How to Change Your Mind To Change Your Life
[Music]
tony robbins said
change happens when the pain of staying
the same is greater than the pain of
change
my question is as humans why do we wait
until something is so painful that we
can’t tolerate it anymore
to find the courage to change after just
experiencing a year of extreme
uncertainty you may be feeling pulled
to make a change in your life but how do
you use that uncertainty
to make positive change
it’s a sunday afternoon in 2005.
i go for a run through my san diego
neighborhood
then head home feeling like a million
bucks
later that day we pull into the
container store
with my husband mike my brother chad and
my sister-in-law julie
the guys they weren’t hugely excited
about the prospect of home organization
so they ran off to a sports bar instead
i’m standing with julie in the create
your own closet section
and all of a sudden i couldn’t hold up
my body
i leaned back against a table trying to
hold myself upright
but i had absolutely no strength a few
moments later the entire store goes
completely black
as i hear my phone ringing in my purse i
fumble around in the dark
and i thrust my phone toward julie
saying who’s calling
i can’t see this mike walks up
and i lay my head on his chest and say
i’m really tired i need to go home
i slide down his body as i crumble to
the floor
over the next few minutes i can’t see
hear
or move they scoot me up in a wheelchair
and off to the hospital we go
as we’re driving to the hospital i keep
coming in and out of consciousness
and everyone’s laughing at me as i keep
saying
over and over again just take me home
i’m like a computer
i just need to reboot we pull up to the
hospital
and i’m becoming a little bit more aware
of my surroundings and i look up at the
building and i say to mike i can’t go in
here this is scripps
my hospital’s sharp my insurance covers
sharp
he chuckles and says no we’re here this
is where you’re going
in triage the nurses kept asking me what
i had taken
as i had never even smoked a cigarette
in my life
i kept insisting i was clean and sober
but apparently that didn’t look like the
truth
later that night they took me to sharp
by ambulance because even in my haze i
was right my insurance covered sharp
after hundreds of questions and tests
they tell this
healthy vibrant 29 year old woman who
woke up that morning
feeling like a million bucks that she
threw a blood clot to her brain
and had a stroke in the middle of a
container store
the next few days were a complete haze
of testing my cognitive abilities and
physical deficits
but eventually late wednesday night they
cleared me to go home
i don’t know what you would do after a
stroke but
thursday morning at 7 a.m i was sitting
at my desk
ready to see clients i was so
focused on doing what everyone expected
of me
that i wasn’t listening to my own body
i believe that when we’re living a life
that doesn’t fit
our bodies try to tell us they start
first with a whisper
then a shout if we still aren’t
listening to the shouts
our bodies will full-on knock us down
in order to better understand how a
healthy woman had a stroke
in the middle of the container store
before age 30 let me give you some
backstory
the mantra in my house growing up was go
to school
get good grades get into a good college
so you can get a good job
work there 40 years and retire with a
large retirement account
i was a good girl i did exactly what was
expected of me
perfect attendance good grades good
college
good job that grew to a six figure
finance career
and a million dollar san diego home from
the outside
it looked like i had it all but on the
inside
i was miserable i believe that if you
aren’t growing you’re dying
i knew i needed to make changes in my
life and in looking for opportunities to
grow
i learned about the lizard brain
your lizard brain is your amygdala a
small almond sized section in your brain
that is responsible for your most primal
instincts
of fear hunger and arousal
your amygdala initiates your
fight-or-flight response
originally our lizard brain kept us safe
from a bear attack or a stampede wild
buffalo
today we’re not really in danger of
stampede to wild buffalo
today our lizard brain causes us to fear
anything that is unknown or
uncomfortable
do you know the number one fear of
americans
according to a chapman university study
the fear of public speaking
is the number one fear in america with
over 25 percent of americans
saying they are afraid to speak in front
of a crowd
this is higher than the fear of heights
the fear of spiders or the fear of
snakes
why because we’re afraid to embarrass
ourselves
in front of other people in ninth grade
speech class i was
so afraid i couldn’t describe how to
make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
something i had done thousands of times
before
at that moment i went and chose the
scariest growth i could think of
i went and joined the debate team
my heart still races before i get on a
stage
but i choose to go deeper than my lizard
brain and not
allow my fears to stop me or define me
maybe today you’re sitting in a place in
your life where you know things just
aren’t quite right you’re unhappy in a
relationship
in a job in a career or in some other
aspect of your life but you’re afraid to
make a change because the fear of the
unknown
is scarier than what you’re experiencing
right now
we have recently experienced some of the
biggest changes we may
ever see in our lifetime quarantine
businesses shuttered record unemployment
and political unrest millions of people
who thought their lives were secure
found that their world could change in
the blink of an eye
crisis creates change and in the midst
of crisis
humans find resilience five popular
companies we
know and use today were founded at the
2008
great recession and contributed to big
change
then mo groupon instagram
uber slack these five companies
disrupted entire industries to change
how we
send money travel communicate
and purchase goods and services this
year
zoom video has surged 658 percent
and overtaken exxon mobil in market
capitalization
think about that a niche application
founded in 2011 is now
larger than a 135 year old
oil company founded by john rockefeller
today’s uncertainty actually provides
our lizard brain the perfect opportunity
to take a risk and choose change for me
after the stroke i ignored my body’s
whispers
shouts and it even quite literally
knocking me down
i doubled down on being successful i
worked harder
i took on bigger clients but it came
with some
side effects i gained almost 50 pounds
i opened the wine bottle actually the
entire wine cellar
on sunday afternoon at 3 o’clock just so
i could stop thinking about my upcoming
week
i had done everything the world said
would make me happy
but i was more miserable than ever i was
so afraid of change that i
just kept doing what i had always done
and i kept getting the same
unhappy results in my finance practice
almost 50 percent of our clients were
widows who were often left
completely unprepared to administer
multi-million dollar businesses
and the families that depended on them
as such
when they were thrust into scary change
their bodies started to whisper
and scream with stress some
microwaved their shoes yes in the midst
of crisis they accidentally microwaved
their shoes
others broke out in shingles in
observing these physical manifestations
of stress
i knew i wanted to empower women to be
better prepared to handle things before
scary change was thrust on them
so i worked days in my finance career
and i spent nights working to launch my
first business
to san diego fitness studios
then a couple years later i added a
consulting business
focused on helping other women just like
me
women who had achieved tremendous levels
of success
but woke up one day and wondered is this
as good as it gets
am i destined to end my life here
it wasn’t always easy my lizard brain
was totally right to be afraid
instead of being responsible for 35
wealthy clients
i was responsible for thousands of
clients
and a staff who counted on me to provide
paychecks and financial stability
there were lots of challenges and
opportunities to quit
but every time i was afraid to move i
looked for the one
task that was so small i couldn’t fail
the one task i could complete and find
success
in the process i learned that in helping
others
i became happier and more fulfilled
myself
why because you can’t be scared
and hopeful at the same time
fear and gratitude cannot coexist
in the same moment so if you’re sitting
here today
and you feel pulled to make a change in
your life but you aren’t certain what to
do next
start small go give to someone else in
need
i love nike’s mission statement to bring
inspiration and
innovation to every athlete in the world
if you have a body you’re an athlete
and to boil their mission down to its
essence it’s their tagline
just do it today’s uncertainty
actually allows you to go take that risk
make that change and today 15 years
after that stroke
i remember that every single day is a
gift
every day is an opportunity for you to
be better today
than yesterday so what change do you
want to make in your life today
what are you grateful for what are you
hopeful for what one
small action can you take today
that is too small to fail
just do it i believe in you your one
small action may
have the power to change the entire
[Applause]
[Music]
world