Stop Chasing Purpose and Focus on Wellness | Chloe Hakim-Moore | TEDxMemphis

[Music] tedx Memphis it is an honor to be here and also pretty timely if you ask me see I'm fresh on the other side of my quarter life crisis now to be clear the crisis is still here I just turned 26 so your girl aged out I'm on the other side of that quarter life side and if you're not familiar a quarter life crisis is basically like a midlife crisis just 25 years early so you're still asking the same questions of Who am I am I using my time well what are the things that I really want to do in terms of family career health drinking water saying hydrated all of those important things that we have to pay attention to and for Millennials this is actually a pretty big phenomenon according to the Center for Disease Control one in three Millennials have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and anxiety is one of the key elements of any kind of crisis it's proven math I promise and for us it's not just about figuring those things out but we're doing so in a world that really human history has never seen before we have things such as the internet which is endless information we are living in some of the most innovative and prosperous times according to the United Nations the World Bank the IMF and also are still seeing persistent inequalities that seem like they haven't really moved much in centuries according to every credible climate scientist if we don't change what we're doing by 2050 we will have ear ibly damaged our world so there's a lot sake in there right and when you're looking for purpose which usually comes in the question of what do you want to do with your life that's a big challenge and I have a theory that for Millennials and for all people we're probably a little scared so in the spirit of new friendships it's time to overshare we're going to dive into my quarter life crisis to work through how I believe that following purpose has kind of kept us stuck and really we should be focusing on wellness and I believe that that will give us the answers we've been searching for so I've had the fortune of basically knowing my deepest fear since I was really little some people call that precocious other people call that an undiagnosed anxiety disorder tomato tomahto the first time I really recognized what was going on cuz I always felt like something was there it was when I was in Trinidad with my family visiting my other family my mom's from Trinidad Tobago and I adored my grandmother she's incredibly creative so when she was gonna have to do art projects like I'm there you know so we're walking one morning to her kiln to get her new ceramics and I'm holding her hand and ice notice for the first time that her fingers were really wrinkly and the verdant green veins in her hand were popping out more than I was used to and her fingers were also a little thin and it hits me that you know she's older and she's not gonna be here forever and I'm like her so I'll be older and I won't be here forever so little eight-year-old me is like walking into an existential crisis and I have to let that go pretty quickly because my hand had been like a limp fish and her so she's like Chloe you don't love me anymore thinking I don't want to hold her hand so I squeeze it really tight to prove to her that I love her and I get out of my extension crisis and I'm like nope I'm here and that moment really shaped how I went through life going forward I told myself okay I know I'm scared to not be here so I'll love on my loved ones really hard I'll figure out how to be a very good person in the world and I'll follow my purpose and dive deep into it so I'm doing this I'm on it I'm deep in school and I get to college I'm ready so I join all these kinds of clubs I don't just join them but I volunteer myself to be a leader in them I'm an RA so I'm taking care of 30 women every year which one of the best things I had ever done and I'm in school I'm a student I'm doing all these things I'm like great but something was feeling off like I didn't really feel like myself and so I thought oh well maybe I'm just busy that's the price of purpose right like you're just really basically stressed as cool when you go to a liberal arts school so I'm like okay yeah I'm doing the thing this is great and I'm but at the same time I recognize you know I probably need a rest or what they call a vacation at some point and that moment seemed to come for me in the summer of 2015 so I had a mentor in school who names Julia Hannah brain and she was shepherding a grant with the National Institutes of Health and so we partnered together to bring that to Trinidad and Tobago and work with the University of West Indies serving a project that served people with disability so I'm like cool I'm still in purpose but I get to go back to Trinidad which was the first time I'd been back since my grandmother had passed and I would get that kind of rest and I was so ready to be back on the island to see my family there and so I get there and going through the work trying to make friends with my fellow researchers and doing all these things and whatever was going on with me was still there and like man I thought you know the ocean air the island breeze would just like melt us away it was like maybe I shouldn't be here longer so about halfway through we get invited to a harvest festival at a friend's Catholic Church and I'm not Catholic but my grandmother was I'm thinking about her a lot on the drive over and you know I'm thinking about her and then all of a sudden accursed me oh I don't know how to do the thing right and so I'm just like okay and so I like I did line and I'm like watching everybody else do the thing and when I get up to the priest I just freaked out so whatever I did was not it and I was like okay so he's just gonna throw more holy water on me to cleanse this and like we'll just move on but it really had me thinking through all of the rituals my grandmother did to be such a devout Catholic and to be so wonderfully steeped in her purpose and give good to the world so to be honest with you I have no idea what that sermon was about I was just sitting there thinking of my grandmother and thinking about purpose and I kind of feeling I was feeling was bubbling up right and I'm just unusually distracted looking at any and everything except the message so when everybody breaks for lunch to celebrate with the feast I kind of sneak away a bit because I needed just some space to figure out what was going on and get my head right so that could be all smiley with people right like that's the thing so I go out and I look over at the edge of the mountain and I'm looking down to the south of the island trying to see if maybe I could see princess town I had no idea I was actually gonna know if I'd seen it or not it's just way down there but looking at that large expanse and also being the mind state I was in something felt different and all of a sudden I felt like a freight train hit me in the chest carrying emotions that I didn't know before I felt like the whole world was trembling like I was being pulled apart I'm having a panic attack I never had one before so this was crazy it felt like an earthquake in my body so I'm looking around to see if everything else is also shaking and it's not so I'm just like freaking out I hate how I'm feeling and I can't stop it so I go back into the church right cuz I also don't want people to see me like and I just get on my knees and I start praying and I'm crying and I don't know really what I'm saying I'm just like this feels really intense and to be honest I just want some help please make it stop that moment was very serious for me to slow it down so when I got back to the states I decide okay I'm gonna check out therapy and I was an RA so I always told my residents you know if you're feeling off you should go see a counselor right cause it's so easy to tell somebody else to go see a counselor so I get there but or I'm like prepping for it you know and I'm someone who needs time to process so I was like okay well this therapist is really not gonna tell me anything I don't know about myself and so I'm gonna write down and I brought it for you because this is me being wild I wrote down everything I had gone through in my life and thought to myself okay i'ma read her my checklist and she's just gonna tell me the things that I already know which is I need to sleep more drink water take care of myself rest and I thought okay cool I'll get the therapist to tell me this so my friends say hey let's go out I could be like oh sorry meri I gotta sleep you know therapy is crazy so that's what I that's that's what I'm on okay so I walk in there got my little list and she's you know smiles at me that kind of building trust smile like I've peaked game you know and she's like so how are you and I'm like I'm great she's like okay so what brings you in today I pull out my little list I'm like sitting there I'm like yeah Susan hear all the things I go down the list and then I look at her and her trusting inviting smile had turned into like so how are you and I don't know what voodoo magic she pulled on me but I start ball I mean it is like Niagara Falls is falling from my face I am just like torn apart and the truth is that was the first time I had been honest out loud about what was going on so what I didn't share with you and it's because I had also not been sharing with myself was that I was heartbroken the person my high school sweetheart I had been with for five years who I thought I was gonna marry I broke up with him not too long before because we didn't really know it out ourselves outside of our relationship and he hadn't been there for me when I had a tumor in my breast for nine months not knowing if I had cancer or not after the stock market had crashed in 2008 there was financial strain on my family and dealing with that as a younger kid that's a lot of the world to try to figure out I was also feeling anxious I had depression and I didn't know it there are also tons of things on this list but we're not that close yet so you don't get to know them but the gist of it is is that I was really not being honest with myself and pursuing all of these things outside of myself thinking that if I pursued them hard enough I could push my anxiety down and all of this fear I had all the challenges I had and they just take their bags and go packing right like get out the pain you know that's not how anxiety works that's not how life works and that's certainly not how death works which is what I was scared of so the next five years what I really had to do was get back to the very basics I had to learn how to be healthy and what that looks like for me is I had to figure out what does health look like for me physically mentally emotionally spiritually and socially and make those things my number one priority which is code for I had to make me my priority that's a wild thing to do when you were so used to dreaming everything external to serving to loving to try to push everything around the world to be peaceful but when you're avoiding yourself that's not possible so I developed a wellness routine and for me that looked like all those things I thought my therapist was going to just sleep drink water exercise take time for yourself go to therapy it's important it will save your life and honestly it that was the basics for me and then on top of that I had to figure out okay what are the things that I need to nourish myself and one of those things is flowers my parents probably knew this when I was little they named me Chloe which means blossoming which i think is kind of cool but those are the kinds of things that you really get to know about yourself when you take a pause and look inward so on top of getting to the basics getting to know myself I started having moments where I felt peaceful inside no matter what was going on and this brings us to 2019 the best and honestly hardest year of my life thus far so it's the best in the sense that the program I've been working on for the past three years got funded which was great and I now run that program I got named to a few professional lists including the Forbes 30 under 30 Wow didn't see that coming I also fell in love even Wilder excitedly didn't see that coming with an amazing partner and we got to travel all over the US and Europe and honestly it's the healthiest relationship I've ever been in on the other hand it's also been the hardest of my life I had debilitating anxiety that really I would be in the bed for so long and felt like I couldn't move I'd lost loved ones and to gun violence I did not expect I had all of these still questions around how do we make change in the world how do we go through and make meaning out of our lives when there's so much pulling at us how do you rest and what I would say that I'm most proud of through all of it is that through every moment I was present I was healthy I was myself and I can confidently say that I thrived throughout all of what was challenging and wonderful at the same time that is called wellness it's being able to manage the internal in the external in a way that creates a harmony for yourself to where you know you are still grounded in who you are you're at peace with all of what is in you and around you and figuring out okay what are my next best steps so let's go back out and look at the world for just another second aside from all the apocalyptic facts I've told you about in the beginning there are also a lot of great things going on we have people who are promoting causes who are protesting in the streets saying we know we deserve more look at Hong Kong look at what's happening in India look at honestly what's happening in the US every day we're trying to figure it out and really the reason I think we haven't figured out just how to do this together is because we've all been so wrapped up and what is our purpose purpose has two options you can set a goal you can meet that goal but then you're a board and you have to figure out new goals it's like this endless cycle right of chasing external things or you could set a goal for yourself that is so far out that it's actually unattainable and peace and fulfillments always just beyond your reach so you consume and you grasp and you take in so much all the time looking for how do I make this better and the truth is I don't think it's through purpose I think really what we're looking for when you see protests me see people fighting causes are going to work you're looking for fulfilment we're looking for peace inside and we're looking for how do we act well and be well with one another and you cannot give or make what you don't have so how do we make world peace when we don't know how to have peace for ourselves so if you want to save the world if you want to live in an environment that is thriving and where prosperity looks the same for all of us not just the few who have the most privilege you start with you you start with figuring out what does health look like for me physically mentally socially emotionally spiritually and work really hard on being good at you because just like hurt people hurt people not peaceful people wreak havoc right so my challenge to you today is to really take serious as commitment to cultivating wellness for yourself because once you are filled yourself with that kind of piece it has no choice but to flow out into all the spaces around you and I can guarantee you you will enjoy your life so much more which is truly the reason we're here so thank you so much for coming to my [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 97,038

Rating: 4.9730535 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Mental health, Personal growth, Positive Thinking, Purpose

Id: rKQLBiylsn8

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 17 2020