Your Purpose Is Your Protest
the 2016
presidential election provoked one of
the most significant social movements
in modern history americans erupted
across 420 cities
producing 27 271
protests for a kinder world engaging
13 million 616 687
people people were demonstrating for
inclusion human rights and the
environment
advocating for racial justice
compassionate immigration
gun reform health care access an
education funding
we could spend a lifetime devoted to any
one
of these significant social issues
i’m not here today to talk about
systemic social
concerns oftentimes when we
take on big social issues
we do so to get a kind of adrenaline hit
that approach to change is unsustainable
it’s exhausting and it can serve as a
kind of distraction
we are each here to make a unique
contribution
a couple weeks ago i called my dad
i could tell he was angsty frustrated he
was
forecasting the future of the world and
the impact to his grandchildren
and i abruptly said dad we are in the
midst of a collective existential crisis
and he said what the heck does that mean
and i said here’s what that means
we have been in a trance the systems and
structures that have organized
our reality are demanding examination
the social agreements that have
undergirded society are not
working we’ve come to understand that
bigger really isn’t always better
the world that we’re moving toward
requires imagination
and creativity
i could hear him start to stir
he paused and then he chuckled and he
said
i appreciate your conviction you know
here’s the thing we are deeply
disconnected we are disconnected from
one another
but perhaps more importantly we are
disconnected from ourselves
we can no longer numb out
or opt out we can no longer just
go through the motions
you know one of the most radical things
that you may
do in your lifetime is honor
your unique purpose your purpose
is a living protest it’s a movement
toward what matters
the word protest means
to declare something firmly and
emphatically in the face of
doubt have you ever experienced
doubt within yourself or from another
person
have you ever had a dream and then been
told it was not possible
what do you want to create in this world
what do you want to create in your world
what is the unique purpose you’re here
to offer
it’s time to rise up as a protest for
your own
freedom to rise above the doubt
and opposition that lives within you and
the doubt and opposition that
lives in the status quo you’re not
here for survival
see when i was a little girl i knew i
was going to be a rock star
i was going to travel the world singing
on stages
and then i became a young mother and i
started to feel
the demands of convention and the
pressures of success
and so i shelved my dreams and
aspirations
and i went into banking i spent
15 years in banking
i learned a lot during those years
one of the things i learned is that
banking is not
my purpose i bounced around from the
investment bank to
underwriting to the retail bank
and finally in 2012 i said to my husband
i cannot do this
another day and i left
we had no savings no game plan
we were raising four kids my husband had
just
completed graduate school conventional
wisdom would suggest that this was a
terrible idea
i’m now an ordained minister i’m a coach
i’m a consultant i support human beings
and
organizations and asking bigger
questions
and giving a greater sense of what
matters
i’ve developed a kind of formula that’s
helped me
along the way it helped me find my
purpose
and it keeps me on purpose
aliveness plus contribution equals
purpose aliveness can be found by asking
yourself a few simple questions
what causes my energy to rise when do i
feel a sense of expansion when does it
feel like time and space can disappear
who am i with what am i surrounded by
contribution can be discovered by asking
what do i want to give to
what do i want to support what takes me
outside of myself and has me feel like
i’m part of something
bigger when you combine
aliveness and contribution you will find
yourself
in the pocket of purpose
i now surround myself with friends that
live their purpose as a kind of daily
protest
my good friend matthew hoffman started a
passion project in 2002
with a hundred stickers in chicago he
operated that project out of a two-car
garage
until 2018 when he
opened the ur beautiful headquarters
matthew has since circulated over 7.5
million stickers in 119 languages
around the world this project started as
an anonymous project that was intended
to
just interrupt human beings walking down
the street
to remind us that to experience beauty
we don’t just have to
buy something and put it on us he
wanted a benign reminder that you
are beautiful exactly as you are
see i think that three things that we
could remember as we’re navigating this
inquiry is defining what really matters
and then finding a purpose to contribute
and affecting social change
we may not determine your purpose today
but we can
incite it we can invoke
curiosity and that is always the
beginning of
change as i
have spent more and more time wondering
about my unique purpose
i’ve discovered that i love to gather
human beings in unexpected encounters
and
shake up what people think they know
i have produced over 300 live events
bringing together some of the most
prolific artists and thinkers
all in service of disrupting the inertia
of the status quo
it’s time it’s time to rise
above the opposition and doubt that
lives
in you that lives in the status quo and
is oriented
around survival
the world needs your aliveness
now more than ever
when one of us lives more freely
humanity itself
becomes freer thank you