Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joel Gonzalez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Joel, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t desire to live on purpose and with a purpose. Even before I understood what purpose meant, I knew what it was. As a child, this showed up in the form of questions–I asked A LOT of questions because I wanted to know the “why” to anything and everything. My consistent question became,
“What’s the purpose of this?”
Growing up in a home where my dad was a pastor and my mom a minister, spirituality was an ever present in my core. Religion, church and spirituality offered a playground for my mind to genuinely ask questions. My questions were sincere, desiring to understand the meaning of things. My journey towards purpose began with curiosity and imagination.
A subtle and progressive shift occurred on my journey to understand the purpose of things–I went from wanting to know the purpose of things to craving to find the purpose of life; particularly my life.
In my journey to discover the purpose of my life, I found myself in the company of people that displayed elements of a life I’d want to live. I remember getting with people simply to talk, and ask questions. What I discovered was that to every question, there was a story to bring the answer to life. Stories would captivate me as individuals shared their experiences that shaped and changed the trajectory of their lives, for better or worse.
Every story offered me a reference point to shape out my story–the things that made me who I was and shaped who I’d become.
What I began to realize is that storytelling is the most beautiful thing of being human. It’s through story that we make meaning of life and find meaning in life. It’s the ‘why’ to ever ‘what’ and the way we are able to see beyond what is.
Things began to make sense to me. My propensity to ask questions in my younger years were to quench my thirst for story.
My love for story led me to want to tell stories. I wasn’t very interested in telling my story–my passion became to tell the story of people; real humans experiencing life from their vantage point.
But how? I knew I’d need a platform to be able to tell stories.
A couple of years ago, a dear friend let me use her camera; a Canon Rebel T7! I’d never picked up camera in my life–but I saw this as a space to potentially tell stories.
I remember turning on the Rebel T7, jumping on YouTube and learning every day. Now to be clear, my passion wasn’t photography. My driving passion was to tell stories and I’d do it through photos and film.
I had found a purpose that would eventually become, my purpose. I began reaching out to my neighbors, friends and people in my community asking if they’d be willing to share their stories. I would want the streets of my community, inviting people to tell stories. This led me to start an instagram account specifically to tell stories. The more I did it, the more I loved it, the more I realized I was stepping into my purpose.
As time went by, my community began to take notice of my work as well as different agencies, non profits and just people. I was actually being offered payment for telling stories of people, places and faces.
There’s a Japanese philosophy referred to as Ikigai which essentially means, our purpose for living. It tells us that our purpose is found in the intersection of 4 elements:
1. Our passion (what we love to do)
2. Our mission (what we contribute to humanity)
3. Our profession (what we are good or proficient in)
4. Our vocation (what we can get paid to do)
This philosophy served as an epiphany for me as I became aware that I was living my purpose and thus living on purpose. I was a storyteller that uses what ever medium available to share narratives. This was and continues to be my purpose. Photography and video is what I do but a storyteller is who I am.
Today, I find myself living in gratitude every day of my life. Not only am I doing what I love but I am doing it with a purpose. My purpose statement in life is ‘to collect and tell stories that connect us as humans.’ That’s what I do because at my core, it’s who I am.
I began a brand I call weourstory. Here, I curate stories of all kinds. I’ve created my career path as a story curator and content creator and in this, I find so much purpose.
I discovered that purpose isn’t something we find. Purpose actually finds us as we become aware of what we love, begin to do it for love and share it with the world with love. Learn as much as you can about it, get better and take risks. And as we do this, we’ll find ourselves living lives of meaning, significance and yes…even purpose.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
My livelihood is wrapped up in a business I call WEOURSTORY. In short, it’s a collection of stories that connect us as humans. I believe that the human experience is collection of stories we live to tell for better or worse. Stories help us make meaning of life as the offer meaning to life. They serve as the fabric that weave together the fabric of humanity.
I tell stories of people through photography and videography and share insights on story through my podcast and consulting work.
My work is unique as not only does it focus on telling stories but it helps people curate their stories. We all have stories have, we don’t all know how to beautifully share them. Much of my work focuses on curating our stories to share them more clearly, confidently and powerfully.
2024 will be a year that I expand my capacity to tell stories, while helping others do the same.
You can follow my journeys and work @weourstory !
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I discovered early on that imagination, curiosity and courage were qualities that would help me live the life I envisioned.
It all begins with imagination–the capacity to see things, not as they are but as we’d want them to be. Imagination offers us a space to envision the life we’d want to live and the people we’d want to be.
The next quality is curiosity–genuine curiosity moves us to become explorers of life and all things purpose. Curiosity allows us to ask the questions that will offer us guidance on our quest. Being curious and staying curious is a quality to keep us learning, growing and discovering.
The final quality is courage–we ultimately will need to tap into the courage to do things, even while afraid. In fact, courage can’t exist without being afraid. Courage moves us to take risks that may trigger our fears. However, the more we expose ourselves to things we’re afraid of, the more immune we become to those fears. We all have something that we want to do yet are afraid to do. This is where courage helps us push past our fears and into our purpose.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m grateful for the work I get to do and one of my favorite parts is the people I meet along the way. Because everyone of us has stories to tell, I’m constantly looking for humans willing to share their stories, whatever they may be. I’ve found that collaboration is a much needed recipe in storytelling thus, I live my life in connection to other humans.
To collaborate with my work, simply follow my work @weourstory and send me an email at joel@weourstory.com to unpack what this could look like.
The collaborations I do revolve around story curating and telling and if this is something you’d like to do, let’s talk!
Contact Info:
- Website: weourstory.com
- Instagram: weourstory
- Facebook: weourstory
- Linkedin: weourstory
- Twitter: weourstory
- Youtube: weourstory
- Other: podcast: weourstory (apple iTunes and Spotify)
Image Credits
Joe Gonzalez
