S1:E5 | Without This Important Pillar, Your Mental Health Will Suffer

 

On to today’s episode…

What is your purpose? How do you find it? How do you live it out? These are heavy questions, right? But they’re also important. For one thing, finding and living out your purpose in your life is a critical pillar of having good mental health.

If this idea intrigues you, if you want to do a “deep dive” into it, you owe it to yourself to listen to today’s episode of the Destiny Malibu Podcast. Destiny tells the story of how she discovered her purpose at a very young age. She also talks about a special honor she received in high school that still matters to her today.

And if you haven’t discovered your purpose yet, or you have, but you feel it’s not as impressive as someone else’s purpose, she has something reassuring and comforting to tell you.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Without This Important Pillar, Your Mental Health Will Suffer

What’s going on, everybody?

We’re happy you could join us again.

We are happy you guys are back. We are going to be talking about 1 of the 7 pillars of mental health and the pillar that we are going to be discussing is purpose.

What is your purpose? What is my purpose? Let’s figure it out together.

The best way to discover what your purpose is, is to ask yourself, “What am I most passionate about?” I feel lucky that when I was little, I knew at a very young age that I wanted to pursue music, and everybody discovers their purpose at different points in life. That’s a great point that some people might know when they’re young, some people might discover what their purpose is in college, and some people might discover their purpose when they’re 50 or even 60 or 70 sometimes.

It is never too late to figure out what it is that you want to do with your life and to pursue what you are most passionate about. When Dez and I were little, we grew up around our mom in the studio all the time. Dez and I fell in love with music at a very young age. The first time that I was ever in a recording studio, or the first time that I remember recording something, I was five years old.

It is never too late to figure out what it is that you want to do with your life and to pursue what you are most passionate about. Click To Tweet

It was the Pledge of Allegiance.

It was at the beginning of a song that her mom did for a 9/11 tribute. I got to do the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of this song that she wrote and that was special. When I was about nine years old, I wrote my first ever song on guitar. That was the first time that at five, I was still like, “The music, this is fun,” but at nine, when I wrote my first song, I was like, “I want to do this forever. If there’s a way that I could do this and write songs for the rest of my life, that’s what I want to do.” Throughout Dezzee and my school years, we entered talent shows.

We were in choir and I feel so honored that at Malibu High I was voted most musical, which I was shocked about because I was on independent study. I remember I came back to school for an assignment or something, and they’re like, “You were voted most musical.” I was like, “No way.” I wasn’t on campus during my senior year. That was special. From a young age, I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an artist and I feel so lucky and blessed that I’ve been able to pursue that. Everybody can discover their purpose at different times in life.

For me, I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was an adult and I realized I don’t do well with shots for animals because things can go wrong. I passed out, so I decided, “Probably not the best route for me.”

A big part of the journey of discovering what your passion is, is trial and error. It’s exploring as many different avenues as possible to figure out what it is that makes you tick. What is it that lights up your soul and brings out this passionate, beautiful version of yourself? The version of yourself that is most passionate about something is usually a hint that that’s the direction you should go for figuring out what your purpose in life is. Justin Bieber has an album called Purpose. I feel like he’s probably an expert on this subject, JB, and Hailey too. I’m obsessed with Hailey. If you guys ever want to come on the show that would make my life. I would probably start crying, but I can keep it together. I can be cool.

Speaking of Justin Bieber. Justin, when you were first on the scene on YouTube, Destiny had you on her computer screen.

Justin was my computer screen saver.

As it was for many girls. Our big brother, Jonathan, would come in and be like, “Why is he on your computer screen?

He’s a hater. Sorry, JB, but we love you, and we love Hailey. She’s the best. A funny side note, I love that album. It’s an amazing album. It is so important to explore different hobbies and things to figure out what it is you like. I’ve talked to some people about this before. I remember I had a conversation one time, and we were at a yacht party. That was pretty cool. One of the guests there, he and I were having a conversation about life, and somehow, I always end up in those conversations with people, “What is your purpose? How’s your emotional health?”

That’s because you’re a mental health advocate that’s why.

I like to dive right in and get straight to the meat. I remember he and I were debating because he was telling me that he doesn’t think that there’s any purpose to life. This is someone that I could tell was struggling because hope is one of the most important things to hold onto in any situation, especially with your mental health. Believing in the hope of purpose is also important because if you go around with this belief that you have no purpose, I feel like subconsciously that probably does affect your psyche and make you feel depressed. You’re like, “Why am I here? There’s no point to anything.”

Just roaming around.

Something I told him, a lot of times we have a tendency to overcomplicate purpose. Just because I love music and that’s the direction I want to go with my life, someone else’s purpose might be being an incredible mother, which is equally significant. Someone else’s purpose might be being a kind person and greeting people with love and kindness and saying, “Neighbor, how are you doing?” Someone else’s purpose might be serving at the local homeless shelter. There are many ways to find purpose in life, and sometimes people get stuck because they think that you need to have this grandiose direction.

Something that I want to add to that is that our purpose is to love one another. How are you absolutely going to love each other? By helping each other. That is what I like to do. I like to say my purpose is, I like to help in whatever way I can. I’ve done many different things in my life.

Dezzee and I make a great team because I’m more of a wear-my-heart-on-my-sleeve type of person. I pretty much lead with everything I do with emotion. That’s something that makes me a great artist and songwriter because I understand people. I have a great love for people. I’m not the most spatially aware person like, “I never know where I am.”

Don’t ask Destiny for directions.

That’s what Google’s for. We complement each other in that way because we have different strengths, but we’re aware of that and those strengths tie into our individual sense of purpose.