MorningStar Foundation: Motivation and Purpose

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Welcome to the answers for elders radio show. meet the trusted experts who will give you straight answers and will health guide you on the path of later life care. Now here’s your host, founder, caregiver and CEO, Susan Newman, and welcome everyone back to answer for elders radio network. And again we have been spending an hour with this wonderful, amazing gentleman by the name of John Yeager, who is the operation specialist of Morning Star senior living and John, it’s been such a pleasure to have you and, most importantly, to experience your heart, because it’s so prevalent in everything that you’re talking about. It’s really nice to to share this time with you. So thank you for taking the time up front with us. I know you’re very, very busy human being, so we feel honored that you’re with us. So thank you for for sharing your heart. It’s been an honor and a blessing to share it some pretty special things and there it’s close to my heart, it’s close to the heart of Morning Star and in honor to share with you all well. And you know it’s interesting because I think you know a oftentimes organizations they do great things, but you know, the Internet is a sterile place. It’s kind of one of those things where you know you’re looking at a website and you do what you can and you’ve got some amazing videos that I hope, and you know, people will take a look at when they go to your website and a little bit. But I think that’s the core foundation of Morning Star and oftentimes people don’t necessarily get that until they hear somebody like you and then all of a sudden it’s like wow, they’re really they really mean what they say, and I think that’s the thing that really is struck me. So, you know, I think one of the things that I would love to just close out today is talk a little bit about, you know, your deeper motivation and purpose with everything you do and how you put that all together. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I would I would start with our our reason, in our purpose, that morning star we were founded with the mission, with the heart to honor God. You we are a faith based company and our mission to honor God. That’s why we’re in senior living, is to care and to serve and to love our residence, to you know, when in the Bible and the book of James, it says true religion is this to look after the orphan and the widow and their distress and to keep oneself from being pluted by the world. And I believe that Morning Star we have an incredible opportunity to do just that, to live out our mission of honoring God through serving and caring and loving for our residence, for our seniors, for the widow. But at the exact same time, our heart at morning start is to serve and to care and to love the orphan and Nicaragua, the orphan in East Africa, to bring clean water, to invest in their hues, hopes, their dreams there tomorrow. And when those two things come together, I believe that we truly are living out our mission of honor and God well, and it’s you know, the thing that’s so important is that we need to remember that we’re a global community and yes, you know, a lot there’s a lot of talk about, well, you know, take care of people here. Yes, we need to take care of our kids here on the street and and all the things that are going on. But even more importantly, it’s it’s every single country at this time. We all affect each other. It’s about a drive in an ambition and I know that. You know, to have that kind of higher purpose per se. It gives you a reason to get up every morning. It gives you a reason to feel good when you go to bed at night, saying I made I made a difference. You know. I know when I started my company, it was very important for me to have outreach. It’s a big part of what we do. It’s, matter of fact, my three legged stool. The third leg is outreach. Because I am like you, I believe in making that something that gives me a higher purpose than just doing what I do, even though I love what I do and I’m thrilled that I do it. You know it. There’s still that side of you that says, well, you know, I accomplish this, I did that, and certainly to give that opportunity to all of the people that work for you on your teams. That gives it. You know that that brings about a greater corporate culture. It’s it’s getting people to think outside themselves. You know, what have you found? Has, you know, been the involvement with your the people on your teams as far as your foundation? Yeah, that’s an incredible thing. At Morning Star is to be able to connect our teams with that greater purpose. We want our teams to understand and to see that transformation is able to be had. I believe it with everything in my being that when you live a life of service, the impact, the two way street of impact, is there. Yes, when we’re serving, when we’re serving our seniors, when we’re serving in the local community, when we’re serving throughout the world, it is the most beautiful thing because, yes, we’re blessing another, but at the exact same time there is so much, I believe, satisfaction and fulfillment and consinsmant that comes from that and we want our team members to experience that. We want our residents to experience that. Now, that is something you know. We talked about purpose and yeah, we have our purpose that morning start to honor God, to live life’s of service. But the exact same time, our residents in our communities, they have such great purpose. As long as we have breath in our lungs, there is purpose to be had. Yes, and so we want to connect our residents, our teams to this work. We want to connect our residence to meaningful, purposeful work in the communities. That’s been some of the most incredible thing is when our when our residents, get to kind of walk the walk, when they get to go out in the local communities and say I still have something to give, I have something to offer, I have great purpose, and that’s that’s something we’re trying to foster and environment we’re trying to create. You know, it’s so interesting you say that because I just I’m triggered by a story I’m going to just share briefly, but when when I was taking care of my mom and she was in assisted living, there was a lady by the name of Bee and her son worked for Boeing and she had been moved out here from the east coast, but he never came to see her and there’d be times he would say to her, oh well, I’ll come by and pick you up and go for lunch, and she’d be sitting in the lobby and he would never show up. You know that kind of thing. And you my mom would see this and I’ll never forget she would. You know, she said to me, I want you, when you bring me something, would you try to remember to bring something for her too? And it was like my mom had took her on and it gave her purpose it. She loved connecting with her and it was so sad that she didn’t have her son show up when he was supposed to. That was something that we couldn’t do anything about, but what we could do is at least bring a smile to her face and, you know, let her know that she mattered. And here was my mom in a wheelchair. You know, she had vascular dementia, she was she had COPD, and and yet my mom found purpose. Those are the things I think that I don’t no matter what you do, you can find something greater in your life and certainly to have those opportunities to reach out to help other people. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing. Amen. Amen. That’s so good. And I think when my grandma lived in a Morningstar community here in Denver, she had such a heart for veterans and she had an incredible skill set of sewing, you know. So she would always do her best to engage her friends, you know, in the community, to kind of come forward. So some things create, some things for the falls, for the Winter Times here in Denver, and love. That was her heart and she found great purpose in meeting a need, you know, serving the veterans in that way. Absolutely, you know, and that’s the thing it’s like. It’s like everybody, I don’t care who you are, we’re coming back to kind of our way, how it was started out. No matter who you are, you can find a way to have purpose, and purpose makes life worthwhile, it makes life worth living and certainly finding a way that you automatically can make the world a better place in your own way. We were all created differently and with different skill sets, different strengths, etc. But the good news is that we have an opportunity to, you know, to do something great today, and I think, you know, it’s kind of interesting to think about. You know, I had an aunt that used to say to me as I was growing up, look for the diamonds and to her it was about, you know, diamonds are only good when they’re polished right, so look for the opportunities that your own character can be polished. So if it was a matter of a shopping cart that hadn’t been put away, there’s a diamond. You know, it’s all the different ways in which you can be and I it’s been really a foundation of how I was wired as a child, obviously because she was on me constantly about those things and I think that’s really so much of sometimes what we’ve missed with our younger people, as well as, you know, the ability to recognize that we do have a lot to give to the world. Absolutely that’s so good. In our our CEO and founder two years famous for saying don’t wait to serve Sir now, no, walk in that purpose of service, yes, and just wait to see what happens. I love that. But a great closing that we have. So, John, how do we reach you? Yeah, you can. You can go online morning star senior Livingcom find out more about our company, found out find out more about our heart to serve others and as a ton of fun being with you Suday and I really really appreciate it. You know what, this has been such an amazing, inspiring our to me. I’m just so blessed you came and I hope you’ll come back again sometime soon and we would love to get more of your heart message out to the world. I know that there’s a lot of families out there that are looking every day of you know, who can I trust to take care of my loved one? And you know, right now it’s clear why you guys are one of the industry leaders out there, because you’re amazing. Thank you very much, thank you. Thank you, and to each and every one of you, we are so glad that you were with us for this hour and until next week. As we always say, be good to each other. But on one extra thing, find purpose and live to serve. We at answers for elders. Thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care? So visit our website and discover our decision guides. That will help you also navigate decision making. Find US AT ANSWERS FOR ALDERS DOCUMENT