Adam Torres and Patricia Shea discuss Being Giveful.
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Show Notes:
Being Giveful is a movement aimed at improving lives. In this episode, Adam Torres and Patricia Shea, Partner at Shea Advisory Services and Founder of Being Giveful, explore the Being Giveful story.
About Patricia Shea
As one of eight children, Pat learned the importance of being in the community and sharing early on. Her family had one car, bike, and bathroom, and she shared one sock drawer with five sisters.
Grounded in her upbringing, giving and receiving have always been integral to her professional and personal life. A former nonprofit CEO, Pat has grown frustrated with the limited idea that philanthropy is only about giving money. Pat believes – she knows – we all have so much more to offer, and our world needs the abundance of our gifts now.
About Being Giveful
Being Giveful is a personal wellness practice—a continuous, conscious, and creative effort of giving of yourself to others while staying open to receiving. Like yoga, meditation, and other wellness practices, Being Giveful nourishes your mind, body, and soul. However, its impact extends beyond self-care; Being Giveful also benefits those around you.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Patricia Shea. She’s partner at Shea Advisory Services and founder of Being Giveful.
Pat, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Adam. All right, Pat. So you come to us from the State of the Woman Conference, and Gail Letts referred you over. So, first off, I gotta say, are you excited about the conference? Oh my gosh, I can’t wait. Gail is such a powerhouse and Nashville is ready to welcome her and all those speakers.
Oh my gosh, and well, we’re going to get into that and much more. We’re going to talk about your, your organization Being Giveful as well. But before we do that, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute. So Pat, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts.
That’s our mission. Pat, what mission matters to you? You know, I think my life’s work is all around helping others who help others. I am very focused on finding people, individuals, organizations that can have a tremendous impact in the world and doing anything and everything I can do to promote them and make their mission matter.
Fantastic. Love bringing mission based guests on the show. So again, great to have you on. And let’s just dive right in. So State of the Woman Conference, I believe you’re a speaker there too, am I right? Yeah. Yes, I am doing the lunch keynote on Monday. That’s amazing. Amazing. So we don’t have to spoil it at all, but can you give us a little flavor of what you’ll be presenting?
Yes, actually, Gail has given me the opportunity to talk about this new initiative that I’ve created called Being Giftful. And for me, Being Giftful is a wellness practice for the mind, body, and soul that I want to introduce and convince people to adopt. Hmm. Where did this I mean, we’re all I see partner, founder.
I mean, we got a lot of titles here that indicate to me that you’re, you’re an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. Have you always been an entrepreneur? Hmm. I think I have, I spent the first 17 years of my life in a corporate setting. Mm-Hmm. . But even there, I started consulting practices and ran consulting practices.
I have studied two for-profit companies. I’ve run about three nonprofits. I’m currently in the practice of starting an additional nonprofit. I facilitate a group of women CEOs twice a month who have companies that are, you know, in excess of a million dollars. So I’ve kind of lived in the world of entrepreneurs.
And starting things. That is a passion of mine. Mm-Hmm. and being gift sort of is a, it’s kind of a summary of my life’s work. Hmm. And so when did you know, like, or how did this idea for being gift, let’s start there. Well, how did this idea for being gift, like come about? I had a tech startup, we launched right before covid.
Weren’t we lucky? And that tech startup was focused on automating workplace. Volunteering and giving and as a sales process, I was interviewing very successful women CEOs asking them about their philosophy philosophy on philanthropy and giving. So, I would do a real quick 3 to 5 minute interview, ask them what they believed about giving how they learned about giving, but the real key at the end of the interview was when I ask them what they received back from their giving and.
I have probably spent, like I said, 17 to 20 years in the nonprofit space. I’ve raised 60, 70 million in my life. And I knew this, but it just, I became so aware of it. Listening to these women, they would tell tremendous stories of building libraries or adoptive parents. But when they told me what they personally got back, that was where the magic was.
And I just had, it was almost like a moment of a ha, that if we all think, really believe those who give are sees, which I do. Why don’t we practice that every single day of our lives? Wow. when you say interview them, do you mean do you mean like on a show or just like, I’m just curious in the interview part, do you have a podcast?
I’m getting it. You got a podcast that I don’t know about out there, Patricia. No, I don’t have a podcast yet, maybe, but I was actually doing a zoom interview and then we were replaying them. And so it. Right after COVID hit and women, well, everybody likes to talk about their giving and so it’s really pretty easy to get.
Very well respecting powerful people to, you know, come on and share their philosophy. But every single time they would tell me a story, it was really what they got back that changed their lives. And and then I started doing investigation and really that’s how I got to the point that what I’ve termed as being giftful is really an opportunity for us to practice every single day, improving our wellbeing.
Through giving and receiving. That’s so interesting to me that like how I love when an idea just starts kind of starts kind of small and it starts to Then it starts to snowball and then you’re thinking about and then you get that whole, you know, entrepreneur is eyes wide open on the possibility talk to me about your about your plan to continue to roll this out and let’s just in the possibility We’re entrepreneurs here.
Let’s dream for a moment. Like what’s your vision for this thing? You Well, my definition for being GIFL is the continuous conscious creative practice of giving of yourself to others while being open to receiving. And that’s a real important key. And so my goal is to build a business practice around the promotion of this concept.
So it’s a continuous practice because it’s a way of being, it’s not a random act of giving. It really becomes how you are. Being GIFL is a creative practice because you get to decide. How you want to give when you want to give and what you want to give But also i’ve learned that when you’re being giftful you actually co create a different future for yourself And that to me is just profound And then I call it.
Conscious, because if you are not focused solely on yourself, but you’re sort of looking at a broader context in your life, you will see so many opportunities to connect with people, to be giftful. And those opportunities are, they’re plentiful, numerous, and they’re fun. And I’ll give you a great example.
I got on the elevator the other day. You go see my mother, she’s 97. She’s in a senior assisted living facility. I was carrying in her groceries. I was kind of in a bad mood. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I was picking up her laundry and how we’re in that state of let’s get it all done. And I’m on the elevator and this gentleman walks on and he’s probably 100 years old.
He’s all alone. And there was something about him that just opened my heart and I looked at him and I just decided to use my gift to speaking to people and I said, how are you today? Bye. And he looked up at me and he said, I’m fine, but whoever you’re going to see is going to be so happy. And that brought me alive.
It changed how I felt about that whole experience. And then he got off the elevator and I kind of caught up with him pretty quickly. And I said, I’m sorry, sir, I’m not following you. And he said, don’t worry, that happens every time I meet a pretty woman. I started laughing so hard. So within about three minutes, all I did, all I did was speak to a gentleman who was all alone.
And what he did for me is he saw me for the work I was doing for my mother. He made me, he called me pretty. And then he changed my interaction with my mother because I was in a much better mood when she opened that door. And that probably changed my mother’s interaction with everybody she met for the rest of the day So it’s a choice we have to be giftful and then I really Want people to not just see it as giving but also Recognize the gifts that come back See what they got in return sort of from the universe.
It’s not transactional It’s not like I do this for you. You give me something back. It’s more like believing that when you put out good Good comes back your way That’s great. so how do people get involved with Being Giftful? Well, my website is OneWay, and I am looking for people who really want to help me embrace this and take it to a new level.
Beinggiftful. com is the best place to go to find out more. But what I’ve been doing is just research. I kind of am to the point where I think this concept of Being Giftful, those who give receive, is a universal truth. And anyone that can bring me more data to support that would be welcome. If you look at medical information, if you look at medical research, there’s a lot of data out there that says if you are a giftful person, you live longer, you reduce the stress in your life, you have better mental health you’re happier.
There’s also, and this is kind of one of my favorite, go into the world of spirituality or religion, every major religion on the face of the earth. Teaches that those who give receive. Most teach that those who give receive multiple of what they give, and if you practice sort of spirituality, it’s also brought in that area as well, because it’s based on this idea that we’re all sort of selectively one entity.
And so. I have started to say that being giftful actually is the currency of our souls as human beings because it is the way that we can continuously care for each other and communicate with each other and build that connectivity that’s such a strong needed muscle across humanity. I’m so interested in this.
so you’re in the research phase and you’ve been in the research phase for, for a while now. That being said, is there anything that you, you were kind of digging? Obviously, you knew you had something else you want to kind of gone down that path. But sometimes when you go start going down that research path you know, things just kind of surprise you.
Those aha moments are, oh, I didn’t know that. Or, oh, like, was there any moments or things that surprised you as you’ve been in that research stage? You know, a couple things. I I had sort of always known that that idea of being giftful was in the religious spiritual realm. I wasn’t surprised to see it in physical and mental health.
I have been sort of surprised to see how present it is in all science. Like, you know, breathing is an example of being giftful. Because you breathe in and you breathe out, but you breathe in oxygen that’s been gifted to us. And our booting out the world, you know, with photosynthesis and keep the world green and our plants alive and we don’t even recognize that as a being different activity.
So I’m always surprised. I find it. This organizing principle in botany, and I find it in biology and I, and I now there’s a family joke about is this being careful and I see it almost everywhere and I have started calling it. A universal truth, and there aren’t many things I consider to be a universal truth.
So I’m testing that theory, but the idea that those who give receive shows up, you know, whether you’re reading about Mother Teresa, or Buddha, or Jesus Christ, but it also shows up when you’re reading Emerson, or you’re reading Paul McCartney’s biography. I mean, it’s amazing where this concept continues to be present for me.
And it does seem like everybody believes it. It’s always true. And there’s just a ton of proof. So the research just continues to broaden. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I’m a Paul McCartney fan. So when you said that, I’m like, what do you, it was in his biography? Like, I think in the lyrics of his, you know, you get the love.
You get the love you give. I’m trying to think the exact lyrics, but yeah, in his music, he talks a lot about the love you get and the love you give. Hmm. Yeah, it’s great. And I love the concept because use universal truths. I mean, I’ve always thought that.
Thought of it as kind of like a principle. I don’t, I don’t know. I’m not claiming I have the definition in both of those in which one it should be. But but I, I feel like what you’re doing here by bringing this amount of attention and this focused energy to being giftful, I feel like it has to also be kind of like very personally rewarding as well, like leading this project.
Like has it, have you experienced that? Yes, in fact, as I opened with, you know, I think my goal in life is to help others help others. And I believe that by elevating, I believe this gift of being gifted has been given to me so that I can elevate the idea so that everyone. Can be more giftful and as people are more giftful.
I am hopeful that all the resources that we’ve been gifted are released into the world and that seems to me like a way to really help others help others is by trying to shake up the world and say, nothing you have is yours forever. Anyways, why don’t we just freely give? Why don’t we just take. Humanity, why don’t we just take care of this planet?
So it does fit with my personal goal in life and I think Americans love wellness practices. You know, we pick up things like Pilates and meditation. I love them. I’m the first one. I’m probably thinking of a new wellness practice now. Yeah, I’m in. Go ahead. I can’t help it. I like it. I like it. That’s why I put it into wellness because.
It does seem to be a space where fads are created. Movement start, you know, if you think about like the calm app where, you know, meditation, and then they’ve gone to sleep. And, you know, I just think being giftful is a practice that we can all embrace. It’s personal. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to get permission.
You can do it and no one even knows you’re doing it or you can share it with the world. Yeah. And I think being giftful fits with just the natural flow of how we were born and how we were meant to be. So it’s really not going against the grain. It’s kind of bringing us back to how we were, how we were originally created.
So it’s not, it’s not fancy and it’s not even all that brilliant. It’s common sense. Yeah, but we do seem to claim and hold on to our resources as if we could keep them forever. And, and, and honestly, for me, the more I give, I always get back 10 times more and every time space, every time you give something away, you make space and I just see it happen.
Day in and day out. Yeah, I can, I can think of that. And when I think about that, oftentimes I think of like my grandparents. So my, my grandparents on my mom’s side, you know, 12 kids. And my mom always tells me these stories about like how they were also helping the other kids in the neighborhood at this time.
And it’s like, and they were, my grandfather was just, you know, he wasn’t a wealthy man by any means. And I’m like, and never, never took welfare or any kind of handout or anything like that, paid for his house. Okay. Cash, you know, working overtime and like that kind of guy. And I’m like, man, like how, like to give, even when you don’t necessarily always have and to continue and to see kind of what it did in their lives.
It’s just a, an amazing thought process and amazing conversation that I don’t feel we bring out and in the media enough nowadays and just like on a consistent, especially in a structured manner, like you’re doing or in a wellness practice, I should say like you’re doing with, being giftful. So I just, I mean, I think the part of the project’s wonderful.
Definitely. Well, and you know what? You just hit it. You just hit it right on the head. I grew up in a family of eight. And so I think grew up in community, right? Yeah, so we Understand that constant sharing Was the way to survive And it was really my dad. I tell this story when I do my talks my dad when I was 10 I found a 20 bill and he made me knock on the doors of our neighbors Just to knock that door And he told me, I said, but Dad, what if someone lies?
And he said, it doesn’t ever matter what anyone else does. It only matters what you do. And goodness. And gets goodness. And I remember I took three seconds to find the neighbor who lost the money to tell by the look on her face, it was hers. Wow. And the pride I had and the feeling like I grew up in that one moment of being.
And so it’s sort of, I think it comes from that, that big family feeling. And, I don’t know, and then, like I said, spending so much time in the nonprofit community and seeing people volunteer and give the 1 point that’s really important to me is being giftful is not about money. It can be about money, but we have so many gifts.
We, I have the gift of speaking. I can talk to anybody. I also am an amazing connector. You might be an artist. You might be a writer. We all have gifts. And so when you are being giftful, I tell people, use those things that bring you joy. Use your gifts that are unique to you to meet the opportunity that you run into all the time, every day.
it’s fun. It is a fun activity. I could spend all day just being giftful because I feel so good afterwards. It’s extremely contagious, which also matters when you’re trying to start a movement. I also suggest to people when they get comfortable, they share their giftful moments because people will want to emulate them.
I had an opportunity current code, but I was having a rough time. Martin Luther King day was coming. That’s 1 of my favorite days. My sister was the leader at Vanderbilt hospital. And I knew how bad it was at Vanderbilt with patients I said to her, I think I’m going to do something for the. Workers at Vanderbilt on Martin Luther King Day.
Do you think I could buy them lunch? Now I was thinking 100 people 350 people later This was great I found a restaurant who offered to donate the food during the worst time a restaurant could ever be in existence And I turned them down and I said no. No i’m going to pay you. I just need you to follow 17 pages of protocol They put food together for 350 people delivered it over three ships And when I shared what I was doing with my group of women CEOs, they wrote me checks without me even making an ask that covered the whole cost of all the food.
And on a Monday, Martin Luther King day, I think that was 21. we were on a zoom call with the head of nursing and this restaurant owner and all these women. Having the best day possible because we had all been careful. Well, think Patricia, that’s a great way to end it. If somebody’s listening to this and they want to learn more or connect, how do they do that?
Well, please go to my website, being careful dot com and drop me a note align. I want to speak about it. I want to find partners. I really am working on the outline of a book, but it’s going to take a community to launch this. And so I’m looking for that community, but thank you for today. Absolutely. And thank you for coming on.
And to the audience, as always, thank you for tuning in. We’re going to put the website in the show notes so that you can go check out being giftful. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time listening to Mission Matters or connecting with us, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives and having them share their stories.
Their mission, the reason behind their mission, you know, how are they making a difference out there? If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing.
Patricia, thank you so much again for coming on and best of luck at the state of the woman conference. I know you’re going to knock it out of the park. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful week.
