Stop Chasing Purpose and Focus on Wellness: Chloe Hakim-Moore (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Chloe Hakim-Moore’s talk titled “Stop Chasing Purpose and Focus on Wellness” at TEDxMemphis conference.

In her enlightening TEDxMemphis talk, “Stop Chasing Purpose and Focus on Wellness,” Chloe Hakim-Moore delves into the transformative journey of prioritizing personal wellness over the relentless pursuit of purpose. She shares her own experience of navigating through a quarter-life crisis, heartbreak, and the realization that her relentless chase for purpose was overshadowing the necessity of self-care and mental health.

By recounting her initial skepticism towards therapy and the profound revelations it brought about her emotional state, Chloe emphasizes the importance of honesty with oneself. Her story is a testament to the healing and clarity that comes from addressing one’s mental and emotional needs first. Chloe’s narrative culminates in the adoption of a wellness routine that profoundly changed her life, leading her to achieve both personal and professional milestones while maintaining inner peace.

She argues that societal change and fulfillment stem from individual wellness, suggesting that by nurturing our well-being, we can better contribute to the world around us. Chloe’s talk is a compelling call to action, urging the audience to reevaluate their priorities and embrace wellness as a foundational aspect of a fulfilling life.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Navigating the Quarter-Life Crisis

TEDxMemphis, 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. If you’re not familiar, a quarter-life crisis is basically like a mid-life 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, staying 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 irreparably damaged our world. So there’s a lot to take in there, right?

Finding Purpose in a Changing World

And we are 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 friendship, 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 tomato. The first time I really recognized what was going on, because I had 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 and Tobago. And I adored my grandmother. She’s incredibly creative, so when she was getting up to do art projects, like, I’m there, you know?

I’m walking one morning to her kiln to get her new ceramics, and I’m holding her hand. And I noticed 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 going to 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 in hers, 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 existential crisis, and I’m like, nope, I’m here.

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And that moment really shaped how I went through life going forward. I told myself, OK, I know I’m scared to not be here, so I’ll love all 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.

The Journey of Self-Discovery

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 is one of the best things I’ve ever done. And I’m in school, I’m a student, I’m doing all these things, and 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 busy, stress is cool when you go to a liberal arts school. So I’m like, OK, yeah, I’m doing the thing, this is great. But at the same time, I recognized, 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, her name’s Julia Hinnerbrink, 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 serves people with disabilities. So I’m like, cool, I’m still in purpose, but I get to go back to Trinidad, which was the first time I had 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, 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 I was like, man, I thought the ocean air, the island breeze would just melt this away. So I was like, maybe I just need to be here longer. So about halfway through, we get invited to a harvest festival at a friend’s Catholic church. Now, I’m not Catholic, but my grandmother was, so I’m thinking about her a lot on the drive over. And I’m thinking about her, and then all of a sudden, it occurs to me, oh, crap, I don’t know how to do the thing, right? And so I’m just like, oh, okay. And so I get in line, and I’m watching everybody else do the thing. And when I get up to the priest, I just freak out.

A Moment of Realization

So whatever I did was not it. And I was like, okay, so he’s just going to throw more holy water on me to cleanse this, and 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 had no idea what that sermon was about. I was just sitting there thinking of my grandmother and thinking about purpose, and the 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 I 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 how I was actually going to know if I’d seen it or not. It’s just way down there. But looking at that large expanse and also being in 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, because I also don’t want people to see me like, ugh. 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.

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That moment was very serious for me to slow down. So when I got back to the States, I decided, okay, I’m going to 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, because it’s so easy to tell somebody else to go see a counselor. So I get there, but 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 going to tell me anything I don’t know about myself, and so I’m going to 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’m going to read her my checklist, and she’s just going to 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 when my friends say, hey, let’s go out, I can be like, oh, sorry, Mary, I’ve got to sleep, you know, therapy, it’s crazy.

The Therapy Session

So that’s what I’m on, okay, so I walk in there, got my little list, and she, you know, smiles at me, that kind of building trust smile, like I’ve peed the game, you know, and she’s like, “So, how are you?” and I’m like, “Oh, I’m great,” and 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, here are 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 bawling.

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 it 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 going to marry, I broke up with him not too long before, because we didn’t really know 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 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 would just take their bags and go packing, right, like, get out the paint, 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.

The Journey to Wellness

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 looked 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’re so used to doing everything external, to serving, to loving, to trying 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 tell me, just sleep, drink water, exercise, take time for yourself, go to therapy, it’s important, it will save your life. And honestly, 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.

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A Year of Contrasts

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, because I definitely 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 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 and 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.

The World and Wellness

Aside from all the apocalyptic facts I told you 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 U.S. 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 in what is our purpose. Purpose has two options. You can set a goal, you can meet that goal, but then you’re bored, and you have to figure out new goals. It’s like this endless cycle, right, of chasing external things.

Or you can set a goal for yourself that is so far out that it’s actually unattainable, and peace and fulfillment is 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 and you see people fighting causes or going to work, you’re looking for fulfillment.

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?

Conclusion: A Call to Wellness

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 this commitment to cultivating wellness for yourself, because once you are filled yourself with that kind of peace, 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 TED Talk.