What is uuness?
What is uuness?
“I am? I am. I am!”
Searches on “What’s my life purpose” have doubled in the last three years.
We offer a specialist life coaching service – to find your life purpose based on science. We do this in ten one to one one hour long sessions.
It helps you efficiently, accurately, and quickly find your life purpose based on science. This gives you a longer, healthier happier life. Your life purpose, once defined, encompasses your career (if you have one), what you will contribute to society, your family and friends.
But, doesn’t your life purpose change? In our experience if you nail your life purpose at a single moment in time, it evolves but rarely changes. Evolution not revolution.
What are the core benefits?
The science around life purpose has exploded since the year 2000. If you have a clear life purpose you will live a longer, healthier, happier and even,wealthier life.
What is the process?
We deliver uuness in ten one to one sessions.
It is specialist life coaching based on the scientific principles of positive psychology and personal semiotics, personal futurism, behaviourism and neuroscience. It is a unique blend of disciplines and knowledge which we have been using since the year 2000. Our use and application of these disciplines is totally unique – here’s a simple analogy – when they started making video games it was a unique blend of code, visual graphics and logic. Existing things brought together in a new way.
What's the role of these different disciplines?
Positive psychology has shown us that finding life purpose is not just a good “idea” – it delivers life long benefits. Postive psychology has also shown us that when you are “in flow” – doing things where time disappears provides the key clues to finding overt and “hidden” life purpose. Personal semiotics provides us a way to audit your life to find those points of flow to think of possibilities you won’t think of yourself. Behaviourism and neuroscience give us the process to allow us to “encode” purpose into your deep brain to make it effortless.
An important point? We’re not trying to fix any problems in your past – we’re here to shine a clear light on your personal why, how and key outcomes for your future.
Is it mentoring?
Mentoring is when a mentor provides knowledge and their life skills to help someone else. In this sense it is mentoring because we are applying the uuness process and our skills with a client to a clear end. However, most mentors are with their clients for a long period of time. Mentors teach a wide range of subjects we don’t, we’re focussed on finding your life purpose.
In short? uuness draws on tools, techniques and approaches from all of the above but it’s outcome is very specific and focussed.
Is it goal setting?
Have you ever set goals that you just don’t achieve? You need a strong why to drive the outcome. Millions of people around the world set a goal of losing weight every January and few achieve it. But let’s look at the facts. Only 20% of people set goals. And of those people, only 30% achieve the goals they set.
In fact, the problem is deep seated. We set goals with the idea of a reward but then the brain kicks in and tells us how much effort is involved. Then, we stall. The overarching problem is that we lack a big why. And the big why, is purpose.
In short? If you find your big why you are much more likely to realise your goals.
Where can I read more?
For more suggested reads view our article Science of Purpose
What are the benefits of uuness?
Emotional Benefits
Greater clarity in your life purpose gives you a sense of calm and inner peace.
This contributes to better relationships, better habits and healthier behaviours.
Financial Benefits
Financial – A clearer purpose correlates to higher wealth and attaining greater prosperity.
This comes from a greater propensity to pursue one’s long term goals, which in turn creates an accrual of assets.
Preventative Physical Benefits
A one point increase in your life purpose clarity (on a scale from 1 to 7) gives you a 27% lower chance of heart attack, a 22 % lower risk of stroke and a 12 % lower chance of death.
People who exist with purpose live much longer lives. This is all backed up by research.
“I am? I am. I am!”
You will have a happier, healthier, longer, wealthier life as proven by empirical science.
The true extent of the physical and emotional benefits that you will experience during this process remain largely unknown. You should know that as you embark on this journey, you will be creating results that have the power to positively impact the future of the entire human race.
Scientific Research
During the last 15 years the science of purpose has exploded and it can be somewhat overwhelming! So we’ve summarised two landmark studies and then given you a full list of benefits after that. If you want to know more, we’ve done videos summarising the science.
1. 2019 US Jama Network Study with 7,000 adults over 50 – Published May 2019 – Live Longer and healthier
This study showed lower mortality in people who have a clear life purpose – specifically they have a lower chance of premature death. In other words you live longer. This was even after controlling for factors such as depression and chronic illness.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2734064 https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/changepower/202108/10-powerful-benefits-living-purpose
2. British survey of 7,300 men and women aged 50 – 90 – Better relationships, Be Wealthier and Happier
This study showed five key benefits. For people with higher purpose they were happier, healthier, wealthier, had healthier habits and better relationships.
- Better sex
- Better sleep
- Less depression
- Greater relaxation
- Diabetics with strong purpose have better glucose control
- Reduction of the production of inflammatory cells which lead to cancer
- Increase in the production of good cholesterol
- High purpose means 36% less visits to hospital
- Higher purpose produces more telomerase–which slows ageing
- Living on purpose reduces inflammatory gene expression which lowers cancer
- Students with a strong sense of purpose experience less health problems and anxiety
- Adolescents who think about giving rewards and being on purpose have less depressive symptoms than those who focus on themselves
Purpose Science 1
Purpose Science 1
Purpose Science 2
Purpose Science 2
Purpose Science 3
Purpose Science 3
Why is it so hard to find life purpose?
Exposure, Ability, Career
The answer to this question is drawn from our deep experience, the many books we’ve read and conferences we’ve attended. There seem to be three basic reasons that make finding life purpose difficult:
Exposure
you just haven’t been exposed to anything that’s given you the true key to what you want.
Ability
you follow what you are good at or can do but it doesn’t connect for you or feed your soul.
Career
just because you don’t have a career doesn’t mean you don’t have a life purpose.
The Pinball Machine Analogy
This is a very complicated question.
A minority of people have always known what they want to do. But for most of us, it’s like being inside of a pinball machine. We don’t know what we want to do, so we bounce around the machine from things that we enjoy with little to no direction. We don’t know where we are going, we have no clear destination.
We don’t know where we are going so how would we know if we ever arrived?
Exposure
In general, the higher the level of education you have, the more “things” you are likely to be exposed to. The same is true of wealth. If your parents are/were wealthier then they could and would invest money and time in trying many new things.
However, the world is full of possibilities, full of niches and full of jobs we’ve never heard of. Just think of how many subjects there are in the world that you don’t even know about. So, there’s a very good chance you haven’t been exposed to, or aren’t aware of something that draws you into your purpose.
Now, we’re not pretending we can give our clients exposure to everything. However, what we’ve found is that most people have had exposure to something in their personal past that they’ve forgotten about which is a key. Or, they have never had the time to give themselves permission to actively look at a range of alternatives.
Either way, uuness helps plug the exposure problem by looking at your past systematically and giving you exercises to look wider than you usually would.
So the answer? In short – the more you look, the wider you look, the more likely you are to find!
Ability
You’re a ‘human being’ not a ‘human doing’ and you’ve likely fallen into doing something that you are good at rather than doing something you love.
Often you will make an initial choice that leads you down a path. This path leads to a series of choices based on what you are good at and that then becomes your work or career path.
There are real problems with this. Just because you are good at something doesn’t mean it gives you a sense of purpose. Because you tend to follow what you are good at – you can end up feeling like a ball in a pin ball machine, endlessly bouncing around, always moving forwards, but in no particular direction. Your life is essentially random.
It’s only by taking two steps back, by looking at what you are good at and what drives you, along with clues in your past that you can find out where your purpose lies.
For example, some of our clients are from finance, they were good at numbers and science and that’s why they ended up there. However, just helping banks or institutions make more money hasn’t provided them a strong sense of meaning. But does that mean they can’t have a sense of purpose if they are good at finance? Of course not – they could use their skills working in an organisation which is aligned with their purpose. They could be the finance director in a charity, a research funding organisation or an organisation they care about. Theycould create their own business based around their purpose.
So, the answer? In short, purpose and ability need to be aligned.
Career
Does my life purpose only cover my career? Absolutely not, it covers all elements of my life. What about if I’m not working – does that mean I don’t have a purpose? Absolutely not and we’ll cover that below.
Here’s an example, of an artist who struggled to see how his work and life purpose could come together.
His purpose was based around creativity. At the end of the process, uuness helped this artist to uncover a very specific purpose, but for the sake of illustration let’s just go with the general idea of creativity. He couldn’t see how to connect his personal and professional life. He felt like a human being split in half. He felt like he was living two lives and that made him feel disconnected from both his family and, internally, his work.
For him he realised he could bring creativity into his personal life. He thought differently from many people and he realised he could share that with the people in their lives, giving them, for example, original solutions to their life problems. He was constantly interested in new ideas and he realised that part of his purpose was to share them. In other words – he aligned his two worlds because he found his life purpose.
Those who don’t Work
You may not be working, you may be on “gardening leave” or taking a career break. You could be a full time mother or father, or you could be blissfully unemployed. So how does purpose relate to you?
Perhaps it’s stating the obvious but there is no better time to look at your purpose than right now. The problems with taking a break without a disciplined approach to looking at life differently are two-fold.
Firstly – you maybe tempted by the first decent offer that comes along. It’s a “rush” to be wanted and it’s dangerous as you are likely to end up doing something similar in a different environment. While a new culture may be better even if it’s not where your ‘why’ is, you’ll still end up in the same place.
The second situation is very common, you maybe offered a contract that pays well and end up going through a new path without thinking whether it’s for you or not. We’re not saying you shouldn’t experiment, quite the contrary, we’d argue you definitely should. It’s better to experiment in a direction you think you might like to go than blindly trying a whole lot of random things.
So the answer? In short – take the time to know where you are going if you have the time!
According to Gallup, 28% of female home makers are depressed versus 17% of working women. Being at home can be really tough, it can lead to loneliness and a lost sense of purpose for some people. There’s a sense in which people without a career, can, we stress can, lack purpose. However, that absolutely need not be the case! Of course if you have a new baby you simply may not have time for anything else! However some homemakers do.
The important thing is that your purpose doesn’t necessarily need to involve money or generating money. It may just be about finding something from your past, maybe a passion or an aptitude that you’ve forgotten about. A lot of people, according to Ken Robinson’s book, “Finding Your Element” are introduced to something in the wrong way and write it off. As Ken Robinson says:
“To find your Element you may have to challenge your own beliefs about yourself. Whatever age you are, you’ve almost certainly developed an inner story about what you can do and what you can’t do; what you are good at and what you’re not good at”. As a result we’d recommend you take some aptitude tests which are shown below. Finding something you care about can also help you hugely if you want to go back to work.”
Conclusion
So the answer? In short – finding your purpose needn’t be about generating money, it can be as simple as finding something you love and contributing.
Here are some great links to help you:
VARK questionnaire – to find your learning style https://vark-learn.com/
Strengths Finder https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/home.aspx
Aptitudes matching career https://careerscope.com/
Who has done uuness?
Senior Managers, CEO’s and full-time Parents
How do you find your life purpose has been a question for many. We’ve done uuness with Members of the largest CEO personal development organisation in the world (TEC/Vistage), for many CEO’s (e.g. the CEO of Saatchi) and senior management (e.g. at HSBC and PWC.) We’ve done this work with artists and leading authors. We’ve done this work with over 100 people.
It’s quite a private process and not everyone is comfortable sharing their personal details, however some people are comfortable talking about uuness publicly
If you wish to ask any of our past-clients a question about the uuness process, get in touch and we will connect you. You may also like to listen to testimonials.
Jonathan Russell – Ex CEO Saatchi & Saatchi
Doctor Richard London – Global Motivational Coach
Hugh Baker, ex head of global strategy HSBC
Paul Nathan, ex financial head of strategy for UK Railpen, now Triad advisory
Mark Taylor – Runs 20 Groups for TEC/Vistage in New York
Colin Mathura-Jeffree, Australia-NZ celebrity
Simon O’Shaughnessy – Innovation/Change expert
Head of Global innovation for Lion Nathan
CEO – Head of Australia-NZ Healthcare company
CEO – Canadian/US Refrigeration/Engineering systems company
CEO – Leading Canadian communications Company
CEO – UK Firm customising travel for high net worth
Head of New business for PWC – Australia/NZ
Marketing Lead – Vodafone Global
IDG – Senior Transformation Leader Global
Marketing Lead of a European Gym Chain
Award winning Business Author – US/Europe
Leading UK Celebrity Motivational Coach – UK
Artist – Leading European conceptual artist
Musician – Trance DJ who plays across Europe/USA
Is it Life coaching, therapy, psychology, mentoring?
It is life coaching but it draws on other things…
It’s a “new, specialist profession”
It’s so much easier to understand something if it has a clear box. The truth is that our work is a new box but it’s derived from other boxes. Mostly, we will cover how it relates to life coaching, therapy, mentoring and goal setting.
Imagine a world before “game design” was a profession. Game designers would struggle to explain it. They would probably say it was a mixture of being a visual artist, being good with computers and story telling, and yet, many people would still not understand it. The same is true of a new type of music. Anything truly new needs time to be understood. While we’ve been doing this for 15 years, it’s still far from being mainstream.
So back to life coaching, therapy, mentoring and psychology; we aren’t aware that any of the above professions specialise in life purpose. Some life coaches help you find your path in life but honestly, they aren’t specialists in the field as we are, they don’t have a unique process. They tend to focus on the outcome but not the why.
If there was a psychologist who specialised in life purpose – they could claim it but they don’t draw from semiotics so the offer would be half cooked.
There are coaches who help hugely with goal setting and try to help you to find your why, but they don’t specialise in it and they don’t draw on the deep principles of finding the unconscious in the way that we do.
It boils down to being a specialist. A roofer could try their hand at a thatched roof without it being their specialty.
A beer brewer could make perfect Ale, but could they make a Belgian beer with a history and exact process?
We’ve devoted years to refining the process with all sorts of people and ensuring science powers that process and we are always learning. We’d vouch, we know more about it than any other school of thought or organisation on the planet.
In short – finding your life purpose is a rare and special thing and we’ve combined science, passion and experience to turn it into a profession. It’s very simple, and yet very complicated and subtle at the same time. It requires true dedication which is what we offer
Who is it for?
You’ll be in one of five situations…
School Leaver or Graduate
You are a school leaver or graduate and you want to know how to present yourself.
Missing Direction
You just feel that you are missing direction, you can’t put your finger on it. You may be early in your career or you’ve been in a career for a long time but it’s not spinning your wheels. You just haven’t found your flow in life.
Career Change
You’re in a career and you know you want to leave it. It’s worked for you but you want to break out on your own. The problem is you don’t know if it’s really you or how to explain it. You want to know what your new direction will be in theory and allow space to figure out what that should be in reality.
Career Next Steps
You’re in a career and you’ve got an idea of what you want to do next but you’re not sure. You don’t know if it’s really you because you’ve never really thought about what’s really you and you want to find out. You want to find purpose in theory and practice.
Visionary
You are a visionary. You’ve had a successful career which has been rewarding but now you want to spread your wings. You really want to realise and find the long term longing you’ve always had. You want to refine it and get clear if it’s really you and how to present it. You want to ensure you stay on track.
What’s the process?
Everyone is different…
We’ve helped over 100 people to find their purpose and have it presented in a way that is meaningful to them. The process we use flows from our consultation with you. We will very quickly know what you need even if you are struggling to articulate it yourself. All of our methods are based on science.
In the interest of being brief this is an overview, the detail comes from a consultation where we will customise the process to your needs based on sound principles we’ve developed over 15 years.
Everyone is different – so we use the same phases of work irrespective but we introduce some different tools in the phases based on your situation. You can think of it as a tailored suit or tailored clothes. There are principles to tailoring which are universal but then we need to have your purpose fit you. That’s the magic of uuness.
uuness(1) overview
Find Flow
These are the key phases:
- Imagine your life in a series of chapters, what would they be?
- Map your life using all of your senses
- Work with uuness to find hidden points of flow that are a key to your life purpose
uuness(2) overview
Find your life purpose in theory
- Map your life using all of your senses to find hidden points of flow
- Map your life into I was, I am, I am being, I am becoming
- Use this to create 9 potential life purpose statements
- Create one life purpose statement in theory and create a single word to capture that
- Test this word over 5 weeks to ensure it works
uuness(3) overview
Find your life purpose in theory & practice
- Map your life using all of your senses to find hidden points of flow
- Map your life into I was, I am, I am being, I am becoming
- Use this to create 9 potential life purpose statements
- Create one life purpose statement in theory and create a single word to capture that
- Generate 11 potential futures to deliver your purpose in reality
- Analyse each future to see what’s right about it, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what should be included to find your life purpose in reality
- Once we have the purpose in reality create a single word to capture it
- Test this word over 5 weeks to ensure it works
uuness(4) overview
Find your life purpose in theory & practice
- Map your life using all of your senses to find hidden points of flow
- Map your life into I was, I am, I am being, I am becoming
- Use this to create 9 potential life purpose statements
- Create one life purpose statement in theory and create a single word to capture that
- Generate 11 potential futures to deliver your purpose in reality
- Analyse each future to see what’s right about it, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what should be included to find your life purpose in reality
- Once we have the purpose in reality create a single word to capture it
- Test this word over 5 weeks to ensure it works
- Capture your personal “semiotic” in terms of the colours, images and existing logos you like to create a brief for your visual
- Produce 3 directions for you to look at and select one – then make final changes
- Identify 5 tracks for you that always make you feel “on track”!
- Mash those 5 tracks into your own personal anthem
Who is behind this?
Jake Pearce
Founder & uuness Guide
Oxford University Human Sciences M.A.
Interdisciplinary The science of man
Background Market Research,
Innovation and Advertising
John Eyles
Co-Founder & uuness Guide
M.A. Art and Design
Artist, Educator and Businessman
Health, Learning and Technology,
Creativity and Innovation
Ian Turley
NED
B.Ed Physical eductaion
Passionate about health and fitness
CMO/COO Holmes Place
EBITDa responsibility of 19 million
Pippa Turley
NED
B.Ed (Hons) Physical Eduction
Passionate about mind body health
Triathlete representing UK and NZ
Xbody revolution in the UK
What’s the purpose of uuness?
This may sound a bit naïve but it is what it is. uuness exists to help as many people in the world find purpose as quickly, easily and accurately as possible using empirical science.
Why uuness?
It’s very simple, and an eternal. There are three reasons:
1. We believe that if people find purpose they will live happier, wealthier, more confident and longer lives.
2. If people do 1 people will need less “stuff” to compensate for a lack of direction, they will be happier with less which means they can focus on purpose and not money.
3. If we are happier with less, this will have a dramatic impact on our environment – we’ll use less resources because people need less stuff.
Our commitment
1. We give 10% of our profits to Oxigen, an organisation which reduces carbon impact.
2. If people aren’t happy with our work or don’t get a result, we’ll give their money back in full.
3. We will share the new science of purpose, the key learnings for free, via our book summaries and videos.
Jake Pearce
Founder & uuness Guide
Oxford University Human Sciences M.A.
Interdisciplinary The science of man
Background Market Research,
Innovation and Advertising
Jake Pearce – Uuness Founder
“I am? I am. I am!”
I’m Jake Pearce, 55, currently based near Chichester in the UK. My journey to founding uuness has been shaped by a fascinating blend of education and experiences. With an MA in Human Sciences from Oxford University covering psychology, genetics, and anthropology, I developed a fundamental understanding of human behavior and the ability to view challenges from multiple perspectives.
My professional path has been anything but linear. Starting in market research, I quickly moved to Europe’s first innovation agency, where I learned the delicate balance between creativity and scientific validation. My career then took me to New Zealand and across Asia, where I worked as a strategic planner in advertising. This experience revealed a crucial insight: organizations often struggle because they lack a clear sense of purpose.
The real turning point came in 2005 when I helped an award-winning author who was stuck with her next book. I realized her challenge wasn’t about writing – it was about not knowing who she was. This sparked a crucial question: Could there be a scientific approach to finding life purpose? I was amazed to discover there wasn’t one.
Over the next decade, I refined what would become uuness, testing and developing the methodology while waiting for the right moment. I’m grateful for early supporters like Simon O’Shaughnessey and Mark Taylor from TEC/Vistage, who helped transform this passion into a viable approach. By 2016, as the science of purpose began providing concrete evidence of its benefits, uuness really started to take shape.
The methodology combines several disciplines: behavioralism and semiotics from my academic background, consumer insights from research, future scenario planning from innovation work, and narrative construction from advertising. Each element contributes to a unique, science-based approach to discovering personal purpose.
When I’m not helping others find their purpose, you’ll find me surfing around the world or DJing trance music – activities that remind me we’re all part of something bigger. I believe firmly that finding your purpose isn’t just about self-improvement; it’s about understanding who you truly are and how you can contribute to the world. I wish someone had given me these tools earlier in my life, and I’m passionate about sharing them with others.