When Della Zhuang, the curator of TEDxNewtown, contacted me last year she said:
“I have seen your work and I would love it if you would be our first speaker at the first ever TEDxNewtown event”.
I was surprised and honoured. I love TED talks but had never really pictured myself being on that stage. When I asked her what she wanted me to talk about, she said, “Whatever you like”.
This didn’t fit with my usual approach to public speaking. Most of the lectures and podium presentations I’ve given have been at medical conferences, and the scientific template is a simple one that is familiar to me. We generate a hypothesis, develop a method to test the hypothesis, and produce results. Then from these results we can make statistically relevant inferences and finally, if we are lucky, some conclusions.
My TED talk experience was not like this at all.
I had every intention of getting on stage and talking about the amazing progress of personalised medicine. My first draft was all about fantastic advancements that I had seen first-hand when I lived in Boston and worked at Harvard University. It truly is the forefront of medicine, where previously unimagined treatments such as personalised gene therapies are being developed for conditions that were previously thought to be incurable.
Della Zhuang listens to Joe’s first attempt
It was riveting stuff to me, yet when I read my first draft out aloud to the TEDxNewtown team they nodded and smiled and they told me it was a good speech … but …
“We want to know your story,” they told me. “Why is this story so important for you to tell?”
And so I went back to the drawing board, to the origins of my story.
Like most kids, I had no real idea what I wanted to do when I finished school. It was not until I had already completed 2 years of a Commerce and Liberal Studies Degree at university that I was confronted by a question that stopped me in my tracks.
I was asked “Why are you on the planet?”
I am forever grateful for that moment, because I packed my bags and went in search of the answer. It ultimately saw me transfer to Medicine, and I’ve never looked back.
The TEDxNewtown day was held at Commune
I went through several further iterations of my TED talk, each time asking myself “Why do I do what I do?” and “Why is this so important to me?” Once I started to include my own personal story in my talk, I unveiled some quite surprising and emotional connections with my own past that I hadn’t really let myself linger on too much before. I had been too busy acting like a medico, testing hypotheses and generating conclusions.
What I initially thought was an invitation to give a talk on an idea worth sharing, was really an invitation to reflect on my life and discover how the threads of my own story are woven intimately with the work I feel that I am here to do. It’s why I feel that everyone should do a TED talk!
We need science, and we can’t get anywhere without drive and passion. But I discovered during my TED talk that what really matters is something even more powerful … Purpose.
The day before I finally gave my talk, my son Charlie asked me what it was about. I told him that it was a talk about the journey I had taken to discover my purpose. He asked me what purpose was, and I had to think a little harder. I said, “Purpose is something that drives us to make a difference and to find meaning in everything we do”.
He asked me “How do you find it?”
Last minute encouragement from Charlie
I answered that I wasn’t really sure, but it sort of finds you in a way.
“Do you make it up?” he asked.
I said “I suppose in a way it is made up, but when you do find it everything just makes sense”.
He said “Yeah, I have found my purpose. It’s watching the iPad”.
He reminded me that purpose is not static. In some sense we can control our purpose, and it may change as we go through different phases of our life. Simon Sinek famously said that is ok to adopt someone else’s purpose. It doesn’t have to be unique or original. But living with purpose is a clear way to live a fulfilled life. And giving a name to that driving force is empowering beyond measure.
I may still not be sure exactly what my purpose is, but it was Mark Twain who said:
“The two most important days in our lives are the day we are born, and the day we find out why”.
I couldn’t agree more.
Watch a 3 minute taste of my TEDxNewtown Talk below
Watch my full TEDxNewtown Talk above
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