Finding Your Purpose

In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about finding your purpose. My guest this week is Dave Chauhan, author, speaker and former corporate leader who walked away from his established career to pursue a deeper connection with purpose. Dave shares his personal journey of reflection, the signals that told him it was time to make a change and the painful yet transformative process of rediscovering his values.

We explore how purpose often reveals itself in times of discomfort, why courage matters more than certainty and how growth comes not from avoiding pain but from working through it. Dave also opens up about the messy, imperfect reality of pursuing purpose and how identity, values and leadership are all intertwined.

About My Guest

Dave Chauhan, author of 'Captain, Set Sail,' is a former corporate leader turned leadership visionary who believes that in a world of constant change, true leadership isn't about control, but about the deeply human art of navigation. He is also the Director of Purple Spark Advisory,  a consulting practice based in Melbourne, Australia, dedicated to empowering Small and Medium Enterprises to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence, and market leadership.

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Connect with Dave:

Website: www.davechauhan.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davechauhan/

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Transcript

Kim Meninger

Kim, welcome, Dave. I have been looking forward to this conversation since our first conversation. I just, I didn't know what to expect when you reached out and we had this great discussion, and I knew instantly that I wanted to bring our conversation to this community. So thank you so much for being here, and I'd love to invite you to share a little bit about yourself.

Dave Chauhan

Thank you, Kim for having me and yes, any cool excitement. I remember our first conversation and how quickly, how deep it went. So yes, I am humbled and very excited to be sharing my story with your, with your audience. About me, I am an everyday Joe who started his life in a corporate career, been about 17-18, years, struggling, stumbling, trying to do, do your best, moving up the ranks, as you do in life. And at some stage, I started questioning my own purpose, and that's, that, that almost happened about a year ago, when I decided to walk away from a corporate career. Now there is a deep story there, and there are so many preludes to how it happened, but the key to that moment in my life was my own reflection, where I felt you get only one life. And I'm not talking about in spiritual sense. I'm talking about being human, what's innately who we are as living creatures, as humans. We are Homo sapiens. We are and connection with the purpose is the deepest desire that we all have, and I was really lacking it. So I started my own journey. And today I'm an author. I'm a speaker. I call myself an accidental author because book came out of this as an accident. The book's out there now, and yes, we have a consulting practice in Melbourne, here in Australia, and as part of all that work, I feel, finally I'm where I'm connected with my purpose.

Kim Meninger

And I think you're absolutely right that it is something that so many of us are trying to figure out. I mean, I talk to people every day who say I don't know what I want. I know it's not this, but I don't know what it is that I want. How did you know you were in a corporate career? You were probably chugging along right? What were some of the signals that it was time to leave?

Dave Chauhan

Well, very well, put you use word signals. And I think that's the that's the crux, that's the cool part. But to be able to find those signals, there is lot of work that you have to do on yourself. You can't see signals if you are not trained or capable of seeing those signals. Once that's the signal part, is identifying those signals part. But then there is a second part. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do with those signals that two, two elements in this equation? But before we talk about it, let's, let's back up the track a little bit. I'm not the first one to talk about purpose and why. There have been, been visionary leaders who have spoken about it over and over again, through the means of spirituality, through the means of religion in some cases, but in the modern world, we can see the work that that's been done by the likes of Viktor Frankl or Simon Sinek. They talk about why and purpose so deeply. And when you reflect back on, on it, it's innately human, and it's embedded in our DNA that we humans are species that are driven by purpose, for a purpose with purpose. So, so once you start to realize that part, that's when you start looking at what we were talking about, looking at those signals, and what you are going to do with those signals. So in my case, it happened about a year ago. I came back from my university after attending an event, I was in Illinois, at University of Illinois, Urbana, champagne campaign campus. I was almost at the verge of completing my MBA, and I came back, back home here in Australia, and I started thinking about, why did I start my journey? Why did I enroll myself into MBA? Because until this moment, I was this hardcore believer that organized education is not for me. I am a person with growth mindset, but my way of learning was, do learn, go and get deep down in trenches and learn that way. So it took me back further back, about three years ago, from that moment where I was invited for the role of for interviewing, for the role of local food charity here in in Australia. As part of that CEO campaign, there were 157 candidates, as I was told, and I'm the last candidate with the second candidate. We're sitting there, and I was told that the board is hung. And during that conversation, I was told that you have to really give them a reason, because the other candidate comes with a really solid background, almost 35 years of experience, coming from for purpose background, and here I am a corporate bunch of nobody, 14 years experience and thinking that, you know, get the job. So I got myself up to that point. But while I was preparing for that that interview, one question that I couldn't come up as an answer for was that here in Australia, you have three-months or six-months probation period, which means, you know, lemon law, if, if something wouldn't work from either party's employee or employer, you can walk away. I couldn't come up with an in that conversation that give me three months, I'll show you what I can do. Otherwise, lemon law will walk away. I just couldn't come up with an answer because I felt this, this inkling in my, in my, in my heart, in my in my deep down in myself, that nobody will know that I failed on paper, or somebody will take care of what I did bad on paper. But what if an elderly, sick person or infant child struggles or almost dies because of my own? Any questions in that role I just couldn't come up with that answer so quickly pivoting from the conversation. I come back from that interview, and I was like, I need to start my, my own journey of, of starting and talking about, what did, what did I start? I need to learn and grow. So I quickly enrolled myself into the MBA program. So that was my first pivot. So fast forward back in that moment a year ago, I started questioning myself again. And in the in the conversation, as you do from a public Ivy League university, when you complete your MBA, the conversation are usually about what next adventure, Wall Street company or, or you go with, work with, with four, big four consultants or whatnot. And I started questioning myself, that, you know, but that's not for me. That's not the reason. Why did I start? So in about, in about a week's time, gathered up enough courage, sorry. And I, my wife and I, we spoke about it, and her response was, Dave, if you need to discover what your purpose is, you need to start now. It's not going to get any easier from this point onwards. And as you do, you talk about all the usual golden shackles. Talk about the you know, what will happen if you walk away from this? But that's when the reflections came back from the likes of Viktor Frankl and Simon Sinek one life. Think about it. You are going to get somewhere. Think about that morbid situation where you'll be dead and people will be talking about, what do you want people to remember you by? What do you remember want people to remember you for? And my response was not this, so I knew not this, but even until that moment, I didn't know what else then. So here's the first point. So reflections are important. So I come back about a week later from this conversation. I was redundant. I walk away from walked away from my corporate career and tears, hugs, cries as you do no pump and show. And I started reflecting back on my journey. So I started reflecting back on every moment that made me, me uneasy, every moment where I was with a client and I knew shady, unethical practices this client might have been doing, and I still said yes, every conversation where I have been making hiring and firing decisions, and I did it because it didn't align with my values, because it made business sense, it made some KPI that I had to check. And I'll say, Yes, I did that. So I started reflecting, and through the journey came what became the book. But book is not important, because through reflections, what you can start finding is finding is what are your values. And once you start discovering your values, then you can start putting every decision you make through that lens, through that save. And once it start filtering through and percolating through, on the other side, you can see the sense of what's your purpose, and it's unfortunate that you know, most people in their whole life will never discover their purpose. But the tricky thing with purpose is that you can only find your purpose when you're going through pain, when you're going through trouble, it is not what's easier. It's often what's difficult to let it go. It's a totally different mindset looking at purpose. It's almost to the point where it became my own dilemma, that if I won't do this, I will lose my own identity. I will lose my own sense of how I'll talk as a leader to my people in the future, until this moment. Yes, I've had led teams. I've led, I've inspired people. But once you sort of go through that moment, you almost start finding yourself that you know everything before this was an illusion, and here you are almost finding your real purpose. So in that moment, you need courage. So that, I think, that I learned from this journey was you never need to chalk out the full map. You don't need to map out the entire ocean. You don't need to plan every action that you will need to get somewhere because this somewhere is, is a hypothetical point. All you can, you can dictate, and usually what I say is purpose is always a direction. It's never a meaningful point that we will you will get one day, and everything will be will be done. It's a journey. It's a direction. And you just keep heading in the direction over and over again. And what I would say is purpose is much larger than you. If it finishes with you within your own inner circle, then quite possibly it's a pseudo-purpose. It's something that you are telling yourself. Often it comes from pseudo values, or often it comes from values that are real, but you give yourself sense of what you call as a pseudo purpose. So from that, from that journey, what I discovered was, okay, I've found my purpose now, and my purpose was to talk about the leadership. Because in all those moments, in every point where I felt myself struggling, I found what were my values, ethics, looking after your people, why you do why you do what you do? So when I started overlaying all this, I found my purpose was to talk about and encourage leadership that's human-centric, that's led by purpose, that understands that leadership is not about you. It's about your people. It's, it's funny, because once you find your purpose, then you have to let it go. You have to, you have to let your own identity be nimble enough to say that it is not about me anymore. It is about purpose. So that's, that's, that's my journey. And fast forward in January, this, you know, book of reflections, which was barely about 7000 words. And they'll tell you how naive I was, almost not even a year ago that I thought that 7000 words is a book, and I presented to my wife, who came home frustrated that day because she felt husband is losing his marble, his sense of reality. And she came back and she said, Dave, I'll leave you, you know, sitting in this chair, and I come back at six or seven, you're sitting exactly where I left you. You haven't taken dog for a walk, you haven't organized us dinner. You haven't had, possibly had had anything to eat all day. What's happening? And sheepishly, I basically said, I think I might have written a book, and it wasn't a book. It was a bad journal at the very best. And I said, Would you please read it? So like in in the US Fourth of July, we have 26 of January, Australia Day. And on Australia Day, I printed all this, this, this on a biggest font that I could possibly print, single side, 70 pages, I remember. And I said, Oh, here's the book. So she reads, she reads it, and her initial response was, Dave, this is bad. This is like, really, really bad, almost at the level of crime against literature. And I crashed in the in the couch, and I'm like, Yes, of course. She empowered me to walk this journey. She empowered me to walk away from my shiny corporate career, leaving a couple $100,000 paycheck. This is where she's not going to be behind. This is where she will be. Just point blank. Here you need to this is what I need to hear. And this is what exactly she did. But at the end of that sentence, which is relevant, was the most important pivotal point that she made was, but there is something of real importance and substance here, and you should continue working on it. And if you choose, it's going to be hard, and that's when you know everything starts cushioning and spiraling back at you, your imposter syndrome, your own doubts, how you see yourself, everything comes back. And that's where the discovery of and connection with purpose becomes far more important, because you remind yourself that, why did you start in the first place? It's not about you. So I, I started crying, and I said, sorry. This is, this is how far I thought I could take it. This is for the first time I have managed to, to articulate that what I have been wanting to say my whole life, what is the purpose of leadership, how I see leadership, how I have learned leadership, and how leadership should be and could be. And she, she hugged me. We both started crying. We said, Okay, let's do it. And we started doing, you know, as you do Google search, we started looking around, what does it mean to write a book? What constitutes having a book? And the first thing we discovered quickly that, you know, 7000 words is not a book. Yes, so that's, that's my journey, and, and it still. Still. It's still frightened me every day. It's still full of self-doubt, self-doubts. There are days when, when I get up every morning thinking about what I'm going to do today, but all that becomes far more easier and simple if you know your why, if you know your purpose. Because what is this? Just a means to then, then get to that purpose?

Kim Meninger

Oh, you said so many amazing things. I'm trying to think of like which bite of the apple I want to start with. I'm thinking about the, the, the pain. You mentioned the pain, right? And I think that is such an important point, because as unfortunate as it is, it is easier, quote, unquote, to go through life without finding your purpose. It is easier, I think, to be more reactive to maybe especially as it relates to work, to just kind of go through the motions. You come home and you go back to it the next day, et cetera. But the void we feel right in our lives when we do that is so persistent and, and over time, I feel like it gets louder and louder and, and I think the, the thing that I've noticed in a lot of people that I've worked with, or, you know, just being a student of society, right, is that there's this fear that if I figure out what my purpose is, I won't be able to unsee it, and I don't know that I'm ready yet to, to know to, you know, make that kind of a life decision.

Dave Chauhan

Yes, I know what you what you mean to begin with, it's hard. Once you, you discovery of your own purpose is hard. But like you said, once you discover it, to unsee it and letting it go is, is, is, is really hard for me. You know, I published a book now and then, I started with the journey of, okay, let's I'm going to talk about this stuff, and I'm going to go and venture out. But when I look, look at myself, this is not my natural space. This is not something that I'm good at, at least right now, I know that part I wasn't good at, at least a year ago, I was worse than what I am today. So once you discover your purpose, you will often find these gaps in your skill set, in perhaps finding means to live your life, and you will find these gaps that will connect you with your purpose. And that's the very first test of Is it a real purpose? Because if it is, you will work your, your back off and you will, you will get there no matter what, whatever it takes. And often, I find we can see anthropologically, there are reasons, and there are ways to look at it. For example, often in parents life, kids are their purpose. So giving them a good life, you will find your way out of it, and you will get what, what your kids need, again, anchored in values, that's the important part. So in the same very sense, when you find your purpose and when, when you discover your purpose, and I call, in my theory, the theory of good enough plan, you will never have a perfect plan to get very where you want. Because, like I said, purpose is this illusion of an island. It's a it's a hope that you will get there, but basically it's a direction. So you will never get, get where you want. So if you don't know where you what your final destination is, how can you prepare how many days of ration you need, how many days it's going to take you, what fuel you need and what skills you will need, which means it's a discovery of a journey in itself. And once you start looking at purpose in that direction, it simply means all you have to look at it is what I'm going to do today, what I'm going to do for the next one week, and is it in line with my values and gets me one step closer to my purpose? And I think that's the important part. Every action, every decision that I'm going to make today, is it getting me one step closer? And I think that's, that's the way of looking at this journey of purpose. You will never get ready. You will never be ready.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, I think that's a really important point too, that there's never a moment when you feel ready, because it's usually, like you said, it's big, it's, it's at the same time that it can be really motivating, it can also be really daunting. And so I think there are a lot of ways in which our brains start trying to rationalize and start, you know, putting up lots of. Are reasons why this isn't the right time and right so I think what you're describing is really important, which is you're not looking for this gigantic leap to a particular destination. It's living your purpose intentionally in those, in the small, micro moments of our everyday lives.

Dave Chauhan

Absolutely and there is a theory I'm forgetting the author's name. The book's called Slight Edge. And in that book, it talks about that. He talks about that we have this notion that leadership or finding purpose is all about these giant pronouncements, this giant leap, that you get there and you reveal your shining armor, and then you say, I've been here my whole life, but in reality, it has never been when you go and that's what I do with my work, when you discover journey of leaders, when you reflect back on their own journey, and when you reflect back leaders who have done phenomenal work for the world they have, have in by their work changed and inspired The world. When you look at their work, you will find it is full of stumbles and struggles. It is full of doubts they were never ready for the journey, for the massive voyage, or the for the massive milestone that they created and carved out by their own work, that they have been shrouded by their own self-doubts their whole life. But yet, when we look back, and that's the, that's what modern world has done, that we glorify success, but we don't look back at every moment and every reflection, every pain that, that to go through, and pain again. You know there are two ways of looking at it. One, pain is spiritual pain. You know, Viktor Frankl talks about that, that suffering that you know not. Don't fall in love with your suffering. Give yourself a reason and purpose to suffer. So you know why you are suffering, and you get to through that point. But that's spiritual part, right? That's, that's something that we can describe. It's a higher sense of, of purpose that we, we have learned through Maslow's law of hierarchy and all these different thinkers who have come before us. But then biologically speaking, we know this post-traumatic growth. We know this body-building you go you have to go through pain, to tear your muscles, to rebuild them and build them stronger. We know this, that every time what's the saying, whatever doesn't break you, makes you stronger. We know this, all this stuff. We have known this, and it's in a funny way, it's, it's, it's it makes you It humbles you down. That as humans, how naive we can be at times, the things we know, things we have heard a million times before that moment, the very moment when we need it, it won't come to us. We have to hear it over and over again, because at times it becomes your own journey, and not as a competition against you, but as that, that vision that you have to be better than yesterday, a little bit better than then, what we're talking about earlier one step closer to your own purpose.

Kim Meninger

And I'm so glad that you're emphasizing the messiness of it, because and this really, you know, struck me when you were talking about other leaders having lots of doubt and having, you know, stumbles and things like that, because it's particularly relevant to the imposter syndrome, right? And the, the theme of these, of many of these conversations, that we, we, we want growth, but we don't want it to be imperfect. It's like we want to mutually exclusive things at the same time, right? And I think that it's really important to remind people that everybody who has found the courage, and you said that word very specifically, have found the courage to do this work, to identify and live their purpose, has done so in an imperfect way, and that there is no there's no way to do it otherwise.

Dave Chauhan

Absolutely and again, I can reflect on my own story, but I can talk about the story the world knows very well. Mr. Churchill, we know the speech he gave in the parliament, before United Kingdom, before Britain, before Britain, decided that they will step up and they will fight against Nazi forces. At the time, what the world saw in Churchill was this visionary, strong leader who, by some historians, did not understand the gravity of what it was to stand against Hitler. So he was just too naive. He was just self-centered, and he just wanted to step up. But by some context, and by, by historians that I believe were exactly, precisely right, he knew what will happen to the world had Britain. Decided to step down and surrender. Here in Australia, we have Union Jack. In Canada, we have Union Jack. Think about the world that every flag in today's world could have had Nazi symbol on their flag. So the, the freedom, the world of opportunities that we live in today was because he because, not because of Hitler's pain, but because somebody decided to stand up. Now this is a very glorifying story, if I tell you that way, but a night before, when Churchill was about to give that speech, he was shrouded with his own self-doubts. And monarch came and talked to him that he has to do this because he's the only one who can do this, because nobody else in the parliament had spine to stand up against, against, against German forces. Everyone was saying that, you know, they should surrender. They were outnumbered. They, they, you know, they were the tiny continent of a of a country, tiny island of a country, and here, after France surrendered, after most of Europe had already surrendered, here's this one country deciding to stand up. It wasn't easy. And that's the, that's the funny part that we forget. So if, if, in that moment of that glorifying speech that he gave in the parliament that rallied the whole nation and eventually made United States join the World War Two. Right before that moment, there was that, that moment of courage, self-doubts that we don't talk about. And I think that's, that's the beauty of leadership. That's where leadership happens. It's that courage, it's, it's telling yourself, like we discovered earlier, we spoke about earlier that, why did I start in the very first place? What made me get here? What's my responsibility and obligation towards my people, my, my, my team and the world that we live in? So yes, courage, finding the courage is, is hard, but in some ways, it is often the most important thing leader has to discover. And we owe this to ourselves in spiritual ways, in an anthropological way, that we are entity of driven or somebody, something driven by purpose, and we have to make that leap. We have to take that leap of faith.

Kim Meninger

And, you know, we talk about courage, and I think that I am no neuroscientist. I am a very amateur wannabe neuroscientist, but I think a lot about how fear is such a dominant part of our experience, because our brains are really prioritizing survival above all else, right? So there are a lot of ways in which our initial reaction to something is fear, because it keeps us from heading into what our brains might perceive as, as a danger zone the unknown, right? Some, something that feels risky, the antidote to that, or the, the force that can help you overcome the strength of that primal fear that, that strikes us so often is your why, right? I always say to people, what is bigger and more important to you than the fear that you are feeling right now, and I think that that is such a big part of what you're saying is when you know your why, you can access that courage in a different way if you have to do something on you know your Churchill story is, Is, is so inspiring. Most people aren't going to make a decision of that magnitude. But if you have to make a decision that you're unsure about and you don't know why you're doing it right that then you're not as likely to take the, the scary action, or, you know, to do, to do the, the risky thing that's likely to lead to a to the better outcome, because there's not a lot there pushing you past the comfort zone, or pushing you out of the comfort zone, right?

Dave Chauhan

Absolutely. A friend of mine spoke about this just a week ago, and her phrase was that growth always happens in discomfort. And one thing that I have made sure, and she was reflecting back on her past 10 years, was that whenever I am comfortable, I just try to find ways to put me back in discomfort. Now I am not glorifying pain, and neither was she. We're not glorifying pain, but it takes back to what you were saying that neuroscience, you know, there are, there are these neural paths that we create. Every time we get through something and we leave a mark, and more we do. We get better at it. And. Have done some phenomenal studies on some of the greatest players in their respective sports fields, and they've discovered, often it is said that, you know, people are good at what they do because they were good at it. And that's a myth because people are good at it because they never stopped when they were bad at it. And we have seen this over and over again with the greatest sports player, when you, when you, when you see them playing, that there is that, that struggle, that trauma of doing it over and over again, failing it over and failing over and over and getting to a point where, like you said that you have to question yourself that what's your purpose? What's your why? And in that zone, your purpose becomes your superpower. It becomes powerful, then who you are, what your abilities are. And it just pushes you through. It gives you that reason that you know you have to keep going over and over again, because it becomes question of your identity and, and that's where I see sometimes people have to talk about this, right, that what I'm doing is either my work or my identity. I am a doctor versus I am in the profession of saving lives by providing the medical service. I'm an engineer versus I am somebody who's building a world better place, and I'm innovating things, and I'm producing things that will make people's life easier. So that whole connection between what I work or what I do for work versus my identity, purpose becomes your identity, and when something becomes your identity, identity. You would never let it go. You would, you would strive, your, your, your every last ounce of your, your, your breath, your sweat, your effort to get where you want to be, because it becomes a matter of who you are or who you're not.

Kim Meninger

So when for people listening, who are thinking about their own purpose and maybe haven't given themselves the space to even start the process or reflect on it, but maybe there's this feeling that this isn't quite right. Is there a first step? Is there something that you think that everyone should start with to get on this journey?

Dave Chauhan

Absolutely, let's, let's. Let's look at it from two angles. One is when your circumstances put you in a situation where you find your purpose. And that happens sometimes through horrible journeys. That happens when suddenly you come back home saying that, you know, I lost my job. That happens because of circumstances put you there, and you start discovering your, your own, own values and what you want to do. You put yourself in that situation of discomfort, not because of you, but because situation and world has put you in that situation. So in that case, first, the very first thing you have to do is make to make sure that you are looking after things and people around you who will provide you your basic safety. And I'm talking about simple Maslow's principle, you know, making sure that you have got food on your plate and, you know, shelter, protection, all that stuff, that basic stuff, that, that we need to do, because if we can't provide ourselves that basic safety. It's really hard, because then you get to a point you are cornered, and you make decisions, not because they are difficult to make, because they are the decision that you have to make. Right now, if you've got a got a clock cut and you're bleeding, you're not going to think about your purpose. You will make sure that you know you stop bleeding. In the same very sense those life's priorities you have to make sure that you have, have catered to or you have a plan that you know you're looking after those things people, everything that, that's really important. And in this case, you have to really validate everything that you put to put in that bracket, not your fancy car, not your fancy house, the people who live in that house, the people who drive and make journeys in that car. So it's car important in that that house important now it's that that that stuff inside that house. So once you, you get to that point, then comes the point of finding your values. And there are multiple ways of finding your values and, and this is where hard work comes into play because you have to really cushion yourself every decision you make, and often you have to be ready and be prepared to step up and say, Actually, I wouldn't have done that. I did it because I needed this stuff. I needed that promotion. I needed a little bit extra salary, paycheck that client would have looked good on my resume, or that company would have good on my resume. So even though I knew that their values are not aligned with mine, I said yes to the to the job, giving myself a fake illusion that Yes, everyone who's saying about company and their bad ethical practice, they're wrong, but one person who said, now they're good, I decided to listen to. Person, not because I knew that he was right, because I knew that I wanted to believe in that, in that that person, instead of those 1000 voices that were, that were shouting and screaming at me. So that's where the hard work comes, where you have to start cushioning and understanding your values. There is a lot of work done by, by scholars. And for example, there are there, there are some, some beautiful models like BIA, and I'm not promoting any, any, any specific model. You can go and choose and find one of those models, and you just do a quick Google search, you'll be able to find those models. But the easy exercise that I often tell is that, or the exercise that that anyone can do themselves, is go back in your own life and start reflecting, take back yourself in that every moment where you felt something powerful, where you felt that emotion, that need to do something, it can be happiness, it can be that rage that you felt. It can be the disappointment you felt that cushioned your place in the world, in that situation, and feel that powerful emotion you felt. It can be your child's birth. It can be the first time you bought yourself a car. Every time you go find yourself, what was that emotion? And once you discover that emotion, then pass it through the filter, test that whether it's a pseudo value or whether it's a real value. Again, there is so much work done in terms of what's a pseudo value and what's a real value. I simply say, if you put it into a filter off, is it aligned with humanity? Is it aligned with people more than your circle of your love. If it's bigger than that, then generally, it's about you don't. And then when you look at it, often, people will say, but that's hard, and my response is, that's the easiest way to look at it, if your work and the decision that you are going to make, if it was made public in absolute clarity of what you went through to make that decision. If public will say, Yep, that was the right decision, then generally it's, it's a good value. So once you discover your values, then start your journey of your, your purpose. And like we discovered, that purpose part is something that's innate, that's often so much bigger than you. In some ways, it could be this very big, hairy, audacious goal, B hack that you will never achieve. And in that sense, you know that he will never achieve this goal, but yet you're working towards that goal. And in the words of Dr King, I have a dream. He had a dream he knew. And during his life, the world never became and even today, there are people who are suffering, but he had a dream which was far more bigger than, than, than him. And that's the innate quality of a leader to define to get towards the dream, that vision, that purpose, that they know, that it's, it's far more bigger than, than them, and it's almost unachievable, but yet you work towards it, and that's the power of values and purpose when sort of they come together.

Kim Meninger

That is beautiful. Dave, thank you so much. I could truly talk to you all day, but interesting time. I want to remind everybody that you wrote a book, and this is your work. So, for people who want to dive more deeply into what you're saying, what's the best way for them to stay connected to you to buy your book?

Dave Chauhan

The book's available now. We will literally release the book about a week ago. It's available on all your platforms, your Kindle, Kobos and Amazon, the books called Captain, Set Sail by Dave Chauhan. It's Captain comma Set Sail. And there are so many stories, you know, funny Google searches, they'll appear when you, when you, when you do that, but it makes me laugh often. It comes with children books and funny pirate stories, but that's the choice we make, we made.

Kim Meninger

Well, thank you so much for being here, for the work that you're doing, sharing your inspiring journey with us. I'm so grateful that you and I connected. I'm so grateful to share this conversation with the community and, and I wish you all the best.

Dave Chauhan

Thank you for creating the space where we can talk about these important things that can make our world better.