 In this video, we're going to talk about purpose. What is purpose? How do we discover it? How do we live with purpose? And I'm going to be joined by a guest speaker today. His name is Eddie Shea, and let me read to you his bio, and then I'm going to bring him on. So Eddie is a certified professional coach, and he specializes in helping minorities in tech technology industries to help them design fulfilling lives. He understands that being a minority in corporate America often, or you know, corporate Europe could be, or corporate Australia, often means making trade-offs that intensify the internal conflicts between different cultures and values, which affects one's ability to live an authentic and fulfilling life. Eddie works with individuals on personal growth topics, and those topics range from confidence to leadership, to self-love, relationships, and purpose. Eddie, welcome to this conversation. Good to have you here. Thank you so much, George. It's good to be here. Yeah, so I know you have some slides that you wanted to share, but I'll let you take over, and I might chime in with some questions, et cetera. Yeah, awesome. So I put together this set of slides really partially for myself to wrap my head around this idea of purpose, and I've done so much reading and so much research about this idea of purpose. What is it, and trying to define it? Many people have different definitions of it, and so I'm really not here to try to change your mind about what purpose is. It's more about how can we talk about purpose in a way where most people who are not well-versed or well-read or even familiar with personal growth or spirituality can understand and can start applying the principles in their life. So my approach is really to help people who maybe haven't thought too deeply about this, really start having some aha moments around like what purpose is and how it has already sort of shown up in their life. Awesome, yeah. I like that you're being very pragmatic about it and kind of gentle with this topic. Absolutely, yeah. I think especially the self-help industry is very white and it's also very male. And I think many of the people who I work with don't identify as those things. And so there is a disconnect there culturally for them when they look into materials or read things from people who don't quite resonate with them. And I'm really interested in how can I bring all of that wisdom that I think is really valuable and translate it in a way that just reaches more people or different types of people. Great, great. So I'll just launch right in. So this deck, making sense of purpose, there's three short parts to it. So what you'll discover in this first portion is a way to understand purposes that isn't overly vague or woo-woo or philosophical. There's nothing wrong with woo-woo stuff or philosophical stuff, like I love that stuff. And I think it can be hard for certain people to really see themselves in that in the way that that's talked about. Also how your purpose fits into the larger picture of purpose and then why it's beneficial to your life to know how this stuff works. So the first thing is just a simple way to understand purpose. The dictionary tells us purpose is the reason for which something is done or for which something exists. So baked into that definition right there is the sense that there's like meaning in something. And because something is done for a reason, there's a sense of like something is being fulfilled. So meaning and fulfillment are part of the definition of purpose. And we might think about it as purpose being a source of meaning and fulfillment. So then your purpose is the way that you access that source. And you'll know that you've accessed it when you experience meaning and fulfillment. So so often people talk about wanting more meaning in their life, wanting more fulfillment in their life. And oftentimes that brings up the question of like what is my life purpose? And that's why these three ideas are so often sort of used interchangeably and talked about together because they are intertwined. So you might be thinking like, but how can it be that simple? How can purpose just be that? What about the purpose of all life? Or what about these big questions? Like why were we created or where did we come from? We can start to kind of go down this rat hole of trying to understand the grandest mystery of all which is what is how did life begin? But don't get hung up. I really encourage you to simply accept that life is here and that you have a life. And just like how you don't need to know how a car is built in order to drive it well and you don't need to understand all the science behind taste in order to enjoy food. You don't need to know the purpose of all life in order to know the purpose of your life. You don't need to know why life came to be in order to know what to do with life once you have one. So yeah, a simple way this is just like, purpose is a source of meaning and fulfillment. And your purpose is your personal access to that source of meaning and fulfillment. And so your indicator as to whether or not you are accessing purpose is when you experience a sense of meaning and fulfillment in your life and that don't get hung up on trying to solve the mystery of life in order to live a purposeful life. So why does all this matter? I mean, aside from the obvious kind of questions that people grapple with existentially, purpose is just good for you. And this has been studied now for decades where it's been shown that it helps you live up to seven years longer. It lowers your mortality rate by 23%. It makes your immune system stronger and your cell walls stronger, reduces your likelihood of having a stroke and developing Alzheimer's. I mean, there are so many studies now that prove the benefits of purpose. And it's widely known that when people stop working, they die, they die sooner, but when they, yeah. And even it's an interesting question though, like even though sometimes people might be working in what seems like a stressful job or not their most ideal job, it's somehow it's keeping them alive. Absolutely, yeah. And so you can read up more on this by just Googling like the science of purpose. There's a website there that is just a collection of all of the studies that show the many different ways that purpose brings health to our life. And I think on a more just experiential level, because like health benefits, I think matter to certain people who value that. And also it doesn't necessarily translate on a day-to-day level. It just makes your life make sense. That it gives you this compass for your whole life that helps you make decisions big and small all along the way. And it gives you peace of mind knowing that you're living your best life, that you don't need to regret your life. You won't regret your life. And it also helps you contribute in the world, to the world in ways that matter most to you. So it gives you an organizing principle around like what you can be doing with your life energy. So that was part one. The next part is about the three basic purposes of life. And this is the first time I'm actually talking through this section of it. So I'd be curious like how it sounds as it's coming out of my mouth, but. So what this is all about is really thinking about like how do we connect human purpose with the purpose that we see around us in nature. And there are these three basic purposes that all living forms share. And what happens when you're missing one of them? How does that show up for us? And some of the questions that you can start asking yourself to really get honest about how you're living your life. So the three basic purposes of life. The first one, the most basic one, is that all living forms like have, they have a purpose to just become itself. Like an acorn becomes an oak tree, right? And perhaps sometimes the conditions don't allow it to become the most magnificent oak tree it can, but no matter what, it's taking all of the nutrients and sunlight and everything it can to become that oak tree, no matter what. So it becomes what it can be, becomes what it's, yeah, it kind of like follows the process of maturation. Yeah, totally. And that it can't become anything else, that it can only become itself. The next is to create and contribute. So when you look at especially fruit trees or there's such abundance that they provide where a single tree provides so many more seeds than can ever possibly be eaten or planted. Or, and so, and also animals, they don't just live to live, they live to create something in the world, whether it's the next generation of its kind or create a home, or there's always something more that living creatures do when they're alive. It might be providing nutrients to another creature. Like there's always some way that it's contributing to its surroundings in some way. And then the last is to grow and evolve. So every living creature faces challenges that it needs to overcome. And it has to learn how to overcome those challenges. And it's equipped to do so by nature, by its instincts. And it may not always prevail, but it's always striving to grow and evolve. Every single living form is unique from one another. And that's on purpose, because nature is always tweaking and changing and just making little sort of changes to living organisms so that we are constantly just as life evolving over time. So these three really about, when we translate it to like our human existence that these three purposes show up in us in different ways, maybe not as biologically all the time. It's a lot of times it's more emotional or spiritual, but that having all three of these is really essential to unlocking your access to meaning and fulfillment. You can think of these as like three legs of a stool in a way. Nice. So what happens when you're missing one, right? And oftentimes we do, we are missing one of these in our life. So when we're able to, like let's say we are missing the stool leg that allows us to become ourself, which can we experience oftentimes as like being in an environment where we can't really be authentic, we can't be honest, we can't, we don't really feel safe where we've reject who we are. And that's really common for minorities especially. And so when we don't have that sense of being able to be ourself, we tend to feel like an imposter. Like we might be learning a ton and growing a lot in our job or in our life and we might be doing some really impactful work, but if we're not able to feel the sense of like authenticity, we can feel like an imposter. The next one is like when we're missing that creation and contribution leg that maybe we're being completely honest with ourselves and completely free with who we are and we're maybe doing a lot of things to really feed our soul and really enjoying life, but we're not really giving back to society, we're not really making an impact on anyone else except for ourselves. There's a sense of feeling kind of aimless, like what am I, what is all this for? And there's a kind of an emptiness to that existence. And then lastly, like a lot of times, I talk to minorities in tech who feel like quite comfortable that they're in their role and feel like they're really great friends with their coworkers and they're doing great work together, but the job has become very easy for them and they have reached somewhat of a ceiling in terms of their growth. And so they may feel really comfortable, but they're not challenging themselves or they're not feeling like they're really living their fullest potential. And so this can often be experienced as like feeling stagnant or trapped and these folks I call, you know, the fixture, right? You kind of feel like you're just a piece of furniture or something which is very comfortable, but you're not really challenging yourself. So just some questions to reflect on like that I encourage all of my clients and even just people who ask me about purpose to reflect on is like which of these three purpose is missing from your life? And when you're being really honest with yourself, like how are you responsible for that? How have you maybe made choices that have made that true for you? And there are obviously tons of external factors that make those true, but we're not really, we can't really control those factors. And so what can you take responsibility for in how you've created that situation? And even deeper question might be like what might you be risking by making the changes necessary to fulfill all three? How might you be maybe putting yourself out there or entering into an unknown situation in order to fulfill the missing purpose? So the last section is all about, now that we've understood what purpose means and also some of the ways that there's like a foundational layer of purpose that sort of shows up in our life in different ways. How do we actually go about living our unique purpose in the world? And by the way, before we move on from the slide, people might be wondering what stance is and stance is the name of your business, stance coaching. Yes, that's right. Yeah. And I find stance to relate to purpose as well and we'll kind of get into that a little bit here. So in this section, we're gonna talk about how to discover your unique purpose on a really high level, not specifically for you, but just on a broad level. And then what it means when people say living on purpose and then what you can do to start living with purpose right now without knowing what you wanna do with your life. So your unique purpose, like everyone has a unique purpose because it's just what nature intended. Like every creature is unique, every purpose is unique. And so the way you fulfill those three basic purposes is gonna be unique to you. The barriers and obstacles that you face are unique to you and also what you experience as meaningful and fulfilling is unique to you. So everyone has a unique set. And so I really like this metaphor. This is the path that Frodo took through Middle Earth to get to Mount Doom. And you will encounter obstacles designed just for you. In a way, Frodo's story is representative of that because his struggles were unique to him. And you will struggle to overcome them. But as long as the struggle has purpose, the journey will feel meaningful and fulfilling. So struggle is present in all parts of our life. And when the struggle feels purposeless, it can be incredibly demoralizing for us. But once we struggle in a direction that is towards a purpose, suddenly the struggle is what creates the meaning and fulfillment in our life. So in the beginning, when I work with clients or went even in my own journey of, starting to live more purposefully, it's full of ups and downs. Like there's no straight path. And at first it can seem really random and unpredictable because there's a lot of experimentation that you're doing like trying this, trying that, how does that feel like kind of doing a lot of internal work to not just take the, you know, overcome the fears that it will take to do, try new things, but also to remove some of the internal filters and barriers that block your access to your feeling of meaning and fulfillment. So even though it's full of ups and downs, it's also full of meaning and fulfillment. And so that's how you know that you're on the right track. That if you're feeling that, you can be pretty sure that like you're going on the right direction. And eventually as you sort of continue on, you begin to see patterns. You begin to see sort of where you've been heading all along, not just starting from the point where you're trying to discover your purpose but looking back in your whole history and seeing how many of the things that you've done or random things that happened to you, all are sort of pointing you in a certain direction. And once you see that, you can start to make conscious choices to stay on that path. And that's what it means to live on purpose is when you start choosing consciously to stay on that path. So your unique purpose, first and foremost, is to heal, heal from these struggles and traumas and pain that you've experienced in the past so that you're able to overcome the challenges that are in front of you. And it's oftentimes like we might think of purpose as this like easy free spirited like, you know, thing, but it's really not, it's full of struggle, but it's through unique obstacles that are, that sort of carve the path of your purpose in a way. And your unique purpose is like the path that yields meaning of fulfillment to the highest degree in your life. And it becomes the organizing principle for the big and small decisions in your life. So if you're having questions about like, well, what can I do starting today? Like, how do I even start this journey? And I always tell clients and anyone that that's interested in this to start where you are, right? Even if you don't know what you wanna do with your life, like so many people approach me because they want to know the answer. They want to know that final endpoint, the star, the North Star, you know, but you don't need to know that to get started. Start by simply turning and facing your internal obstacles and just starting to walk towards them. So if you can identify some of your deepest fears, some of your, you know, some of your traumas big and small, some of the ways that you've always struggled in your life, some of the conditioned patterns that you've started to understand are like no longer serving you, start there, face those and follow them because that is actually your path towards purpose. Thanks for listening. That's great. Yeah, that's great. I like this because sometimes people think, well, a coach, an expert has the answer to my purpose, but and sometimes, you know, experts and coaches even sell that they do. And yet the irony is if it's unique to everybody, then the expert or coach is really telling the person their own purpose. So like the person, the client ends up following someone else's purpose, someone else's metric for what success means. And yeah, so thank you. Thank you for this kind of reminder and reflection. This is this is great. I hope I hope people got a lot out of that. And please do folks watching this add a comment below. Let let us know. Let Eddie know what you got out of that presentation and if you have any questions too. So how do you work with clients? Eddie, how can people work with you if they're interested in pursuing this? Yeah, so I obviously do one-on-one coaching with folks as my main offering right now. And I work with people anywhere between three to six months for once a week or every other week sort of cadence. And each person I work with has a different set of goals that can range from purpose to relationships to career. And all of it is, I look at all of it holistically because I'm really interested in coaching the person as opposed to their problems. In the future, soon I'll be offering personalized classes for either one person or small group of people to work on certain skills. So things like public speaking or developing your leadership philosophy or identifying your strengths. These are all things that can be taken with you into your workplace or even into your personal life. And those are shorter sort of one to three to six session long classes that I'll be teaching. And then the last way is just in-person workshops where I do locally around the Bay Area. And those are mostly for groups or teams to help them be authentic with each other and work better together. And if somebody wants to fly you out, you're open to that too. Totally, yeah, I'd love that. Cool, cool. And just to let people know, what is your career background? What's, since you work with people in the tech industry, maybe you should mention your background. Totally, yeah. So I used to be a user experience designer and work in tech. And in a lot of ways I still feel like a designer. The way I approach problem solving and the way I approach coaching is in some ways very similar to design thinking and a design-centric approach, very human-centered approach. So I still identify as a designer even though that's not how I spend most of my time anymore, but yeah, and that's also why I understand a lot of the challenges that minorities in tech face because I was there, I've lived it and I really get it in a lot of ways. Great, thank you. Well, this is great and I hope people will add your comments and questions and there are gonna be links to where you can connect with Eddie. So thank you Eddie so much for this conversation. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, George.