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(Paul) Hello and welcome to our second module on the entrepreneurial
educator. Today's topic is awakening
relevant purpose, I'm Paul Porter, professor in the School of Education
here at Sonoma State University
and welcome (Mark) Mark Nelson Entreprenuer-in- Residence at Sonoma State University
School of Business and Economics.
(Paul) So we thought we'd start today with
with defining or talking about what
is relevant purpose, what we mean when we say awakening relevant purpose because
for me until we
know inside of ourselves what is our purpose what's our mission
some of the other parts of this whole series aren't going to mean a lot
unless you've got that alignment inside yourself
of knowing what you stand for what your life is about so that's what
that's what it is for me
and it's kind of a key to being an entrepreneurial educator and thinker.
How 'bout you Mark? (Mark) Well to me relevant purpose is kinda self
self discovery process and it's about alignment but first and foremost
I think with young people what we're trying to do
as we alluded to in the brief overview session
was try to do some self discovery, try to find out really what makes people
tick,
and then create learning environments that allow that those people to expand,
explode, fertilize,
cultivate, and hopefully harvest because
if people can really harness those internal passions they will want
to learn and so part of it to me is unleashing,
other parts is identifying, the other part is nurturing and I think
finally we we want to really create alignment. Alignment between
what's going on inside of a human being and what's the external reality, to me
that's what relevant purpose is all about. (Paul) what do you mean by external reality?
(Mark) Well it could be when you're younger if you find yourself liking to collaborate
working in teams
as much as, it could be playing a sport, (Paul) So what do you mean by
alignment with it from within?
(Mark) So I think everybody in this world
has a unique purpose. I think unique purposes,
and part of our mission in our life is to do self-discovery
and as we progress in our lives to identify
those unique purposes and unique purpose. Now once you've done that what you want
to try to do is to try to create
alignment with the external realities of your life, what you're doing from a
professional perspective,
who you are hanging out with, who your friends are,
what type associations you are, what are your hobbies,
again, how you're making a living and consciously
try to create an awareness about about this internal world and your external
world
and try to bridge the gap and connect the dots. To me
that's what relevant purpose is about: creating alignment between an inner
purpose and passion
and the external reality. (Paul) That inner passion
it's not just about business or work it could be the best parent you could be
what are some other examples? (Mark) Could be tending to a garden, it could be
wanting to instruct people
at Sonoma State University, I mean I came in here out of a passion for
wanting to help and to be of service to the
world,
to me that's critical. This is a great
tool, it's a great avenue to do that. I was fortunate in
in my prior life in and actually my existing life
to do pretty well in the business world and now I'm able to take some of those
experiences
navigate into a new world, connect new dots,
create new alignments, so that I can be a better person and hopefully be
a better service to to people like you and to educators in the world and
to myself and others. (Paul) If I love making the best
comfort food in the world or if I love,
I don't know, coaching people, how do I align that with what's out there?
(Mark) Well and I think that's one of the things that we're
gonna need to distill over the course of time
but initially my thinking is to try to break down
passions and purposes into attributes
frequently, you know, when you're younger you say I want to be a fireman or I
want to be an actor, I want to be a doctor,
and what I would say is okay what are the attributes
about being an actor or an actress that are exciting to you?
Maybe it's being in front of others, maybe it's getting response,
emotional response to what you're doing, maybe it's working
in a team collaborative environment, maybe it's part planning and part
part spontaneity, and then I would say to myself well you know what
maybe that's also a salesperson or something else so as we break down these
attributes we create opportunities to
connect our internal realities with our external lives
and by the way, external lives, by the way it's not just about finance
it can be about, again the hobbies we decide we're going to participate in
the associations and not-for-profits and philanthropic endeavors
that we're going to participate in,
the relationships that we're gonna have with a myriad of people.
(Paul) So it's more than just I'm gonna go out and survey the job market
(Mark) No, it's actually much more than that and we'll talk about this later on it's
about
trying to build a life portfolio so that you've got balance amongst all these
different elements in your life.
(Paul) It seems to me that as you're doing that you're going to have to keep
a term you use is reinventing yourself. (Mark) Oh my God,
at no time in history and we're gonna hear about this from some of our educators
in some of the clips that you're going to see over the course of this
course, some of the sessions, and that is
constantly reinventing yourself, understanding what the market demands,
whatever market that is it doesn't necessarily to be a for financial could
be
I wanna go do this from a not-for-profit perspective and here's what I have to
offer
it's about building these ongoing tools and experiences
so that you have some level up relevance towards any directional
area you may want to be be going. (Paul) I think another thing we've talked about is
in in this whole thinking process money as a trap.
(Mark) As I alluded to in the prior session
so many people believe that you need to delineate between
your inner purposes and passions and the external realities
that you're trying to pursue and so often we see people that are
pursuing things, a profession, just for the money
and many people I know in fact I might even put myself
into that category at one point in my career where
I stayed in situations or I did things because the money was so good
well what happens is that over the course time you develop some levels of
internal bankruptcy, maybe spiritual bankruptcy, or intellectual bankruptcy.
So again you wanna be looking at these things
holistically and not just as it relates to
I wanna do this to go make a whole bunch of money nothing wrong with making a
whole bunch of money by the way
at all, but you wanna do it in a way that
is creating an abundance internally, intrinsically, so that your building wealth
simultaneously as well as building external wealth. (Paul) This really
reminds me of the work by Daniel Pink
who has written several books
particularly his book on drive. He talks about in motivation
there being three main keys to motivation and one of those is purpose
and I have a quote from Pink, and
Pink says "people who
who perform at high levels in the service of
some greater objective can achieve even more,
the most deeply motivated people, not to mention those who are most productive
and satisfied,
hitch their desires to a cause larger than themselves."
So I think what Pink is saying is if we really want to have productive
workplaces,
productive people, people who keep reaching their potential,
they have to find this sense of purpose within themselves.
It's the key to all the other steps, the key to mastery
the key to productivity, et cetera. I have one more quote here,
a quote from a McDonald's executive also from Pink's book,
from Matt Leiderhousen, he says, "I believe wholeheartedly
that a new form of capitalism is emerging.
More stakeholders want their businesses to have
a purpose bigger than their product." (Mark) You know Daniel Pink
is, talks about some incredible things in
in one of his books he talks about the migration from being a left-brain
society to a
right brain society, really a whole brain society
and really touches on a lot of the concepts
in a different way there that we're talking about here which is basically
being entrepreneurial, being creative,
and using those things in totality to become a complete person
and when you talk about some other quotes here related to
to service you know to me there's there's four things that people are
really
looking for related to relevance. First of all, 1) they want to be
individually viable and vital, 2) They want to continue
a personal growth pattern, lifelong learning, they want to be
you know, relevant to themselves in a future time period, 3)
They want to be relevant to others, you know, they want to be relevant to
others in the in the world and then finally they want to be relevant
to the world. They want to be as this person stated, the McDonalds guy, and
Daniel Pink,
of service to the world. That to me is absolutely critical.
What you really need to understand is something that we've talked about called
the river
and really the river is the world and the world has circumstance
the world is an environment and there are certain things that
our world has the river that we have
no control over, we don't have control over
the ebbs and the tides and the flows and the levels and how chaotic a river
can get at any point in time or when its serene,
but what we do have control over is
our oars, the vessel that we're developing in order to navigate that
river
and to navigate in that river we have to understand when it may be time
to row over to the side of the shore, take a look, map out where we want to go
down the river
map out the course that we're gonna take so that we don't capsize,
we don't wanna row up river, you know, sometimes you wanna hold back on the
ores other times they got to pedal hard,
same thing in life. To me, a victim
doesn't feel like they have oars in their hands they just
think the river is what it's gonna be and they can't do anything about it. Well
it's a dance, right? I mean the reality is that
the world is a beautiful place and if you look at everything as an obstacle
as if you're a victim then you're not gonna progress,
in fact I would argue that in this day in age the greatest challenges to bring
is when obstacles are there,
because then you get an opportunity to really test yourself. You get an opportunity to
really
dig deep inside, do some self discovery as you and I know, you know,
we've got a few laps around the track right and
the time you fall, the times you suffer, the time have a little pain,
are the greatest learning environments and so to me, get in the river,
you know, understand that you got a vessel and you know, don't be a victim.
(Paul) In psychology and education we often call that
'owning.' The difference between owning
your own life, owning what you want, owning your own responsibility,
verses waiting for someone else, blaming, externalizing,
I think kind of you're talking about. (Mark) Yeah and waking up every day and having
a good attitude and
saying, you know, what challenge is going to be before me that I'm gonna get a
chance to overcome.
(Paul) Yeah. You use a term to, setting your own agenda.
(Mark) Well, I think you gotta set your own agenda and you gotta set it in a
realistic way.
you know I think-(Paul) That's the alignment piece- (Mark) The alignment, right,
you know, when you set your own agenda and you don't feel powerless
but I think if you're smart you set an agenda that is
understanding that there's a purpose inside of you,
there's a real world out there and the agendas gotta be about trying to create
alignment
between those two things with the appropriate attitude,
again, not everything's an obstacle, but most things are an opportunity
and it's too big an obstacle, get out of the way of it.
(Paul) or flow with it (Mark) or flow with it. (Paul) I hope everyone out there gets the concept that
this is about thinking differently
and behaving differently and not about this becoming
an entrepreneur.
(Mark) No, absolutely not (Paul) and we want this movement to start early
we want this way of thinking to be taught in our schools much earlier so it
becomes more engrained in the inquiry process, in risk-taking, and all that kinda stuff.
(Mark) Well I think, you know, it's interesting and we touched on this probably
indirectly in the session and that is you know so frequently
young people get defined by their environment a
at a very early age mean people are asking questions like a what you wanna
be when you grow up and
you know your extroverted or introverted, you're an athlete or an artist and
blah blah blah blah blah and the reality is you start pigeonholing kids brains
and the reality is what we want to do is we want them to find themselves
we want to create an environment, whether it's at home or in a school,
and by the way when it's in a work force where people can start
defining themselves by utilizing the environment as a point of reflection,
a mirror, also using it as a tool to develop
and to me the educational system, you know, you gotta
attentive, hopefully attentive, audience every single day
nine months ten months out of the year with these young people
let's make it fun them, let them do some exploring
let's let him unleash their inner selves
and make a difference in the world.