over, instead of learning to yield and bend and not to ignore the problem but to find a way within ourselves to deal with the problem as it passes through, then we survive and thrive through a moment where most will get blown away by anger, dissatisfaction and giving up, and I know a lot of people that would probably want to argue right now with me and say, hey, what you just said about the tough times and just letting them pass through. I can't do that. We have to speak out against things, and I get that. I understand that. I'm not saying you can't speak out or you shouldn't speak out.

Speaker 1: 17:01

What I'm saying is that fighting with yourself every single day and getting angry with what's going on and how you can't find a direct solution to it right now, that is a storm that you're fighting, as opposed to doing what you can do in the meantime, of taking care of yourself, of building up the areas of your life that will allow you to have the energy to continue to withstand more storms that will come through, and this is what many people have been doing for years withstanding the storms of life, and right now there are a lot of storms coming up or that are already here Economic storms, health storms, financial storms, relationship storms, mental storms, and the list goes on and on and on, and you may fall in one of those categories or in all of them. I've fallen into the health storm, the financial storm, the mental storm, the economic storm, the fear storm. I've been in all of them and it is not a good feeling at all, but that's also part of me being human. I don't have all the answers and I don't need to have all the answers. I don't have all the answers and I don't need to have all the answers, but this curiosity of wanting to know how I can withstand the storm that allows me to be right here in front of you today on this podcast and telling you that you can be purposeful about withstanding the storms of your life right now.

Speaker 1: 18:35

And it is not easy, but it is simple. And a lot of times I'm going to go right back to this. We take simplicity and we want to make it complicated so that we can get out of trying and, like that read said, it's very simple Don't fight, bend and yield Each day, bend and yield. Each day, ask yourself what am I fighting? What do I have resistance towards, and how can I bend and yield to this? And I have done this. And let me tell you you'd be amazed how things move out of your way, how people that you just don't get along with. They just all of a sudden they go somewhere else, how the problem that you thought was never going to go away, it just all of a sudden resolves itself. Or that thing you had that was ailing you inside. Now you have a feeling of like, oh lightness. I feel good today.

Speaker 1: 19:30

It's because you've allowed yourself to take back your personal power, and that's being purposeful. And you don't need to pursue purpose to be purposeful. Having that purpose every single day of what is my purpose today? Well, I'm going to do this today. That becomes your purpose. You become that captain on the ship who knows his next port of destination. You become that person that knows their next port of destination, regardless of the storms, the winds, the waves, regardless of any of that. And even if you do have something that capsizes you for a bit, you do have something that you can do to get yourself back onto that boat. That's called the purpose of wanting to get forward, to get beyond that moment, of wanting to get forward to get beyond that moment. And that's what I've been doing. I've been looking at every single day of what do I want to do today. That's going to bring me some sense of purpose, some peace of mind, and I'll get hit with something and it worries me and all of a sudden I go back to okay, wait a minute.

Speaker 1: 20:36

Now let's not go off on a tangent here. Remember, we're fighting, we're resisting. How can we bend and yield to this and then, poof, an answer comes. I know how a lot of you are feeling right now and I'm telling you that it is your personal right, your sacred birthright, to have happiness, peace of mind, sanity and well-being. But that starts with us. We have that control and to remember that tough times don't last, but purposeful people do. Wishing you all an amazing week ahead. Thank you for listening to your Purposeful Life and I'm your host, adrian Starks. Download this podcast on your platform of choice. Join me on my social media channels and be a part of the your Purposeful Life community. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit that like button with a purpose. Come on now. Remember, your human mess is the process. Let's help you shape your purpose, your way.