Embracing the Purpose of Work

What are you afraid of? A little hard work, afraid to get your hands dirty, afraid to roll up your sleeves, dig in, pick up whatever tools necessary, put it to work, use your brain to solve some problems. Work certainly takes many forms, and that’s a really important thing. What would you do without work? That’d be good if we were in a post work world? Would that be a good thing in some ways? Well, we’re certainly closer to being in a post work world than ever before. We have technology that makes life so much easier. We have reliable energy sources, we have enough food. We have, theoretically, speaking, safe streets, stuff like that. Times are pretty good. What would it be like if we didn’t work anymore? If you didn’t have to work, would that be good? I submit that the answer is no. I think that we human beings, we need something to do. You know what they say about idle hands? It’s devil’s workshop. Devil’s Playground. However that saying goes, so simply allowing people to do whatever, will that lead to good results? Think if you look around just environments where that’s happening now or throughout history time, all that stuff, I think that the answer is is no, it’s not a good thing. You want to see bad things happen, leave a bunch of young people to their own devices with nothing to do, particularly young men. And I had a little bit of a smirk on my face, but for the most part, it’s not funny. Young men went left to their own devices. Probably start some things on fire, probably break some stuff, probably getting some fights. It’s probably true about women too. I just know more about men because I am one. So idle hands not good. Leaving a bunch of people to their own devices oftentimes leads to negative things, I mean, and so I’m not saying when somebody has all of their needs met, and when I say all their needs met, all their basic needs met through no doing of their own, they’re not happy. You would think that the government just giving me money so I can meet my basic needs, that that would make me happy, that that gives me the opportunity to pursue arts, and I can pick up, you know, sculpting, I can become a painter or a poet, and maybe I would do all those things, but across time and just experiences teaches us. It’s not that’s not how it works out, and it’s true across the entire spectrum. Children of billionaires commonly struggle. They have wants. They they really want for nothing when it comes to material possessions, when it comes to food insecurity and stuff like that. The bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, those are all met. Shouldn’t that make you automatically happy because you don’t have to work? Well, turns out, you ruin your kids if you just give them too much money. You create shiftless people who do not have the desire to roll their hands up to get the roll roll their hands up. How does one roll their hands up? Roll your sleeves up. Get your hands dirty. You understand what I’m trying to say. And children born into poverty are certainly also susceptible to this, because if they are wards of the state or taken care of by the government or whatever, it’s also not a good thing. So simply thinking that giving people the ability to pursue whatever they want and free time thinking that that’s a good thing, I think that it goes against human nature. In order to enjoy free time, we must also have work time. It’s a whole Yin in Yang, night and day opposites, kind of a thing. If every day is a beach day, you’ll most certainly end up taking the beach for granted. If you live in a place where you’re not by the beach. You know how great it is to go to the beach if you live in the Midwest, and you deal with nine, eight to nine months terrible weather, and then the summer hits, and you get a Saturday, a perfect Saturday. Whether it’s festivals or parades or the fair. It’s amazing. It’s magical. You appreciate it. Every day was like that. Then you would grow accustomed to it, and you would no longer appreciate it. You would take those great days for granted work. I don’t know that I’m making a great case for it, other than the reality or the realization that as human beings, we must be productive. We’ve got to we’ve got to be working on things. Work is important. It is essential for a lot of different reasons, and that’s we’re here to talk about. It’s also a source of dignity. There is so much value in a hard day’s work, a hard day’s worth of labor, digging a hole, building something, cleaning something up, job well done. Could see the impact. You could see your progress. You can step back at the end of it and know that the fruits of your labor, you can observe directly, and that is without question of value Labor Day, the idea that we wanted to honor workers and their contributions to the economy came from labor unions. The first Labor Day was September 5 of 1882 in New York City, organized by the Central Labor Union. Now it was in unpaid workers took an unpaid leave to participate in Parade and festivals, stuff like that. As the labor movement gained momentum, there was a push for a national holiday where people could take day off and actually get paid for it. So it’s a good thing. And President Grover Cleveland signed a bill into law on June 28 1894 making Labor Day a federal holiday to be celebrated on the first Monday of September every year. So Labor Day became time to honor the contributions of workers to the strength and prosperity and well being of our country. It is today, kind of the end of the summer where we take parade, do parades, a lot of parades going on, barbecues and other parties, and it’s an important thing, certainly. But how much are we really thinking about it? How much do we think about Labor Day and all that good stuff? I don’t know the answer to it. I don’t know how often you think about work, but on Labor Day, just like on all holidays, it’s a good time to reflect and to think, Okay, what do I kind of think? What do I really think about work and the value of work? What role does work play in my life? Is it something to be overcome? Is it I need to figure out how to not do this anymore because I hate it. Is it something that you are excited about, that you are passionate about something that you do? Is it a source of identity and pride? It’s a funny thing. Over the past 20 years or so, we’ve had in the world of personal finance, this fire movement, financial independence retire early with the idea that work is something to be overcome, where people find themselves in soul crushing, dead end jobs and in debt, and they sort of played along and thought, I’m going to climb the corporate ladder and do what my Mom and Dad did before me, my grandparents, whatever, come to realize that wasn’t necessarily all it was cracked up to be, and people would rather figure out how to do a lot more of what they like instead of having to do what other people want them to do and source of money. And I get that. So two things could be true at the same time. Work can have immense value, and you could certainly want to overcome it. And I think that that’s true, and it’s of value when you are working to figure out a different means to an end, simply wanting to be done working, I don’t think, is healthy, but wanting to figure out how you want to be spending your time, and then making plans and working towards that, I think, makes all the sense in the world. It’s a trap that we sprung, or set, rather, for lots of young people. And I say we, because I’m part of this. I live here in this society. I live in the United States, and through that, I’m I’m tacitly responsible, I’m complicit in this.

And what we saw happen was I. We saw cost of higher education explode. We saw students, young people, teenagers, take on student loans, take on debt to pay for that bloated over wildly expensive cost of education, but we told them this the ticket. You got to get your ticket punched. This is how you do it. And then what happens? Graduate with a bunch of debt, got to get a job, and you need to take a job to start servicing this debt, got to get an apartment, got to buy a car. All of a sudden, I’m living hand to mouth, living paycheck to paycheck, and for what, for what? I got a job that I hate doing work that sucks to pay bills and just to survive. That’s not great. That doesn’t sound good to me. Opt out. No thanks. So makes a lot of sense in the world, why people would want to find financial independence and get the heck out of this, this trap of just working for money so I can pay my bills, that’s not good. That’s soul crushing. So getting to the point where work is optional. Think that that’s great. Let’s take a huge step back. What’s great is what you decide is great. I am not interested in putting my values on you. I understand and appreciate that the drive that exists inside of me and my body may not burn quite as brightly as the one inside of you, and that’s fine. We’re all different. You have different wants. You have different desires, needs, preferences. Great. It’s what makes this place awesome. If everybody was like me, that wouldn’t be good. Not good. We don’t need 8 billion me’s running around. So we need people that want different things and look at problems in different ways, look at work in different ways, solve problems in different ways, go about their work in different ways. That’s great. The whole thing is you. I want you to decide, and I want you to figure out what a great day looks like and how you want to be spending your time, all of it work, time, alone time, family time, leisure time, fun time, whatever. That’s what I want. I want you to figure out what’s most important to you, and then for you to put that into action, to make your desired life your current reality that sounds good to me, that sounds good to me, and this is all I mean through different life experiences and different seasons of life, we we also change. We have different preferences and different wants at different times. The things that I wanted when I was five is different than what I wanted when I was 15, certainly when I was 25 and now I’m 45 years old, what I want is, there’s some through lines and some some similarities, but different. I have a different understanding. I have different appreciation for for the field of play, for for the marketplace, for how things operate and work, for the different forces that are playing upon us and that we are just the different games that we’re playing, the assumptions that we’re living under, stuff like that. I had my first taste of corporate growth when I was late 20s into my early 30s, when I was working in a more corporate role within some really big companies. And during that time, in 2009 one of the I was working for a life insurance company. And the life insurance company was experiencing massive success coming out of, uh, or right in the middle of the Great Recession, the financial collapse, 2008 and turns out that insurance company sold products that had guaranteed rates of return. So these have been very popular. And this company I was with, I think it gained a 12% market share for life insurance sold the United States. It was extraordinary, extraordinary. I don’t think that ever been done before, and probably will never be done again. There are hundreds of companies that sell life insurance, so for one to have a market share of over 10% was extraordinary. So you would think, okay, we’re doing great. Let’s keep Good going. But no, no, they wanted more, more growth, 5% growth every year. Well, how can you grow 5% on on your market shares 12% so it was this infinity war. Power of corporate growth. I remember thinking, gosh, they’re just gonna run everybody into the ground. I gotta burn everybody out. This is not sustainable, and it wasn’t and it’s not so yin yang. I’m a person who does believe in hard work, and when I’m saying, Let’s pump the brakes a little bit here, everybody, that’s a sure sign that things have gone a little too far. So we need to be mindful of that as well. It’s Infinity War of constant progress and constant growth, at what cost. So there’s all this. We all have our own potential that we want to realize. We all have a lot of potential energy that is inside of us. How we choose to tap into that or to let it go, that’s really up to us. I believe that our prime directive as human beings is the fullest the realization of our fullest potential, and therefore I strive and drive to hit that every day. So with that mind, I think that work is essential, and ancient humans certainly understood the importance of work, because if they didn’t kill, they didn’t eat. So whoever was in charge of going out there and hunting. There’s no thought, there’s no thoughtfulness. Or, you know, gee, should I take the day off? No, if you don’t do your job, everybody else is going to die because there’s no food. Or if you don’t get the water and bring it back, we’re all going to die of thirst. If you don’t do XYZ, then these people will suffer greatly. So difference, right? Bible encourages diligence and hard work. Proverbs tells us that all hard work brings a profit, but mere talks leads mere talk leads only to poverty. So we need to be industrious. Not just talk about it. Gotta be about it, not just talk about it obviously. Maybe it’s not obvious. The Bible also references and I’m talking about the Bible just because it’s ancient wisdom, something we’re all familiar with, and there’s just so much wisdom in every word within the book. So Bible certainly talks about rest and balance. Talk about the Sabbath and the importance of honoring the day, your your your day of rest. It’s in the 10 Commandments. So work life balance, along with the fire movement, probably people have been talking about work life balance for a really long time, but this is also something that it’s never going to be 5050, it’s never going to be it’s never probably going to be the same every week. And what your idea is of work life balance is unique to you. And I really advocate that you work to figure out what that is. I like to talk about the right rhythm to life, sort of like music, and I want to be flowing. I want to have the right rhythm. I don’t want things to be out of balance when I go too hard in one direction than the other. Aspects of my life that are important, they suffer. I like to think about six areas of life, family, community, your career, your finances, your personal development, your well being, and then your peace of mind. And we need to be sure that we’re touching all of those and making sure that we have the right rhythm or stasis or balance between all six of those areas. Because when we ignore one area, all other areas will certainly suffer because of that, even though you don’t think so. I think that how you look at everything, how you look at your life, makes all the difference, and that’s your perspective, and certainly, how you look at work makes all the difference. So for me, if my name’s on the list, then I’m going to be I’m going to be committed, and my heart’s going to be in the work. One of my favorite stories talks about during the space race, John F Kennedy was at NASA. It was late in the evening, probably early in the morning. Everybody was still working, and JFK noticed there was a janitor who was really working hard, and he walked up to the man because he was curious what was curious what was going on, he said, Hey, I’m Jack Kennedy. Can I ask you what you’re doing? He said, Well, Mr. President, I’m working to put a man on the moon. So there’s a guy cleaning up the floors, cleaning the toilets. If he didn’t think about it like that, he saw himself as part of the this critical mission as he was, as he was. So do you think about work as a calling or a vocation? It’s an interesting thing. God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden and told him to work it and take care of it. So maybe

you think about your work like that. Maybe you think about. But you are a good steward of your family, your little garden of Eden, my little garden of Eden, your community and work, it can take the form, obviously, of I’m training time for money, or I’m I’m doing something in service of receiving some kind of compensation, but it’s also making sure that I’m working in service of those other areas of my life. So I think it’s an important thing. Will you ever get there? Will you ever feel like like your work is your this is what I do, this is my calling, this is my vocation. I don’t know. I hope that you will. I think that that’s a good thing. Why wouldn’t I want to have a deep connection to the work that I’m doing, versus feeling like I’m part of some soul crushing, crappy job. And there’s a problem of passion. Certainly, we’re all supposed to be finding our calling and our why and finding our passion. That’s great if you have it, but also very, very abstract if I don’t, and this is one of those things that we tell people to just do, just figure it out. And if we have no idea how to do that, how to do it, then why would I? Why would I be able to do that? So I advocate that instead of just trying to figure out what you’re passionate about, just get serious about whatever you’re doing, and then you’ll get good at it, and then from there, I bet you’ll become passionate about it. So will that work for you? I don’t know. I’d say it’s worth a try, though. Here’s something I know for sure, is that all this takes courage. It takes courage to look inside and ask yourself these existential, big questions. It takes courage to if the answer is, my job sucks and I hate it, to make change in your life that takes a lot of courage, forging your own path, cutting your own path, takes absolute courage. It will take hard work. There will be discomfort, there will be anxiety, lots of negative feelings, or what society tells you are negative feelings and bad things, but they’re not. Little bit of healthy anxiety is a good thing. It keeps us alive. It keeps us moving. Pain from having that worked a hard day. That is a value pain because I’ve strained my muscles, because I’m working out and lifting, that’s just me getting stronger. That’s what that is going with the flow is easy. Going with the flow is easy. Doing what you’ve always done is easy. But at what cost? It’s got a giant negative cost in the end, when you get to 4550, you realize, oh, no, what am I going to do? Is this it? Am I stuck here? Maybe, is it ever too late? No, it’s not too late to think about the work that you want to be doing and then figure out how to do a little bit of it, and then figure out how to do a little more of it. Just think about what you want your day to look like. What would you like to be spending your time doing? How can you be earning money doing that? And get to work figuring that out. That’s what I want for you. I want you to figure out what you know and think about work, how you feel about it, and then get to work on doing the work you’re interested in doing. You can do it. You’re a courageous person, you’re smart enough, you’re worthy of the life that you want. You’re even deserving of it, but none of us are entitled to it. So as always, do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.