The Awakening The Great Awakening and the Reawakening

[Music]

[Music]

i want to thank the tedx committee for

inviting me

not only because i’m flattered which i

am but also reminded me

of an important story about gandhi a

woman had a son who was obsessed

and addicted to sugar so she took him to

the great leader gandhi

to cure his addiction she brought the

son to gandhi

gandhi spoke to him for a little bit and

sent him away and told the mother

bring him back in two weeks

two weeks later the mother brought the

sun back the sun met with gandhi they

talked for a little while

not too much longer he was cured and

they were about to leave and the women

asked gandhi

why did you wait two weeks what happened

over that two weeks and he said well

two weeks ago i was obsessed and

addicted to sugar so i needed two weeks

to cut back before i could talk to your

son about that

when the tedx committee asked me to talk

about my baseline

it was a good reminder that during the

pandemic during this most challenging

year we’ve just had

i’ve been knocked off my baseline that

i’ve been aware of my baseline

i might not have referred to it that way

but i’ve done work around my baseline

and over the past year it’s one more

time in my life where i’ve been

faced with challenges i have some tools

to meet them

but i realize sometimes too late that

i’ve been knocked off my baseline i need

to reboot i need to return to that and i

thank the tedx committee because

here i am and it’s giving me a few weeks

to do some reflection the way gandhi did

i hate to compare myself to gandhi and

i’m not and i’m not doing that

so let me take you back to the first

discovery of my baseline

i was about 12 years old maybe a little

bit younger doing fine in school well in

school even

kind of active in sports doing pretty

well there and really well behaved

on the other hand i had what might be

described as a really bad temper

and that might be a kind way to describe

it

i would i would kind of lose it and fly

off the handle and

and it was act really not okay so my mom

sat me down and she said

erin i’m going to give you two choices

okay mom

no idea where this is going choice one

we can buy some boxing equipment for the

basement

a big bag a small bag and some gloves

and when you’re frustrated when you’re

angry

when you get into these moods you can go

down in the basement and work that out

i said okay well that seems like a

pretty good option that’s sounding

pretty good

what’s option two option two is you go

to a psychiatrist

i said okay well i was about 12

wasn’t sure exactly what that meant that

was also a little bit of a different era

so that didn’t sound like a very good

option i chose option one

that was my first introduction to what

my baseline was

that my baseline way of of managing my

emotions

of managing stress maybe not that

healthy

and maybe something that i need to be

aware of and cause

and may cause me problems now at that

time i wouldn’t have thought

it in those terms but on reflection that

was the first

re-awake or the first awakening to my

baseline and it was a real gift for my

mother to do that

it wasn’t until another 40 years where i

did take her up on part 2 and go to a

therapist

that was only several years ago

when i it’s this is a time for a little

bit of a disclaimer

my therapist and i as we tried to

identify what might some of these issues

be that i’ll refer to later

as challenges or issues what

was going on back when i was around 12

years old

and we struggled to put labels on it

struggled to diagnose it and didn’t feel

like that was necessarily that important

for me this is just my story

it could be more possible or more

helpful for someone else

to put labels on it and get that

diagnosis so we called it the energies

i just have these energies that’s what i

was feeling and sometimes i manage them

well and sometimes i don’t so if i refer

to the energies

that’s what we’re talking about so that

strategy

that my mom employed in middle school

served me fairly well during high school

and college

and we kind of stuck with that that same

mode

i would work hard have lots of physical

activity

i was parts of sports teams that gave me

a sense of purpose the physical activity

gave me a physical release and that

worked pretty well

that was when things were healthy

sometimes i just have too much energy

too much going on it might be 11 or 12

o’clock at night in the middle of the

week

my parents are sitting there watching

the news and i come running down the

stairs jump down the stairs i’m in a

full

karate ghee or i’m in army fatigues and

i just take off and i run

and i’m in the woods running at 11 or 12

o’clock at night

it’s arguable whether that’s healthy or

not

other times i would choose less healthy

alternatives like alcohol to manage

the energies and to manage my mental

health issues that i was having

that weren’t and really don’t don’t have

a diagnosis or a label on them

but all in all i managed pretty well

i came to middlebury college and and and

kind of managed the energies

with with that formula that we talked

about fast forward to the early 1990s

i’m back at middlebury as a coach

i’ve graduated from middlebury in 86

i’ve got a master’s degree

i’m married to my college sweetheart

who’s great

i’ve got a good job taking up mountain

biking and skiing and running and

lifting

some of these same physical activities

but maybe at this point they’re not as

much they’re not enough anymore

there’s other things going on family

family issues

that maybe were under the surface before

start manifesting themselves

and we start discovering things in our

family like alcoholism

addiction suicide and other serious

mental health

challenges like bipolar disorder or

depression

again i don’t have the diagnosis for

myself and at that time i wasn’t sure

whether those

are exactly the things i was facing or

not

but i knew they were part of my family

they felt like they were part of me

and i knew that the tools that i had

used before were not enough

to address these not enough to address

the energies that i had

felt or what our thera my therapist and

i

named these broader issues the troubles

the energies and the troubles and i knew

that the the

modalities that i had at that point

weren’t enough to manage these

so much like frank

i chose to address these and after some

research i landed on

meditation those are some qigong

exercises we were doing before some

shaking and tapping

tai chi and some body healing

uh that i did as well those were all

activities that would move me towards a

more positive baseline

i also gave up alcohol sweets caffeine

and i became a vegetarian i felt like

there might be some things that would

move me

away from a negative baseline and then i

can add some activities that would move

me toward a positive baseline

and those worked really well for a long

time

life was pretty good there was the

challenges like everybody has

but i managed them pretty well i managed

the energies pretty well

i felt like there’s a way i’ve described

i’ve heard describe some mental health

issues of a nice calm duck on the

surface

and underneath the feet are really

paddling

when i was younger and through the early

90s

i was that duck and there was lots of

paddling my brain was very noisy

all the time i felt like in the

10 or 15 years after that that things

had quieted down

that maybe that duck on the surface also

was kind of chilling underneath and just

paddling along pretty easily

not not not without challenges but it

felt pretty good

so things are going well you’ve got a

good job you’ve got a great life you

live in this great

town of middlebury so let’s change

careers and give that up right

seems like a great idea so in many ways

it was a really good idea

the idea was to learn change grow

meet some new challenges and that was

all right and good and it served me

pretty well

to do that i think it was a good choice

in retrospect

but i didn’t do the self-reflection to

say

are the modalities that i have enough

for what’s going to be new challenges i

didn’t do the self-awareness and the

self-reflection

with the new challenges maybe i didn’t

understand what those new challenges

will be

and i realized a couple of things when i

took this new job

and it took me about five years which is

too long uh

to to to be awakened uh or what it might

call reawakened

uh to some of the challenges that i have

some of the new challenges that i

that i uh unearthed in this process

had led me by 2011 so about five years

into my new job

to be in what might be described as a

deep depression

whether that’s a clinical depression or

just how i was feeling

or what adam grant described a couple

weeks ago in an article as languishing

but i was not in a good place within the

first five years

i realized that what i had done up until

2006

was necessary at the time was helpful at

the time

but maybe not sufficient for these new

challenges

i realized also that with that

depression there were probably three

main things

leading to that that i had not really

uncovered in

in and discovered in my previous

self-awareness processes

and that is a sense of perfectionism

a sense of invulnerability and low

empathy

the perfectionism and the

invulnerability

came from that self-personal development

the focus on my personal development

because i was so fearful of what failure

might mean

so fearful of the energies or the

troubles taking over

that i put on a suit of armor i was

going to be perfect

i was going to be invulnerable

and if you think those are just words i

literally would say to myself

i will be and need to be perfect and i

can do this

and i will not succumb to the energies

or the troubles and i didn’t use those

words at the time those

we decided on a couple of years ago but

that was my approach

and there were some things that were

okay about it

but there with new stresses and new

challenges it was not enough it was

necessary

but it was not not sufficient

so it took me about five years to

realize that i kind of did some

again reflection and self-awareness

realized these things i had a friend

give me an assessment on my personality

he’s the one who identified that i had

low empathy not because i didn’t care

about people

but i was so focused on holding things

in and being involved

invulnerable that it was hard to connect

with people

see things from their perspective trust

people and let go

and that i needed to do that as this

next step

so i refocused on my mindfulness efforts

but i

i made made it then an inside out

approach yes i need to work on myself

inside but it’s only useful if it then

extends to others

and you develop a sense of empathy a

sense of compassion

and a sense of connection with other

people so that’s what i tried to do

i also codified this philosophy in

writing for myself

so i could come back to it i picked five

points to focus on one was work hard

that that has served me well i need to

work hard and stay busy

and that had served me well and i feel

good doing it i get in a flow state

so i continued to work hard but i added

work

smart because if you work hard without

smart

your relationships can suffer and i also

have recently added

with joy work hard and smart

and find joy in the work number two

there are no ordinary moments be

grateful for the small

everyday moments they’re there

if you’re with another person be

empathetic be compassionate connect with

them

and find joy in that connection in those

ordinary otherwise ordinary moments

three constant and never-ending

improvement

if you think that sounds too much like

perfectionism you’re right

this is something i adapted when i was

younger it

evolved over time to be learn

and grow by making mistakes

taking risks and being okay with failure

so i’ve kept it as constant and never

ending improvement

but within the context of being

comfortable failing

learning and growing number four is

relationships matter

all of that personal development in the

world doesn’t matter if you can’t share

it

can’t share it with joy can’t share with

love with other people

so relationships matter and i’m going to

focus on relationships

and then last love is a verb

it’s not just a nice word it doesn’t

just happen it is a verb

you love you actively love

and that’s going to be sort of a key to

everything for me

so i had these struggles gone through

this time

that’s a pretty good formula i’ve landed

i think on a better place

i’ve got the internal uh processes

they move out to other people i’ve even

codified it so i’ve got all this figured

out

end of story life is happily ever after

right

not not quite yet but a year ago

pandemic hit the world and i’m not alone

in those struggles

other people have mentioned it the last

year has been tough

another one of these transitions

some self-awareness some early part of

the pandemic where i say i’ve got this

i’ve been through this before apply

these principles

and you’re going to be okay but it’s

been a long year

and i’ve those have eroded a little bit

again this is a good time to thank the

tedx committee for making me

re re-look at these and have a

reawakening again

to my baseline and what i need to do to

live the life that i want to live

and i’ve done that in the last couple

weeks

and it was a quicker process having gone

through the last process it went through

in 2011.

so it’s going to be hard as a few months

ago started seeing the light at the end

of the tunnel

thinking it’s maybe the end of the

pandemic is coming

and it turns out that late is an

oncoming train because a month ago my

dad dies

it’s another reminder that life’s

challenges are going to keep coming

but that doesn’t mean you have to give

up it doesn’t mean that we don’t have

any tools

but we don’t have to be perfect we don’t

have to have all the answers

we rely on others for help we ask for

help

and it’s okay to admit that we don’t

have the answer and we can be vulnerable

so i’ve gone back to my baseline i will

work hard

but i’ll do it smart and i’ll do it with

joy

i will savor the ordinary moments

of everyday life and be grateful for

them i will

constantly try to improve but it’ll be

through taking risks

failing making mistakes being vulnerable

and being okay with that

i will nurture close relationships

and i will love actively

that is my baseline as i have tried to

define

it not as it tried to define me

thank you very much