Adam Torres and Janet Hogan discuss finding purpose.
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Show Notes:
Does everyone have a purpose and if so why is it so important to understand what it is? In this episode, Adam Torres and Janet Hogan, Founder of The 5th Door, explore Janet’s journey and her mission to help individuals succeed. Start your journey by identifying your 3 core emotional pain points here: https://quiz.janethogan.com/pathway-to-purpose/
About Janet Hogan
“I thought my job was to sacrifice my happiness on the altar of hard work.”
Janet Hogan was a cover girl, starred in a movie, ad agency owner, property developer and lived the perfect life in Australia’s Whitsundays with her husband and 3 kids. Her life was a “success.” At age 45, She had everything she wanted.
Janet felt like the luckiest person alive. But all she felt was empty.
A year later, the universe decided she needed a wake up call. In 2008, the Global Financial Crisis saw my hard-earned wealth disappear…and with it her sense of self. she was left with 3 burning questions.
“Who am I? What’s my “why” and how do I find it?”
She went searching for the answers. 10 years and tens of thousands of dollars later, She discovered there wasn’t a thought leader, book or program that could help.
She created the path she wish someone had shown me and so The Process® was born, the program that introduces you to a life way beyond being just another cog in the machine, where you are living the life you always wanted, as your truest, most authentic self.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Janet Hogan and she is founder of the fifth door.
Janet, welcome to the show. Hello, Adam. And thank you so much for inviting me as a guest. I’m really thrilled to be here. All right. So , we got some work to do today. I’m excited. So our topic and our overarching theme, the role of emotional pain and helping us find our purpose. I feel like purpose is one of those topics that many of us grapple with.
And the fact that you’ve made it a practice and your purpose to help others find their purpose. Did I say that right? I think I did. I think that’s amazing. And it’s going to be fun to get into. Topic with you and a big shout out to Kurt, who who’s been a long time community member and, and also introduced you to us into the platform.
So we’re always grateful for our community members that bring their faves over to us to have, to have on the show. So. So really appreciate Kurt doing that. And I guess just to get us started off here, Janet at Mission Matters, our mission, and I like to share this as to amplify stories and to really get them out there.
So things that we feel need to be told and heard that’s our mission. So what mission are you on? What matters to you? What mission matters to you? Oh, what matters to me most was triggered many years ago when I was watching a video back in the day, it’s a videos with my husband and it was a movie.
Maybe someone listening has actually seen this movie. It was a terrible horror flick called motel hell, but the vision that really stood out for me,
the vision that stood out for me was it was the core scene was all these people who were buried underneath sand and their heads popping up through the sand like cabbages. And I went, Oh my God, that’s me. I am buried alive and I’ve now I’m looking at a picture of me in this terrible conflict and it was like a dagger to the guts.
And I thought , I’ve been absolutely blind to this on my entrepreneurial journey. My husband and I ran six businesses. If you can imagine that I was an absolute workaholic and what I was witnessing on that screen was my emotional pain that I’d never been open to before. And that was the pain.
Of self sacrifice, which showed up in self betrayal, burying myself alive on the altar of hard work, because that’s what good entrepreneurs did. that sounds pretty traumatic to me, actually. Like that’s a pretty traumatic experience. I mean, it’s not like the story was like, I like to think about my movie that turned everything around.
Might’ve been like Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory. And I was going after that golden ticket. Yeah. Well what happened to me and I don’t know , if people listening to this have experienced this, the first pain I felt. Was the pain of success and then not feeling anything around that. So I got to the point where I had everything that I thought I wanted, that I’ve worked so hard for 30 years to achieve.
I had a massive waterfront mansion, private beach next door, but so much money in the bank, I didn’t know what to do with it. And so I got to the top of that mountain and instead of feeling this elation, this yay, you know, gold medal winning performance for me, I’ve made it. I had this extreme feeling of disappointment and let down and I had no idea what to do with that.
So I did nothing. And accordingly, that was like a mini wake up call. And I think what happens, most of us don’t know what to do with the mini wake up call, but let’s say that’s the one of success. So I then had to be thrust into the wake up call of failure, which was over investing in the share market just prior to 2008 and suffering a major financial crash.
And that’s when I had to really take a deep look in the mirror because in the face of feeling that I was, you know, kind of like a squillionaire and now I was reduced to nothing, you know, my self worth tied up in my net worth when my net worth plummeted. So did my self worth. And so I became like a big fat zero in my own mind.
And you know, where do you go from there? So sometimes for some of us, the only way to go is out. And that’s where I was. I just thought, you know, right now the world would be a better place without me. And and so fortunately at that point, my husband said, no, listen, we can get through this because I was blaming myself for that loss.
And that’s when I started this, this self investigation, if you like. And that’s what drew me into what I’d been avoiding all my life, which was this pain of self betrayal. I was just totally blind to it. I was telling myself everything was okay. So where do you go from there? Like, so now you have this, obviously there’s in 2008 and for everybody that’s listening that is, you know, was that, and that’s when I started my background financial services almost 14 years, but now I’m been in media full time, eight years or so.
And I remember 2008, very clearly like that was a tricky time and it was a level setter for money. So , where do you Go from there. You’re at the bottom. You’re thinking about what’s next, not just financially. I mean, you obviously had skills to run businesses. You obviously still had, you know, weather access and you had your skills that you originally brought up.
So I don’t, I feel like it’s on some level, you’ve maybe felt like you could do something like you, but it’s more to me, what I’m hearing and correct me if I’m off, it’s more of the mental part to where you’re like, what did I just. I don’t want to use the word waste my life, but I, a lot of delayed gratification there, right?
You spent a lot of time doing that when your friends were doing something else, like period, like that’s for sure. Or, or your acquaintances, whoever. So now where do you go from there? Yeah, well, I was very, very lucky to experience having everything I thought I wanted. So I knew that mountain wasn’t the one I wanted to climb next.
So where we went from there I still hadn’t learned my lesson. So what we did was we monetized time. That’s fair. It takes me a while to learn too. I’m like, yeah, this is my conversations with God. Like, oh, I didn’t learn that time. I understand. I know now. Please go ahead. Yeah. So yeah. So that was business number six, the wedding venue, which we were very, which unfortunately we succeeded at because that became another distraction.
However I knew enough at that point, I’d had enough of a wake up call to know I wasn’t living true to my purpose. I had no idea what purpose was at that point, but I knew that, yeah, it’s kind of nice seeing the, the, the father walk the bride down the aisle. I get, I get goosebumps at that moment.
Does that justify spending 60 hours a week on this business? Probably not. So that’s when I started the journey inwards and you know, like a lot of us, you know, Do attending workshops, random workshops on money mindset and all sorts of things. And one of the businesses that we run was an advertising agency.
And that taught me the lesson of accountability. Like when a client invests and has faith in you, that you’re going to deliver an outcome, you deliver that outcome or you lose that client. But I didn’t see that accountability in the personal development industry at all. There was no follow up, even though I was spending sometimes , thousands of dollars on these programs and courses.
No one was checking in to see if there’d been any real shift. So that’s when I got angry and frustrated and use that anger and frustration to develop the program that I wish someone had taken me through. And initially it was all about, okay, so what is your purpose? And I knew it had something to do with to gift.
And what is it that, how could you apply that gift to a problem that that you feel personally invested in that you want to solve? And I started taking people through that process very step by step, but then I’d call them up a couple of weeks later and I’d say, how’s it going? Cause I wanted to be accountable, not like the the people who’d take that probably shocked them.
Huh? That probably shocked them. Got their attention. They wait a minute. Why are you calling me? We’re done. Aren’t we? Exactly. Exactly. Well, what shocked me even more. Was the guilt that I was met with on the other end of the phone. It was like, Oh, Oh, look, I love the workshop, but you know, I’m really busy now.
So what I heard was that they got the insights, but they didn’t take action. Yeah. And then I thought, where do I go from here? I mean, you know, I don’t want to be one of those people that promises the world and then fails to deliver. I’d rather do something. I’d rather do something else. I’d rather do nothing.
And so at that kind of give up point just before getting to that, I thought there’s got to be a way that we can crack the code for inaction. Why is it that we refuse to step up to the plate when we can see, when we can actually see what that bigger life could look like? What is it in us that’s stopping us?
And that’s where I got interested in decoding self sabotage and inaction. And that brought me to the place that we, where we least want to go. It makes sense. Doesn’t it? If it was an easy path, , we’d already all be there. So I thought we’ve got to be counterintuitive. Therefore, we’ve got to go to the place that we don’t want to go to.
And that is the place I’d been spending my whole life running away from. And that was the emotional pain. What Is it within us? That we are running away from, that’s what we have to turn around and confront. , and so now you’re confronting this pain and now you’re thinking about, at what point do you link your purpose with helping others?
Like in the manner that you’re doing now, like a, was that like, an epiphany moment for you? Was it a gradual progression? Like how did , that moment where you’re like, okay, I’m going to spend a significant amount of my time on this. Like how did that take place? It was several epiphany moments.
The first was finally allowing myself to feel severe pain, which I did. One of the workshops I went to was like a face your fears bootcamp in Malaysia. And one of the things they got us to do or they did to us was go through a simulated death experience. I don’t know if you’ve ever been through one of those.
Have not, have not. The disclaimer form they get you to sign is that thick, , it’s like a book. Anyway, what it involves is someone stepping up to you taking your neck, squeezing your carotid arteries until you pass out momentarily. And then you experience what it’s like presumably to go through a simulated death.
And I was actually, because this was in a controlled environment, I wasn’t scared. I was thinking, Oh, I might, you know, see the light, my life might flash before me, maybe I’ll get the answer, you know, to what my life’s all about. So I was pretty .Desperate by this point. And the astounding thing that I experienced was instead of an elation, a choir of angels, instead, as I passed out, I felt this massive wave.
It was like a visceral response in my stomach of disappointment. And it was like, and there was a thought or a voice that was very distinct. And the words were, Janet, you’ve let everyone down. And, and and I thought, oh, that’s it. That’s the judgment day. That’s my judgment day. That’s what I would hear passing through.
I don’t go through the pearly gates. I go down the other way because I haven’t fulfilled my mission. Yeah. So, so that was the epiphany that moment. And as I came to, well, I melted at that point, I was just a mess and people running up to me saying, are you okay? Are you okay? And I said, actually, I’m fine.
I needed this. And in that moment, I made this decision that I was never going to hear that, that message again and I would do anything I could within my ability to spare other people that most terrible judgment of their life, let everyone down. You’ve wasted it. Hmm. How do you help people like maybe even understand the importance of purpose?
Like, how do you, how do you help with that? Cause obviously you went to a pretty extreme. I’m going to use the word extreme. I’ve never done anything like that for other people. Maybe that’s not that extreme. I’m going to use my, not projecting on you, but I’m going to use my, my thought process on it. It’s pretty extreme.
I haven’t heard too, I haven’t heard too many stories like that. So you went, you know, far in your, your pursuit. how do you help others like, like kind of uneven understand the importance of purpose? Yeah, they come to it themselves. So the people I work with typically are going , they’ve all, come to that first mountain that was the peak of that first mountain where they’ve got all the material comforts from the impressive home.
The kids are going into private school that, you know, they’ve, they’ve ticked all of society’s boxes and they’re going, and I’m miserable and I don’t know what to do because I can’t leave my work because then all of this comes crashing down. Where do I go? And they use the word fulfillment. Or meaning more than purpose, they say.
I just want my life to have meaning and I, it’s, it doesn’t. Yeah. So there’s a point where I, I noticed, and I work mostly with men. Mainly probably because I work mostly with entrepreneurs, but I do work with women as well. But what I love in people is , it’s all about people taking action because I realized it’s so easy for us to make excuses.
So I tend to work with drivers, you know, I also work with a lot of neurodivergent people. I’ve noticed people with ADHD or dyslexia they, they often carry a lot of shame because of their schooling. And so that’s what I call a pain point. Shame around feeling stupid when you’re not. And so those people normally say, I know that this is not my life, the life I’m supposed to be leading, but I cannot see what it is.
And I cannot see through the weeds of my current existence. So they’ve all, they’re already feeling that pain. And that’s when I go, great. I can work with you now. Do you think everybody has a purpose? Like do you, as you’ve been working with people, like, do you think everybody has a purpose? Yeah, absolutely.
Yes. Yeah, I do. I, that’s why the word purpose used to annoy me actually, because at school I went, I went to a school that was, They, they couched purpose almost in divine terms, like a calling that comes as a bolt from the blue. Almost like destiny. I feel like they were using interchangeably in the past or so maybe even some now like purpose, destiny, like that kind of thing, like almost predetermined or like that.
I feel like that’s how I, that’s at least how I understood it growing up. Exactly. That’s, that’s how I got it too. And I thought, why? If there’s a God, why would God say, Oh, it’s just for the chosen few? Surely it’s for everyone. For sure. That doesn’t, that doesn’t seem right to me. So yes, I do think it is, but does everyone find their purpose or live true to their purpose?
No, it’s a minority. Maybe, I don’t know, I’m guessing at numbers, 20%, a significant minority, I think do find their thing, but let’s face it. The education system educates us to not find our purpose. So it’s already an uphill battle for us. Yeah. So that there’s usually sufficient dissatisfaction with life coming from an individual for them to go, like I did, okay, I don’t want to see that scene from motel hell again.
Mm hmm. For sure. Do you think the emotional pain side of things almost like help some people find their purpose? Like going through that and going through those experiences or even maybe like, I mean, I’m, I’m not going to. Say that this is true for you. So please correct me, but a scenario could be, if you hadn’t gone through those losses in 2008, if you hadn’t, then maybe you would have still been on that same treadmill of accumulating more mansions by the waterfront.
Maybe you had one in Florida. Now you need one in the Mediterranean. Maybe now you need one in California, Malibu. Maybe now you need, I don’t know. Like you can feel you try to fill yourself up a lot of different ways. But do you think that the emotional pain now, hindsight being 2020, obviously just to, you know, repeat that, do you think it’s, it’s a part of that journey?
Yes. I think that if we are veering away from our true self, our authentic self sufficiently, the degree to which we veered away is the degree to which we’re in pain or I would say suffering. Totally. Yeah. And so it would have only been a matter of time, Adam. If not 2008, there would have been another train wreck for sure.
I, I, I was, yeah, I was on that, that path. Absolutely. And of course, that always, we, you know, we blame the current situation, but of course, anyone who does inner work knows that it always takes us back to our formative years between the ages of zero to seven, you know, the, the, the formation as a child.
Yeah. And what we’re seeing as adults the suffering there is just a ripple effect of something that’s been unresolved from our childhood, but that’s that’s the, the, the beauty , because we’re so fearful of what causes us discomfort because we’re a society that’s you know, conditioned to be comfortable then we fear pain, we fear physical pain and we fear emotional pain.
But actually talking to Kirk when I was working with him on this and I said, Kirk, what’s your greatest fear about doing this work? And he said, my greatest fear is that it will be like a Pandora’s box that I open something up that is within me that I don’t know about. And I will it, it will cause me distress and I won’t be able to put it back in the box, like letting a genie out of a box.
And I said, that’s a totally valid fear to have. I totally get that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that’s what. Tends to stop most of us, uh, looking under the bonnet. However, I have never worked with anyone who’s confronted their fear and their pain to not like what they see, because when we see the true self, the true self is light.
So, it’s like this beautiful surprise. It’s like unwrapping the most beautiful present, but it’s in weird wrapping paper. We’re not sure about it. But then when we unwrap it, it’s like, wow, that’s me? You mean it’s that simple to be me? I think the fun part of the process of all this is that it like, The more you do it, the better you get.
Like the more you get, like you start looking inward, like over time, whether it’s, however, I mean, different ideologies, different ways of thinking it, whether you’re getting closer to source, to God, to your own energy, whatever, however we want to explain that. But. I find that like, even just manifesting otherwise, like things just happen faster and you just know faster, like you just kind of know faster, you trust your own intuition faster, you realize it’s not serendipity or a coincidence or a hunch, like, no, it’s not.
And then, and like, you kind of can, at least this has been my experience, experience less pain because you’re, when you’re heading towards what you’re, where you’re supposed to be going and you start getting further into whatever word you want to use, whether it’s flow or otherwise, like. Yeah. Things just doesn’t mean you don’t have troubles or things don’t happen, but you just tend to dodge more of them versus when you’re ignoring it or thinking you’re going to put that, keep that Pandora’s box closed and you’re fighting it and you’re fighting, saying, man, you can’t fight the universe.
I get personally, I give up. I’m like, all right, am I supposed to, well, how does this feel? It doesn’t feel good. I don’t care. Maybe I’m right. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m walking away from the opportunity because it doesn’t feel right. Period. Maybe I don’t realize why that wasn’t right for years, but I don’t think about it twice.
And I feel like because of that, I’ve been able to just manifest and attract more interesting and things that I want in my life based off of that. And I feel like the more I work on it and I’ve, and not just myself, I’m speaking from my experience, cause that’s the only experience I have, but also doing many, many interviews, thousands and thousands of interviews.
I talked to others, they validate my. Belief through their do the conversations I have with them and the thousands of experiences that they’ve shared with me throughout the course of doing this show. So I love it. I love it. And I think that the more people hear messages like yours and, and think about purpose as not just a cliche term or just something that, Oh, we have to find our purpose or we have to do this or that.
But to realize like another way to say it is we have to find our humanity. We have to find our essence. We have to find our source. We have to find. What makes it worth us being on this planet while we have the time to do so. Yeah. Absolutely. And our system, you know, like let’s say our system is our mind, body, soul.
It’s here to help us. It wants us to find our purpose. And that’s why it gives us pain. We don’t understand that. So one of the most It’s protecting us. Yeah. Even though we know it doesn’t necessarily feel good, but that’s what, or at least that’s the way it’s designed, whether or not we live it to its functionality, whatever, but that’s the way we’re designed.
What I’ve noticed in a particularly entrepreneurs one of the most common pain points is loneliness. And so and, and people feel ashamed to admit that they feel lonely. That mean, Oh, does that mean I’m not popular? Does that mean I’m a social reject? Does that mean there’s something wrong with me? So But , what is beautiful when we see someone address that loneliness, it’s a loneliness from the self.
We’re disconnected from the self, where the purpose is behind that is inevitably it leads to some form of connection. So to give you an example, there’s a fellow I’m working with at the moment. This is a good example of how pain can transform into purpose. Very successful guy works in the Hamptons You know, at the top of his game and yet this , under belly of loneliness, broken up from his wife still gets on with his kids, but there’s something missing.
It’s a big piece of the jigsaw that’s missing. I don’t know what to do with it. And so I, I said so as we confronted that pain from his childhood, as we resolve that pain from his childhood, He was able to turn his focus from inward obsessing about himself and his own feelings of loneliness to outwards and going, Oh my God, there are so many lonely people out there.
Join the club, right? It almost makes you feel connected to know that the, the term it’s lonely at the top is not. A cliche term that’s there’s truth in some of these things. Yeah, go ahead. So where we went from there, so finally he could see his pain experienced by others. And this is where we’re starting to get into purpose now.
So I said, okay, you know, what do you love to do? And there’s a bit of a process to, to isolate the thing that he really loved. He’s a crazy golfer. He says he tries to play golf every day. He’s not professional or anything, but he just loves it. And I said, okay, how can we take what you love? You’ve got this gift and you’ve also got a gift for empathy.
You’re empathetic. You have good, you’re fascinated in psychology. What makes people tick? How can you bring these things together to, to solve a problem? What’s the problem that you would like, like to solve? And he said, I’d like people to feel less lonely, particularly in my age bracket, you know, which is kind of, you know that that’s, that’s a big theme of empathy that I wouldn’t expect that response from somebody that didn’t have a huge amount of empathy.
Go ahead. Yeah. So now what he’s looking at is using golf, reinventing golf, a form of golf. I won’t go into too many details. But to make golf a little bit like pickleball makes tennis accessible to everyone. I’m making a form of golf accessible to people. So it’s more of a social event, bringing people together because it’s what he loves.
It’s his playground bringing people together. So in helping other people resolve their pain of loneliness, what he’s doing, and this is the purpose piece, he’s healing himself. And that’s our purpose to heal ourselves so that we can show up as the truest expression of who we really are. That’s a little snapshot of how that works, how pain is actually the canary in the coal mine that takes us all the way to finding out what, what we could be doing with our life that gives us that sense of fulfillment that we need.
So many people crave. Amazing. Well, Janet, this has been so much fun having you on the show. And I really enjoy our dialogue and I know our listeners are definitely, and if I’m enjoying it, they’re enjoying it. I already know. And , they’re going to have follow up questions and want to connect and learn more.
How do people follow up? How do they learn about the fifth door? How do they inquire about your work , and connect with you and your team? Well, one of the things I love getting married was I had a simple surname at last. So this, that they go to my website, which is Janet Hogan, H O G A N.
com. And , if you’re curious to know what your emotional pain points are, just go there. A, there’s a link there to a quiz. I think there are about 150 options. Yeah. And you will know when you read through the list. Certain words will jump off the page for you and that if nothing else gives you the clarity of going, Oh now that I’ve got a name for it, you can actually see what it is that is stopping me at the moment from going forward to a life of fulfillment.
Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we will add the link to the website and the show notes and also to Janet’s quiz where you can start identifying your three core emotional pain points. So lots to uncover there. And speaking to the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet, we welcome you to.
Hit that subscribe or follow button because we have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line. We don’t want you to miss a thing. This is a daily show. That means each and every day we’re bringing you new episodes new stories, and hopefully new inspiration that can help you along the way in your journey and Janet, again, thank you so much for coming on the show.
It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Adam.