Discovering the Power of Purpose and Joy | Anna Hall | True Snacks

TRANSCRIPT - Anna Hall - Purpose and Joy

Roger:  I want to hear about the purpose equation. So your company is called the purpose equation. Can you walk us through the purpose equation and its components?

Anna:  Yeah, I wanted to build an equation because I spent 20 years working with older adults in the senior living world where there was an acceptance of the fact that purpose is important.

But again, it's very vague. What does meaning and direction and goal orientation actually mean? So I reached a point where I was sitting under the Redwoods in California one day visiting my sister, and I was thinking about it's so vague. What does it mean? Cause all the research says that people who are connected with their purpose live seven years longer.

Recover faster from illness, less likely to have a heart attack, less likely to have a stroke, like all of these tangible results of this vague thing. But the equation is the result of years of purpose guides who blessed my life showing me the power of purpose. Like when I was in college. I needed to earn some money.

I worked as a personal care assistant for a man named Alan, who was working as a lawyer. He was head of disability services at Boston University. Powerhouse of a man. I mean, he ran this department. He was an advocate. He was a lawyer. He was doing speeches for organizations around the world. And he was living with muscular dystrophy.

When I met him, he could move. One finger, enough to power and his, his electric wheelchair. So my job was to meet him at his house in the morning, help him with all personal care, showering, dressing, everything, suction his lungs because he had lost the muscles to be able to keep lungs clear. Uh, connect him to his oxygen machine and then go to work with him, feed him during the day.

And he would get so frustrated with me, yell at me. It was hard. I was 19. But then we would have these conversations about how his mind knew exactly what he wanted to do and what he wanted to say. And it was so frustrating for him that he couldn't move his body. And then we would talk about the law. And then I would watch him at work.

Working his magic, helping people all ages, all stages of life, and I thought, wow, this man is here because he has a sense of purpose. He was 35 when I met him, which was eight years past his life expectancy, given. the status of his muscular dystrophy. So that was my first entree into purpose. So back to the redwood trees and the purpose equation.

It reached the point where the calling was so strong. I said, I'm going to figure this out. So I quit my job and I did a year of research and I started with wondering about motivation. Why is it that some people get out of bed and go through their day when it seems like life could be too hard?

Insurmountable and others seem to give up in senior living. We used to call that failure to thrive, just giving up. So I started with motivation and I went down all the rabbit holes of self determination theory and positive psychology and neuroscience and personality theory and basic psychological needs, and I ended up.

with a framework that's all evidence informed because why wouldn't I, right? Like why am I going to make an equation that's based on frou frou stuff? I want it to be based on things that we already know work to help older adults define and activate their purpose. And what motivated me besides the vagueness, I don't like vagueness, I like clarity.

With older adults who were people I aspired to one day be like, talking to me about themselves in the past tense. Imagine talking to someone who you look up to talking about themselves as if they don't exist in the present day. They would say, I used to. I used to. I used to. I used to be a CEO. I used to have these hobbies.

I used to play baseball, and there was no like present tense or looking forward. And I thought there's something going on here because we're, we're basing how we think about ourselves or on the past, what's going on. So all of that created this equation and it's a framework. It turns out that I would help older adults.

Well, I'll say guide them because I guide them through the framework and purpose reveals itself. But then the older adult would say, Oh my goodness, you got to talk to my daughter. So if the older adult is 80, the daughter is. You know, 35 in her career and then the daughter would say, you got to talk to my kid in college.

So it turns out that I didn't know this, but the framework works for people of all ages and stages in life. And it really looks at joy because I can't help people look at their purpose if it's not fueled enough to be able to see it and to feel it and to sense it. And then values, strengths, personality, and like I said, the operating system.

Roger:  I love that idea of joy being a fuel to not only energize, but to really act, activate and accelerate. Yes. All right. Our living into purpose. And there's this saying about how, if you, you know, if you do what you love, you'll never work another day of your life, which I've found to be, and I'm sure you have to not true.

If you find what you love to do and it produced a lot of joy, you're going to work all the time. You might love it. You might love it. None, nonetheless, but you're going to work. You're probably going to work a lot harder. Uh, wait, joy's the, the, the word of the year for me.

Anna:  You are going to have an amazing year.

Roger:  So far it's been pretty good.

There's just so many things that point to joy being, not a [way to] mask bad things that are happening, but to help you deal with things that are happening.

Anna:  Another thing that I have, here I am on my soapbox, but people talk about happiness. I think happiness is bullshit.

Roger:  Lay it on me. Tell me more.

Anna:  Oh, you know, there's a lot of, of philosophers talking about how we can choose happiness.

You know, I have experience with depression, uh, and, and when I'm depressed, I cannot choose happiness. And it, that bothers me when people say, just choose to be happy. People who have clinical depression cannot choose to be happy. And I saw that already bothers me, but then happiness is more to me like an outcome of enough joy.

Joy is deeper. You know, it fills us from the inside and happiness, I think, is a result of joy. Joy is less of a choice and more of a physiological, psychological, spiritual experience. And the outcome is happiness. Hmm. Well, I always, I think of joy as, What, what could be our new definition of self care and that's how I teach people about joy.

You need joy in order to fuel your life and what really fuels your life is your purpose. So we have a nice cycle going here. A little dose of joy is also very potent. 15 minutes of joy can fuel happiness and, and meaning for a day.

You know, less than 50 percent of the population feels that they know what their purpose is.

And I believe that every single human who, who gets connected with their purpose makes our human experience exponentially better, exponentially better. That's how powerful purpose is. Because when I know my purpose, And I'm uplifted and I can get out of bed and go out into the world. I'm impacting all these other people, right?

Like it just goes out in waves and the more people that are putting those waves and their light out into the world, it is an exponential effect.

Roger:  It's not only joyful and powerful for us as individuals. It is powerful for the collective. We are better together.

Anna:  So much better together.