On Being Human and the Four Jobs – Ep. 158

Earn and manage money. Build and maintain physical health. Give and receive love. Create purpose and meaning. These are the four jobs that every human being should take into account when living the everyday life. These four activities are – or at least should be – the greatest incentives that guide our actions, our thoughts, our behaviors, and how we show up in the world. Without them, nothing flows the right way.

In this episode of Next Level Human Podcast, Dr. Jade explains the concept of the four jobs (mentioned at the beginning of every episode) and talks about the importance of balancing them and making them work together. Although we tend to prioritize one of them from time to time, it’s fundamental to give enough attention to each one. These jobs are not taught in school; we learn them and figure them out on our own.

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Website: www.jadeteta.com

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Podcast Intro: [00:14] welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast. As a human, you have a job to do. In fact, you have four jobs; to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships, to find meaning and make a difference. None of these jobs are taught in school and that is what this podcast is designed to do. To educate us all on living our most fulfilled lives through the mastery of these four jobs. I'm your host, Dr. Jade Teta and I believe we are here living this life for three reasons and three reasons only; to learn, to teach and to love. In this podcast, I will be learning, teaching, and loving right along with you. I'm grateful to have your company; here is to our next level.

Episode Intro: [01:18] welcome to the podcast everyone it is Dr. Jade Teta today, we are going to be talking mindset stuff and some of the next level human work that I do. Obviously, this podcast I've gone back and forth on the name of this podcast several times, the Jade Teta podcast Mind Muscle metabolism, Next Level human, it's kind of all three, it's kind of what I want it to be a mix of my work in mindset, personal development, as well as fitness, strength and conditioning and of course, natural medicine, metabolism, weight loss. I absolutely adore and love self help self development, I minored in psychology, and I feel like I really kind of majored in psychology my whole life after what I went through my first breakup at 18 years old. This is something that a lot of people don't know about me, I oftentimes laugh with my friends and family because I say, you know, it's interesting that I'm known as the metabolism guy, because if you really asked me what I thought, my greatest area of expertise is, and of course, my greatest interest, it really is in personal development, and the realm of self help, and bettering ourselves as a human. And so over the last several years, I've really put a lot of emphasis into that work. Now, of course, personal development is very similar, and obviously, you know, inextricably linked to physical development. And so the two things kind of make sense. I can't remember what episode it was in his podcast. But one of these episodes, I introduced several different philosophies, the stoic philosophy and also the next level human sort of work. And I think I introduced some of these concepts we're going to talk about today, but I really want to get into something that a lot of people have a very strong interest in. And that's the idea of some of my work that talks about the four jobs of every human being. And that's what we're going to talk about today. From my perspective, there really is four jobs that every human must do, whether you like it or not, failure to do any of these four jobs typically results in a life that is not easy and or unsatisfactory, and creates more difficult than it needs to be. Now, I don't know what your belief system is, some of you are religious, some of you are not, some of you are spiritual. Some of you believe in, you know, sort of conscious capitalism, and others of you believe in sort of more socialist things. We all come from, you know, sort of very varying backgrounds and belief systems. And these four jobs really, in my mind, transcend all those belief systems. And certainly there might be some overlap depending on you. But these jobs are things that you need to do and take care of regardless. They also tend to be for things that we do not get taught. They typically are not taught in schools, they typically are not something you can get a degree in so to speak, there are these things that you kind of have to figure out. You emulate other people, you learn the hard way. They're very difficult to sort of understand and a lot of people aren't doing these well. Usually we have one or two of these areas that we mightily struggle in very few people get all four of them done well correctly and some of us aren't doing any of these well. And as you listen to this podcast, I just want you to sort of consider, think about this for a minute, whenever we talk about personal development, especially when you're listening to someone like me talk about a framework that they have put together from a sociology, sociological perspective, and psychological perspective, it's easy for us to be like, Oh, this doesn't fit my worldview, it doesn't fit my religion, or my spiritual beliefs, or my, you know, political leanings or whatever. And what I would ask you to do is, just listen and listen with an open mind. Part of what I believe we humans make a big mistake with is we don't typically have these kinds of conversations except with ourselves and our tribe, who already believes what we believe and so we end up in this sort of echo chamber or bubble, where all of our beliefs and our way of seeing the world are sort of reverberated back to us. And we can easily live our entire lives without getting out of that shell without ever leaving that protective bubble of the tribe. And whenever you're listening to personal development type of work, that's the whole purpose of it, the whole purpose of it is for you to, you know, expand your awareness.

[06:39] The way that I like to describe this back in my early 20s, I did a self development training called the landmark education, some of you may have heard of that. And they had a distinction that I really liked. And the distinction went like this, it basically said, you know, there are things in life that we know that we know. And there are things that in life that we know, we don't know. And then there are all the things that we don't know, we don't know. And most of knowledge 99.99% of knowledge is in the area of the things we don't know, we don't know, let me make that a little bit more tangible for you. Because I know it can be a little bit confusing. What do I mean by there are things you know that you know, well, you know, that you know how to drive a car, I can go get in my car right now. And I know I can drive myself from point A to point B, I know how to use the steering wheel, the gas, the brakes, the turn signals, et cetera, I know that I know how to drive a car. Now, if you put me in a plane, I definitely know that I do not know how to fly a plane, I could not take that plane off. So I know I don't know how to do that but then there are things that I didn't know, I didn't know, meaning there are ideas, there are perceptions, there are types of things and exposures and experiences that I had no idea even existed. One example of this would be in the realm of, let's say, metabolism, right? Let's say you know a little bit about metabolism. And you know a little bit about calories in calories out and macros. And maybe you know, you don't know much about rheumatoid arthritis. But then there are some things that you didn't know you didn't know until you hear of them something like metabolic endotoxemia, or the idea that you have all these bacteria living in your gut, that are sending hormonal signals throughout the body that are adjusting and changing our metabolism. Once you learn that, you go, oh my God, what that is so unique, that's so interesting. And it opens up a whole world of study for you and even explain some things like, why you might get achy joints and muscles the day after you have a pizza binge, right. And so once you get exposed to some of these things you didn't know you didn't know they can change your world. And so the reason I bring that up is because when we're talking about personal development, and these ideas around that, especially in my work, in my sort of next level human work, which is the way I conceptualize and develop sort of my ideas around being better and growing as a human, and sort of mental and emotional sort of growth. I want you to think about it from that perspective. Pay attention to the things that challenge your belief systems. Some of the things I say you might say, yeah, I agree with that. Some of you don't. That's the whole point. Just try these ideas on for size and see if they can make a difference for you. The whole point is for this podcast and this education, in particular, to help you get a better handle on your life where you're weak; how to control these things.

[10:02] So let's enter into this with that sort of idea in mind. Now, what are these four human jobs the way that I see this? Well, first of all, you have to earn and manage money right? Now, this bothers some people this the first job, we all must do, we must earn a living, we have to manage our expenses, right? We need to earn money, save money and manage money. Now, a lot of people get upset about this idea, because they might have a different beliefs around money, maybe some people believe money is the root of all evil, right? And so this bothers people that this is one of the jobs but you have to make a living, I would essentially say because some people might say, well, aren't there people who, let's say, a stay at home mom or dad, where the mother or the father is the major breadwinner in the family? They're not, you know, necessarily earning and managing and saving money. And I would say that, yes, they are, they're earning a living, they are essentially doing it by proxy, they are essentially part of that particular unit. So they are earning a living, you might even say, Well, what about the person who's essentially living on the street, they still have to essentially find and procure things of value, food, clothing, shelter, in a sense, this is a form of earning and managing money or making a level living rather, this includes things like saving for the future, managing where your money goes, investment savvy, your personal financial IQ, asset management, or any kind of entrepreneurial pursuits, this is something we must do, we must earn and manage money. This is job number one. Now, the second job we must do is we have to build and maintain, attain and maintain our physical health, we must take care of our physical health. This is about managing stress. This is about building strength and power and aerobic capacity and eating healthily, and managing our weight and all these kinds of things. At a very high level, if we don't have our health, we can't do much right? Imagine if you're sick all the time, and you don't have the energy to get up and go out of the house, you're probably not going to be able to earn and manage money. So you can think about which one of these things that you would put in hierarchy. But it's obvious that we must attain and maintain our physical health. If we die, because we're ill, we obviously are not doing the job anymore, we can't do that job, right, we need to have a degree of health in order to function. So job number one, earn and manage money, job number two, we have to build and maintain our physical health. Job Number three is we humans are we are community based organisms, we have to find and cultivate personal relationships, we have to give and receive love, we cannot basically survive on our own humans are not islands unto themselves, we are essentially pack animals s we have to connect and communicate, we have to collaborate and contribute, we have to contribute to others and grow them and teach them and they and we must learn and grow from them. Obviously, the parent child relationship is the first sort of introduction we get into this, we have to rely on other people, for a lot of things and obviously, this overflows into the job we just talked about, right? We know that if you are alone, when if you put someone in solitary confinement, which is why it's so miserable, they can go essentially crazy and their physical health can deteriorate. So these jobs are linked to each other as well. And this is where sort of, we'll get into this a little bit but probably the two most important relationships that we have are the personal relationships with our parents and siblings and immediate family. And then of course, one of the most consequential relationships that all of us will deal with is the romantic partnerships that we have in life, very important. So one, earn and manage money to build and maintain physical health. Three, give and receive love. And then the fourth job is sort of what I would call the transcendent job. It's the job about creating purpose and meaning and making a difference in life. This is a job we must do. This is essentially about taking your signature strengths and using them for good in the world in a way that you are uniquely suited to do to contribute to the world to make a difference to decide how you're going to make meaning and generate purpose out of life, right? This is about, really about becoming the next level human. It's about living a purpose driven life. It's about making the world better, in only the way that you can. It's about learning, teaching, and loving. This is the idea here and I want to get into each of these jobs. But before I do, let me interrupt the show just for a few minutes because I want to tell you about one of our sponsors, Evolve.

[19:25] and let's get back to the show. I want to walk you through what I do with a lot of people want I work with them in a coaching format. In terms of I do a lot of business coaching with high end sort of CEOs and top level executives and athletes and things like that a lot of mindset and personal development coaching and one of the first things that I do when I'm working with someone as a coach, even if I'm just simply working on their health and fitness goals is I want to triage and sort of measure how well they're doing these four More jobs. And so I want to do this with you now and give you an idea of how this works. So on a scale from one to 1-10, 10 being like, you really feel like you have this particular job nailed, you're doing it perfectly. Or one, you're not doing it well at all. So for example, managing and earning and saving money, you would be if you're at a level 10, you have no money worries, whatsoever, you got savings in the bank, you have, you know, entrepreneurial pursuits down investments, assets, everywhere you're earning, well, you're saving well, you're managing well, you have plenty of money, money's no worry at all, versus that would be a 10 versus a one, you're essentially living on the street, or close to living paycheck to paycheck, if one thing wrong happens, you are essentially on the street or not able to pay rent, et cetera. So where are you in this? And, and the way I like to do this with money is just think about it a third, a third and a third, right? How well are you earning? How well are you managing? And how well are you saving your money? And just give yourself a rank on this one to 10? Where are you, and I will do myself and try to be as honest as I can here. So you can get a sense of this. I have been lucky in the last 10-15 years and I earn very, very well, you know, in the top, you know, well, all of us probably in the western world are in the top 1% in the world. But I am making very close to what I've always dreamed about making. Now that is great. So a third of that I'm great. I'm already up out of three or four, just from that. But what about saving, and managing? Well, I haven't been a good saver throughout most of my life. And I've also used a lot of my money to build businesses to get me to the earning capacity I currently am and I'm still making up for some of that debt. So I would say saving money is not my strong suit. And managing I'm getting better and better at that every day as I'm trying to educate and increase my financial IQ. So I would say in the financial realm, um, probably I'm definitely above average. So I would probably say I'm about six, or seven, but maybe not at the place that a lot of people might think I am, I'll say I'm at a six.

[22:39] Now, for health, physical health and fitness and that kind of thing I also kind of break this down into, okay, how am I doing? How are you doing one to 10 with your weight management? How are you doing one to 10 s of with your fitness? And how are you doing one to 10 with sort of your health parameters? So for example, if you're 30 pounds overweight, you couldn't run a mile if someone told you, they'd give you a million dollars to do it, and your cholesterol levels and blood sugars and all that kind of stuff, you're dealing with some kind of disease like diabetes, or auto immunity or something like that, right then you'd be like maybe at a one, a 10 would be you are working out every day, you can do 40 Pushups, no problem, you can run a mile in under 10 minutes, you can, you know, do all the physical fitness oriented things, you have a six pack, you know and are relatively lean, you know, 10% body fat for a male under 20, you know, low 20s to high teens, for a woman in body composition. You can do all the fitness things. And when you look at your blood labs, blood sugar's insulin, blood pressures, heart rates, things like that they're all in sort of good working order. Rank yourself in that regard. So for me, I would say I have some health issues. You know, I have hypo thyroid I have and this is funny because a lot of people say Hey, Jade, you're the metabolism guy. You're the health and fitness guy. But I just want to be honest with you because you'll see where we'll go with these four jobs. So as I rank my health and fitness i feel like i Ever since sort of my late 20s When I went through a very stressful period of time at medical school and bartending at the same time in personal training and I diagnosed myself with hypothyroid I've been what I would describe sort of this muscle fat guy. I'm also guy who loves I'm Italian. I love pasta, I love wine. I love sweets, so I can struggle in this area a little bit at the same time. I do work out I'm very strong. I'm 45 and I'm still squatting 405 pounds for 10. I can still bench press near the 400 mark. I can one thing I can't do actually which is hilarious because I just tried to do With the other day, as I still can't really run a mile in under 10 minutes, I'm not a cardio guy. And I'm also 510, you know, 225 230 pounds, I may be pushing even above 230. Right now, because I'm a little bit in my fat stage, I keep saying that usually I'm getting lean around this time, but I'm slow to the mark this time around. But I struggle a little bit in this area, and my cardiovascular fitness is not great. And I also have some challenges, you know, I have higher cholesterol levels, which isn't really a big deal, except I have, you know, borderline high blood pressure, I'm fatigued, my hypothyroid bothers me a little bit. So I would say that my health and fitness surprisingly, for a lot of people, because people look at me, and they say, wow, you're the Super Fit looking guy oftentimes. But if you really see me and look at my parameters, I'm probably around a five in health and fitness. So this might surprise people a little bit, I consider myself and maybe I'm being a little bit hard on myself, but I want you to rank where you are in this.

[26:04] now in personal relationships, giving and receiving love. What you want to be looking at is you want to be looking at how is your family unit doing? How is your romantic relationship? Is it healthy? Do you have one, and then how are your friends. So ECI break each of these down into three different parts. So for me, I am very, very tight and very, very lucky with my immediate family, I would give that a 10. In my romantic relationships, I'm not dating anyone seriously right now. But I have individuals who I am romantic with who I am very honest and upfront with and they're very honest and upfront with me. And these are really beautiful, great relationships that I get a lot out of. And it's all sort of safe and fun and good. And these are people who I have deep connections with. So I feel like I'm at a 10 there as well. And then sort of in my friend area, sort of my friends, I have very, very good friends. And I would say a lot of my friends would say I tend to get very focused on work. So I'm not the best always on keeping up with individuals the way they do with me. But I feel like I got a lot of people that I can go to. So when I think about personal relationships, romance and immediate family and close friends, I'm up near nine for that I feel like I'm really set in that particular area. And of course, I feel really good about that. And then of course, in the purpose and meaning department, I look at this like this, I break this down into meaning and purpose. And you know, sort of this happiness quotient, you know how much of my time so a 10, in creating meaning and purpose would be sort of looking at it from the perspective of I go through most of my day, and I feel like I matter I'm making a difference I have worth, the work that I'm doing is contributing in some sort of meaningful way, not just for myself, but for others. And so when I break this down for myself, again, I'm at near a nine now if you want to think about where you are with this, one distinction that's interesting here is the difference between meaning and purpose. Meaning is something that you can derive from many different areas you can get meaning from experiences, right, you can look at a sunset and derive sort of a deep sense of meaning and connectedness to the world, you can get meaning from putting your effort into your kids or, you know, your job that can give you meaning. But those things are typically fleeting, when they go away when the sunset sets. That meaning purpose goes away when the kids graduate from high school. That meaning goes away when the job is done, the meaning kind of goes away. But meaning is important. Purpose is a little bit deeper than meaning because purpose is really about something that you feel that you have always with you. So, you know my purpose is in my creative pursuits and writing books and doing educational programs and building businesses that make a difference purpose is really about not just how I feel in the moment, but sort of a legacy type of thing, not legacy from an ego perspective. But what will be left after me that made the world a little bit better. Not that anyone will remember me but perhaps, hopefully, I feel like my work is contributing to other people's meanings and to making other people's lives better. And also, the next idea is you know, what about this idea of just fulfillment do I feel like I've sort of achieved the things that I want to achieve we know from happiness psychology, that, you know, Martin said In the father of happiness, psychology tells us that achievement for achievement sake is one major piece of happiness for humans, we oftentimes want to deny this because it's not seen as something that we should, you know, do it's not looked highly upon, but we want to achieve. And this fulfillment comes from, you know, sort of having this purposeful thing and this goal set, that we are actually achieving things and leaving things finished, by the time our life. And so when you think about when you're measuring this purpose and make a difference factor, you want to be thinking about what's my meaning, what's my purpose, and what's my level of fulfillment. So they're on that I feel like a nine as well, I feel very settled here. So here I have these two things. Finances, I'm at a six. Health and fitness, I'm out of five, personal relationships and things like that I'm at like a nine, and purpose and meaning and fulfillment I'm at like a nine.

[30:58] So what I want you to do is I want you to think about where you came out in these four particular jobs. And very quickly, you can see where you want to be spending most of your attention. So for me, I really should be focusing most of my attention, were back onto my physical health, which is ironic, right? Because that's mainly what I teach for a living is in metabolism, personal health, physical health, those kinds of things. And so this really tells you an awful lot about where you should be focusing in your jobs by doing this quick triage. And what I would say here is that most people, when you look at them, you will see a big imbalance in this. And I'll say a couple things here really quickly, because where do you think most people if they're weak in which areas do they go through? If you've ever been exposed to Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Where do you think, you know, sort of your first needs sort of come from if I was going to kind of rank these? Well, they're tricky, right. But obviously, we need to feel like we have shelter. And we need to also feel like we have health. And so I feel like they're earning a living having a roof over our head making money and physical health are definitely probably one and two for most people, you can make a strong argument for relationships, as well. And then sort of purpose and meaning come out of having those other ones balanced. But one of the things that I found happens with many people is that they will neglect one or more of these jobs for another one of these jobs. The classic example here is someone who is constantly looking for and focused on romantic relationships at the expense of their money maybe and their physical health or another one might be the classic businessman who's overworked makes great money, but is also fat, and divorced. This is the kind of thing that we humans get ourselves into. And so the whole point of this particular podcast is to draw your attention into each of these areas. Now I want to there's nothing that's really going to come out of this today, some of my work goes through. And some of the books that I have written and will write in this area will go through exactly what to do here. But the take home is here to do is to first look at the things that you are weakened the areas that you are weakened, and begin to fix those areas. So for example, for me, what I may want to do is take an investing course, or read up on books about saving and finance and the millionaire mindset and all these kinds of things I'm earning well, but if I'm just buying fancy cars, and traveling all over the place and burning through that income, am I really being strong in that area. So there are ways to educate myself in these jobs. This is the point this is the point about opening up your mind and saying, I know that I need to transcend some of my family inherited money mindsets, and or I need to stop doing certain things like buying cars and spending all this money out. I tend to like to be very generous with friends and family. And oftentimes, I can blow through money that way. I certainly that's part of why I have such cultivated great relationships and have a good sense of purpose and meaning. But I might need to balance that. So what you want to do is you want to be thinking about where do I begin to focus my attention. For example, if I'm already strong in relationships, and I'm already a nine there, I don't want to start neglecting those to get it weak. But I may want to start putting more emphasis and energy into the earning money and building my physical health point of view. And this is why this is so important because what I have come to see is that almost all individuals who are struggling in life They are struggling in one of these four areas, and they're not even aware of it until a moment just like now all of a sudden, you hear this podcast, which is the reason I wanted to do this, and you go, I didn't know that I didn't know that I was not even aware of these four sorts of areas, and then I am falling down in one of them. And all I need to do now is once I've sort of seen where my weak areas are, then I can begin to educate myself, take courses, read books, start to focus my attention in those weak areas, and make them strong, we need to have all four of these jobs balanced, I would say we need to have all of them at a five or above, for us to really feel like we've got control over our lives. This is why this is so important. And this is why some of the coursework, and books and mentorships and exposures to things travel and all these things can help with this. But of course, if you're someone that has no money, and or traveling makes you eat worse, like someone like me, let's say if I didn't have the money to travel, and every time I traveled, I just got fatter and sicker. That might not be a good idea. So you want to look at ways to bolster these four areas. I think it's very important.

[36:26]  The one thing I want to say here, around purpose and meaning because it's the one that trips up people the most is this idea of people say well, Jade, how do you how did you get so good in that area? Is it simply because you're a creator, and you put out creative works, and that's what does it? Well, I'll tell you what it was when I went through my sort of deepest sort of troubling time in life, my sort of rock bottom, sort of midlife crisis, which I now call a midlife awakening, I was married, I'm still incredibly close with my ex-wife, we're still very close friends, but I was disappointed, embarrassed, kind of disgusted with myself. After what went down, I had an affair, I was being a person that I did not respect and or I was a coward. And that when you wake up in a sense and see your deep pain and your suffering, mine looked like that other people's deep pain and suffering will be their illnesses, or financial ruin, or reputational ruin. Any of these kinds of things we all through life will have pain and suffering. And the idea to generate purpose and meaning is that from my perspective, pain is the path to meaning and fulfillment. In other words, that's the area that teaches you the lessons that you then can go out and teach others and make sure they don't make the same mistakes. That's where the purpose and meaning comes from when you can take your signature strengths, your unique experience and lessons and pass them on in a way to bolster and help others. That's where you generate that kind of fulfillment, and meaning and purpose in life. That's what worked well, for me. So I'm gonna stop rambling on here. But I wanted to give you an introduction into the four human jobs, help you understand how to triage these and rank them for yourself. So you can begin to be aware of these things, and then begin to think about, okay, how do I now go about bolstering these four jobs? And what are the ramifications to this? And is this why certain things are working and I've had these, you know, continually repeating frustrating patterns in life is because I'm not doing very good in the realm of cultivating personal relationships, especially in the romantic realm, or I don't have a good relationship with my immediate family. And, by the way, if you don't have an immediate family anymore, or you don't have a good relationship with your immediate family, this is also about building a tribe that can be your immediate family. Maybe you meet someone and get married and their family becomes yours. And that becomes your new, immediate family. Maybe it's really about creating a unconventional family of you know, friends who become best friends, and almost like brothers and sisters or a mentor, or you know, parent figure. All of these kinds of things are things that I want you thinking about, but hopefully you can start seeing through these patterns and seeing how you can bolster yourself and get better. So I'm going to end the podcast here. I hope this was interesting for you to just get an introduction into the way I you know, sort of look at these four human jobs.

[39:58] And one interesting thing about this before I go that's interesting, if you look at, um, you know, obviously Internet entrepreneur and do a lot in the internet space. And if you think about it, I recently just came to this, this understanding, I was like, isn't it interesting that the four human jobs are actually the big sellers on the internet, if you want to be thinking about people in the creative space, it really is about money, physical fitness, relationships, and self-development and finding meaning those are all the areas where people spend money, sort of online when you're talking about services or info products, right? People spend on those things. So it's really interesting because we can see that when we look out there in the world of informational products in the internet space, we can see that these four jobs hold true, right, that's where people are spending their money, there's not you know, you might be able to make money, for example, you know, with some products, or, you know, with knitting or something like that, but you're really gonna make the most money in these spaces. The things that make the most money are in the realm of health and fitness, teaching people how to make money teaching people how to find romance, and, and sort of fix relationships, and teaching people how to find happiness, and meaning and sort of personal success. So I just wanted to point that out. I find that interesting. So hopefully this is useful for you to give you a little bit of insight into the mindset part of this podcast, and I will see you at the next podcast.