Victor (Vic) Strecher

Thank you very much, Shankar.

Look forward to this.

Sure.

So people with a stronger purpose, direction, intentionality in their lives are

live longer, for one thing, and there are now at least eight, nine, 10 studies showing that very carefully.

There are eight studies now showing that people with strong purpose around the age of retirement are far less likely to develop dementia, which is very intriguing, really.

People with strong purpose have fewer pro-inflammatory cells produced in their body,

Some of my colleagues have found that people with stronger purpose are less likely to develop heart attacks.

If they already are susceptible to heart attack and heart disease, they're less likely to develop stroke.

We found that people are less likely to be abusing drugs and medication.

They're more physically active.

They tend to eat better.

And so maybe this is one of the explanations for why purpose helps you live longer.

It's because you take care of yourself better.

And why do you do that?

It's because there are certain things that really matter a lot to you.

And you think I better take care of myself.

I think when Julia went through her second heart transplant, she was conscious enough to understand that she may not live a long life.

And I think as a result, she became far more purposeful.

And I think that's one interesting relationship between salience of death knowledge that you will die at some point in time.

Right.

And having a purpose because, you know, this isn't a practice round.

This is your life, whether it's long, whether it's short.

And she understood that she might end up living a briefer life than most of her friends.

And so she took the elements of her life very seriously.

She took the things that mattered most, her relationships, her friends.

She had a wonderful boyfriend.

She took her school very seriously.

She really wanted to become a nurse.

And she was passionate about being a nurse.

In fact, she was passionate about everything because she knew this is the one life that she had to live.

And that taught me a lot as well, frankly, about the fact that our lives are finite.

This isn't practice.

And we should live our lives really almost as Stoics would talk about, where maybe every day might be our last.

Not everybody goes through some difficult tragedy, and that's a good thing, of course.

We don't want everybody to have the loss of a loved one to stimulate a person's purpose.

But some simple ways you might start thinking about your purpose is simply to ask yourself, what matters most?

What are the things that are most important in my life?

Another thing to do, and we've just been talking about it, is mortality salience.

I have

in my book, Life on Purpose, this headstone test.

And it's just a real simple test.

You draw a headstone any way you want, any shape you want, and put down your name.

Say you just died today.

And what would you want on the epitaph?

What would you want people to say about you at your memorial service?

This is really thinking about the end of your life, and it may sound depressing, but it starts getting you to think about the importance of your legacy.

What do you want to leave when you've left this planet?

So many people I talk to about finding their purpose are worried about the scope of their purpose or the length that they have to maintain this purpose.

or even the fact that they're committing themselves to something very big and bigger than themselves very often.

One of the things I like to talk about is the fact that there are different domains of purpose.

I might have a work purpose.

I might have a purpose at home with my family.

I might have a personal purpose.

I might have a community purpose.

And you might start with these different domains of your life and ask yourself, which of those domains are most important to me?

And then within that domain, you might start thinking about, do I have a purpose within that domain?

For example, we spend most of our waking hours working.

Most of us do anyway.

So that's a really important time for many people.

And many people might think, well, I just work for the money.

But are there other things that you could build in what some of my colleagues call job crafting?

Could you craft purpose out of the job that you have and turn that into something that's a little more powerful and meaningful for you during this time you're spending most of your waking hours?

So let's talk about two aspects of this question.

One is the fact that she got burned out from teaching, and that's

not uncommon because it's such a difficult job.

People who are in healthcare get burned out from that.

You see burnout everywhere.

And along with burnout comes loss of purpose.

So one thing I'd like to say to this person and to other people who are experiencing burnout is

Purpose can give you vitality and energy if you start thinking about new ways of teaching or new ways of practicing medicine or nursing.

But also there are things you can do that purposeful people tend to do to develop that energy and vitality.

I like to think about five things that have been shown in randomized trials to actually give you more energy and vitality.

One is sleep.

The second is presence or mindfulness.

Activity, physical activity is important.

I try to walk to work every single day that I'm teaching.

Creativity, you might think, what is there about creativity that gives you more energy?

Well, just try doing a haiku and ask yourself, now do I have a little more energy?

I ask my students to do that.

And invariably, they are more vital after they just finished a haiku and they all raise their hand.

I want to read my haiku.

So if you are burning out as an employee, or just generally in life, you might ask yourself, am I giving myself space?

Am I sleeping?

Am I present?

Am I active?

Am I creative?

And am I eating well?

And then over time,

Become a researcher of yourself and start asking yourself, are there certain letters there in space that are giving me even more energy?

For me personally, I found that being creative was the number one thing I could do to have more energy and get more control, self-control of myself.

So I love that.

Now, the second part of that question is if you have burned out like this person has and now they are seeking a new chapter in their life, that's a perfect time to start repurposing your life, going back and really looking

conducting that self-contemplation, that self-research, what we sometimes refer to as me-search, and asking yourself, what are the things that are important in my life?

You might ask yourself, who am I?

What is my identity?

And from that identity, I think I could start generating a purpose.

And that can lead to then asking the question, are there certain skills that I need to generate to become more effective in this next phase of my life?

Absolutely.

I mean, these are the things we've been told to do for, what, decades and decades, and yet very often we don't do them.

But if we are intrinsically motivated to do them and study them about ourselves because we have this

big, hairy, audacious purpose in our lives, then we start improving those behaviors.

And we tend not to relapse as much.

You know, if you try to work out more or try to change your diet or try to quit smoking or so many other behaviors, and I'm in public health, this is what I do professionally for the last 40 years.

We know that the relapse rates, even after three to six months, can be 70 or 80 percent of people go back, rebound almost like a rubber band back to their

old behaviors.

But if they have the stronger intrinsic motivation to make a change, we don't see that relapse as much, not nearly as much.

first of all, I'm so sorry for this person's loss.

It is unbearable and it continues.

Gradually, it does get better.

And if you can survive this, you can be an example to others who go through difficult times.

That would be one of my messages.

Now, I think being a mother is

of a person who's lost a child is different than being a father.

In fact, nobody goes through the same journey.

No one is the same.

I went through my own journey by reading Seneca and reading Rumi and many, many other philosophers and poets and writers.

My wife went through a very different journey and she decided to start volunteering

in the children's hospital that was always taking care of Julia.

And she became a very active volunteer in the hospital.

And that gave her life a great deal of meaning.

I'm not a therapist, so I don't want to pretend that I can help an individual in a therapeutic way.

All I can say is what's happened to my wife and I and other people that I've observed.

And I think it's very important to find meaning

through doing, through doing something, through being active, through giving in particular.

I'll also say this, and it may sound trivial, but our dog has helped us a lot.

We have a Jack Russell Terrier.

His name is Uncle Lenny, and he keeps us active all the time.

He's a very active dog, requires a lot of attention, and that helps.

So that's all I can say is what's happened to me personally.

Well, I think that doing, I think it was Goethe who once said, in the beginning was the act.

And getting out there and acting, getting out there and doing something, like volunteering,

can be very helpful for people.

And there's a lot of research that shows this as well.

I know for me in my personal life, I could sit and continue to read more and more philosophy and more and more Seneca and more and more Viktor Frankl, et cetera.

And all of that was helpful for my mindset, but ultimately I had to go into the classroom and teach and stop a second

As I was teaching or just before, as everybody's just walking into the classroom and sitting down and looking at every one of my students and taking a breath and saying, all of you are my daughters right now.

Just to myself.

I don't say it to anybody in the classroom.

I just think that.

And then it gives me this profound energy for teaching.

And I think somehow trying to create that approach to your doing can be very helpful.

Well, first of all, thank you, Gretchen, for that wonderful feedback, because when I was saying you need to get over yourself, and I think it was actually Julia, my daughter, telling me I needed to get over myself.

I try to emphasize that it wasn't like you need to get over this.

That was the last thing that I wanted to say.

What I was trying to say is I need to get over my own ego.

I need to transcend my ego.

as opposed to continually ruminate within your own ego, within your own castle wall.

Somehow rise above that castle wall.

Open that drawbridge.

Leave the castle.

Be exposed to other people.

Be exposed to failure.

Be exposed to the potential for not being perfect when you're out there.

Maybe also, I'll never forget a day or two after our daughter passed away, I was walking with a couple of my friends and they were asking what I needed.

And I said, the thing I need is for you to still be my friend when I'm probably not the most attractive person to be a friend with.

I really would hope that they would still be a friend.

So, no, I don't think it's about somehow...

getting over yourself and turning around and, you know, just, you know, battening the hatches and, and you're, you're going out there going, I'm now a stronger person.

Darn it.

It is more about transcending that castle wall that you're in.

I think that's what I,

was trying to convey.

And I apologize if I didn't convey it in that way, because I certainly didn't mean you need to get over yourself.

That would certainly be blaming the victim, I think.

It's a wonderful question.

I did not go through any sense of shame.

in searching for my purpose or trying to find my purpose, but I have run into people who have.

I'll never forget, this may be five years after I wrote my book, Life on Purpose, I was invited to give a keynote to a national OB-GYN conference.

So these are obstetricians and gynecologists, many of whom were women,

And after my keynote, I ran a workshop about finding purpose.

And so many of these people came in from the keynote address and most of them were women.

And they said, you just freaked me out, Vic.

I said, how did I freak out?

Well, now this is one more thing I need to do and I need to be really good at.

And of course, we know very often that women sometimes feel

a sense that they need to be perfect and do better.

And there's so many reasons for this, sexist reasons for this that I try to understand.

But it just came out so strongly from these women.

And here I'm thinking these are incredibly successful people, incredibly successful women, professionals who have accomplished everything they strive for in their lives.

And here they are.

I've just given them one more thing to worry about.

That's unfortunate.

And I don't mean to be doing that.

So Erica brings up such an important point.

And thank you, Erica, for the question.

I just I couldn't help stopping when you said horrible, grumpy, selfish.

Really?

So you're a caregiver of multiple people in your family.

You were thrust into that role.

And then suddenly you are now the person that people turn to.

They need you.

It's essential.

They rely on you.

It's very hard being a caregiver.

There is some research that shows that many caregivers don't actually label themselves as a caregiver.

They just experience the stress.

They just experience the difficulties, the noise, the loss of income, the many, many things they have to go through by taking care of a person or people.

But they never label themselves as a caregiver.

And it turns out to be a very helpful thing to label yourself.

I am a caregiver.

Suddenly that's saying I have a purpose in my life.

Wow, Cheryl, great question.

Love the question.

So I like to tell my students to be willing to fail, double the number of failures.

There's a star tennis player, her name is Emma Navarro, and she's one of the top 10 tennis players in the world, female tennis players.

And her father, Ben Navarro, lives in Charleston, and he teaches a course on intentionality.

And we were talking the other day and he said, in my class, I have my students go out and purposely fail in something and then write about it, write about that failure, write about the emotions, write about the experience and write about what you're going to do now.

So this is what, you know, obviously really at the heart of what I believe Carol Dweck's growth mindset is all about.

Are you willing to fail?

And then when you have a failure, how do you interpret that failure?

And I think it's very important that you continue being willing to try something

And maybe fail in it.

It is important.

At the same time, if you just keep beating your head against the wall continually doing the same thing, of course, that's not good either.

So it's a tricky, tricky answer to provide for people.

You know, the classic case of having a purpose in your work, no matter what you're doing, goes back to 1962 when John F. Kennedy was touring NASA and he walked up to a maintenance worker, a custodian, and said, hi, I'm, you know, John F. Kennedy, what do you do?

And he said, well, Mr. President, I'm helping put a man on the moon.

I've heard about so many people who have fairly, what,

One might consider mundane jobs and they find great purpose in those jobs.

I remember we had a septic tank that needed emptying out in the front of our house.

And I remember talking to the manager there and asking him about his job.

Said, why do you do this?

Because, you know, it's a pretty smelly job, obviously.

It's a very smelly job, actually.

And he looked at me like I was kind of crazy.

And he said, well, for the money.

And I said, do you realize that this is one of the most important things that one could ever do in public health through the history of humankind, taking the poop out of the water?

system is one of the most important things anyone has ever done for the public salt.

And that's what you do.

In a way, you are a public health worker.

And his eyes kind of lit up.

He literally then said, can I give you my card?

And I said, well, of course.

And it suddenly it almost was like some light clicked in him.

I don't know whether that will stay.

I don't know whether it's changed his life.

But at least at that point, he may have viewed his job in a

in a different way.

One of the jobs that's been considered the least purposeful and the least paying is parking attendant.

And I started talking about that once in a group and somebody came up afterwards and told me a story about their parking attendant because they always had to park in the same place.

And this parking attendant literally had a small ruler and he would go around to all the cars and all the tires and measure the tire tread.

And then when the cart left, the parking attendant would say, if you had low tire tread, say, by the way, maybe you need some new tires.

Did you notice you have very low tire tread?

That's a very purposeful person.

Wow.

You know, how many times have you gone up to a cashier?

You're checking out, right?

And that cashier looks as if they can't wait.

They're looking at their watch.

They simply can't wait for their shift to end.

And they're counting the minutes.

And there are other people who go, hi, how are you doing?

How was your day?

Did you get everything that you needed?

There's night and day.

Now, which employee do you think becomes happier, not just is happy, but becomes happy as a result of those interactions that they have with people?

I think it's pretty clear.

So

I do think that to some extent you can choose to another extent.

Sometimes you run into a cashier and they're just they're grumpy and they're not looking at you.

And you may interpret that as the person being a mean person, not a good person, or it could well be that they just had an awful day.

or has a sick child in the hospital, or is going through a divorce, or just their husband or wife or spouse just lost their job.

There are many things that people are going through.

So making attributions about why a person is acting in a certain way, I think is not a good thing to do.

On the other hand, trying to extend yourself to another person

in a way that may improve.

I can't tell you how many people, if they are just looking kind of glaze-eyed or grumpy, I might ask how their day is going.

And very often they'll turn to me and say, well, here's how it's going.

And then you have a conversation and you leave much more, both of you leave much more satisfied.

First of all, the micro issue itself of being an empty nester.

So this happens very often when parents have devoted so much of their attention, their lives to their children, and suddenly their children are gone.

You can certainly help a person after they have left the home and support them.

through your own advice, through financial assistance, through many things, through encouragement, through being a sage that they turn to, a person that they turn to for advice.

All of those things are certainly helpful.

But also, it may well be a time for you to become a really great model for your children in how you actually live this next chapter of your life.

For example, maybe if there are other things they can get engaged in, it could be a hobby.

You can be very purposeful within a hobby.

You know, I know, for example, I work in a medical school, so I know a lot of physicians who in retirement or as they became empty nesters took up things like woodworking or painting or other hobbies.

And they became enamored with those and really got into it.

They're happy now.

you know, or maybe it's pickleball, whatever it is, what you're doing then is setting example for your children that it's not all about having children.

It's not all about them.

It is about doing something that's fulfilling and flourishing in your, that you can produce, you can flourish in your own life without the necessity of children.

And what that makes you, I think, is a better parent.

Precisely.

I couldn't agree more.

When you start looking outside of your immediate family and start asking, what could I do for my friends?

What could I do for my neighbors?

What could I do for my community?

What could I do for my country?

What could I do for people in other countries?

That to me is the epitome of purpose and a transcending purpose.

And there's probably nothing

greater that you could teach your children than this act of self-transcendence and moving beyond the immediate family.

Obviously, they've given you a lot and you've given them a lot.

But what do you really give them now?

You give them the example of yourself.

I've received a huge number, hundreds, many hundreds of responses today.

from people through email, through LinkedIn, through many, many ways.

And it seems to have really touched a chord.

And from that, I am

grateful because i i think this has this is a very important area of people's lives now and it's not just since covid i think you could go back 2400 years to aristotle who asked these same questions of what makes us happy and he basically said having a purpose and direction is what makes us happy

I can relate to Victoria, by the way, because I have lots of purposes in different domains.

I certainly have community purposes.

I have family purposes.

My wife and I have strong purpose in our relationship together.

We have purpose with our children and certainly strong purpose in work.

So I can relate and I'm always thinking, boy, how do you balance these purposes?

I can talk about getting more energy and vitality so that you can develop, you know, actually be more aligned with all of those purposes, but can balance.

having so many different domains of purpose burn you out?

I would think so.

Yes, I think it can be.

So you do need to give yourself some downtime, some relaxation time, maybe even some purposeless time.

As one of my mentors, Jim Lehrer, has told me many times that energy is the most important aspect that we can have in our lives.

Thinking about not health,

But thinking about energy, do I have vitality?

Do I have energy?

What gives me more energy every single day?

So we could go all the way back then to these space criteria of sleep, presence, activity, creativity, and eating so that you can live and be purposeful in multiple domains.

At the same time, you may need to learn to say no as well.

Wonderful question from Julie.

I think I'm going to separate the word goal from the word purpose.

So a goal is achievable.

I mean, almost by nature, a goal typically is something that there is a possibility of achieving.

Now, goals are very close to purpose, but purpose doesn't necessarily need to be achievable.

It needs to be aspirational.

So I may aspire to teaching every one of my students as if they're my own daughter.

That's probably not achievable.

But it is aspirational.

In other words, I go into the class with the mindset or into my office hours with the mindset that I am going to try to do that.

That becomes a purpose, a direction, an intention of mine, but not necessarily a goal that's achievable.

So the two are different.

And I have to accept the fact that the purposes I have in my life are not going to necessarily be met.

Well, first of all, there is another episode that you did with a person named Tony Burrow, Anthony Burrow at Cornell.

And Tony Burrow is a developmental psychologist.

So he focuses a lot on that developmental process.

And he's one of the world's experts on purpose.

So first of all, I'd suggest you go to that episode and listen, because it's such a powerful episode.

But what I would suggest, and I have worked with kids, different times, different situations.

And

I think the idea of starting with what matters most, just like with adults.

So if you ask a child what matters most right now, and they may go climate change matters most.

There are different things that may matter most.

I'll give you one example.

My seven-year-old grandson saw a documentary about shrimp and the unsafe harvesting of shrimp.

Well, he he was so alarmed by this that he decided to put together a group of people in his hometown.

They made signs and the sign said things like save the shrimp.

And suddenly the ex-mayor became involved in this.

And they started parading along the side of the street with these save the shrimp placards.

And this became a purpose of his.

And he's seven years old.

So I do think that you might start with what matters to you?

What matters most?

What are some of those things?

And on the basis of that, maybe think about how you could become more purposeful.

Are there certain things you might be able to engage in that are meaningful to the things that matter?

Starting to live that way?

Imagine, I can't wait to see that seven-year-old grandson grow up into an adult and just, boy, watch out world.

Here's how I think about that.

I believe that

Students need to know who they are.

Meaning, what are their core values?

Explore their identity.

Is the identity that they're striving for, does that fit?

Almost like a suit.

Try the suit on, wear it for a while.

See whether that works for you.

Do you like being this person who wants to be wealthy?

Do you like being this person who wants to be generous?

Do you like this person who wants to be a healer?

Whatever.

Try those things on for a change.

find out what your core values are, what your identity is from those core values.

And from that, find out whether the strengths that you are trying to develop are the right strengths.

Because ultimately, I believe you will flourish

if your behaviors, if your profession, if your emotions all come from this root system, almost like a tree.

So if you start with the roots, as opposed to starting with the branches of the tree, like what career do you want to be involved in?

Well, the majority of people who are majoring in something 10 years later aren't doing that anymore.

So start with what you value the most in your life.

What are those important things?

From that, a purpose can evolve.

From that,

You start looking at your strengths and you may also find things that you need greater strength in.

I might need to be more patient.

I might need to be more inspiring.

I might need to be more thoughtful, more studious, whatever those things are.

How do I become those things?

How do I build those strengths?

And from that, then suddenly the profession starts becoming easier for you.

And also, as we all know in our fields,

Opportunities come by.

And if you don't take that opportunity and you say, I can do that and you jump on that.

And to some extent, even you may have to fake it until you make it, as they like to say, having enough skill, having enough strength that undergirds that.

is really really important the final thing i'll say is if in the process you think about your core values and you're starting to question them you might ask if this is a tree metaphor what is the reservoir underneath that root system that's feeding those roots that

Those values.

Is it a religion?

Is it a philosophy?

Is it your community?

Is it your parents?

I think we need to have people, especially my students.

What I have my students do is try to explore the sources more.

will tell you, especially when they move into their 70s or 80s or even 90s, I've lost my purpose.

I used to be a big shot at work or I had this family and now suddenly I don't.

I don't really have that purpose anymore.

How do we help those people?

How do we help older people in general find greater purpose?

But one of the pieces of advice we give pretty regularly to older people is to think about volunteering.

Volunteerism has been shown to improve people's purpose.

It seems to actually improve our epigenetic or our biological clocks, actually.

So volunteering can be really helpful.

If you think about yourself and then your family and then your friends as being in concentric circles and moving out further and further in these concentric circles of helping others, being kind to these other people, as you move further out,

I think actually you become a happier person.

Now, that's just a theory that I have, but I really do believe that.

I tell people or my students in public health, you will end up helping people.

It will be your job to help people, many people who you might not ever meet, you might not know, and to some extent you might not even like.

That becomes your job.

And if you take that job really seriously, you are in public health.

And you will, as Jonas Salk said, be a good ancestor.

It was my pleasure and honor, Shankar.