The Fear Of Change Vs The Fear Of Complacency
imagine
if a patent clerk tried to change the
laws of physics
imagine being able to become a friend
with anyone in the world
imagine your job didn’t even exist when
you were born
well these three things have already
happened
that peyton clerk changed the world of
science forever
his name was albert einstein we can all
send a friend request
with a click of a button this was made
possible
by mark zuckerberg i was born in 1999
youtube was created in 2005 and in 2018
youtube became my job hello nice to meet
you
my name is adam bills and yep i really
just did that i compare myself to mark
zuckerberg and einstein why not first
ted talk
see these things that i’ve laid out are
all results of change
being able to embrace it live with it
imagine it i’ll give you change
imagine doing your first ted talk in
front of a bunch of cameras and laptops
instead of a real audience
that’s a change we probably couldn’t
have seen coming 12 to 18 months ago
but we adapt we overcome and i mean look
we’re all here today
this event is going ahead why because
it’s change
that makes us versatile
when i say imagine change what’s the
first thing that comes to your head
imagine changing your phone imagine
changing your car
imagine changing something you do in
everyday life
see when i say imagine change we
probably all think about these small
little changes
almost like new year’s resolutions
little promises that we like to make to
help make life that little bit better
whether that’s to get healthier get
smarter
improve our mental health little
promises
just to better ourselves in some way i
mean i’m constantly asking myself
imagine eating less packets of crisps
every day my little brother he’s always
asking imagine spending less time
playing xbox
and my mom well she’s always asking
imagine if i would clean the house more
still working on that change but doesn’t
mean it’s not right
but then we go to the other side of the
spectrum
of change i like to think about change
in this
range the range of change i like to call
it
imagine if i was a poet but one side we
have the small little changes to help
better our lives in some way
then we have change in the other side
this is where we have
our mark zuckerbergs or albert einsteins
or thomas edisons and so on
people on this side made a change to
better humanity as a whole
a change that impacted all of our lives
as we know it so we have the
small little changes on this side then
we have the huge
massive changes in the other but
what about the middle see these
middle changes are the changes that
change
our own lives the most
so we have the small changes that help
us become better people the big changes
and these middle changes is what changes
us and guess what these are the scariest
changes to make because
no matter how many new year’s
resolutions you set yourself in the
matter
how many times it took thomas edison to
light a bulb it’s these middle changes
that impact us the most
i’m talking about changes that affect
you for the rest of your life
changes that set you on a different path
changes that are very hard to undo
and to be honest when i first decided to
take this ted talk i was a bit skeptical
on what people
think because of my age and because i’m
a bit younger than other ted speakers
that i’ve seen in the past but that
doesn’t mean
i don’t have a story to tell
these big metal changes that we’re
scared to make often get dismissed
by these series of statements oh it’s
too risky
i don’t have the time uh maybe another
day
i’m comfortable where i am i don’t need
to do it
what did i get from it oh sure it’s
already been done
up would you wise up that’s never going
to happen well
i’ve got news for you change is never
going to happen with that attitude
wise up now what would you say
if i said imagine a child right this
child
goes to school he’s doing great at
school getting on great with friends
he’s excelling in all of his subjects so
much so in fact that he got 11a stars at
gcse
what would you say well you’d probably
say okay well this is
very clearly a young academic person who
has their head screwed on
fair enough now what would you say
if i said that young academic person
sacrificed all that
to start a youtube channel what would
you say no
well you probably say okay well this is
very clearly a stupid young person who
doesn’t have their head screwed
on trust me i’ve been called worse
that child that i was talking about is
in fact me
someone who was once very academic going
places had the likes of
oxford and harvard university in their
crosshairs
what made me want to go from that to
uploading videos online
see change means something
it means going from point a to point
b but it’s this
transition that scares people
how was i ever going to tell my teachers
that i didn’t really fancy the likes of
oxford or cambridge never mind wanting
to go to university at all
how was i going to tell my parents how
did i explain that how you what when
it’s in this moment that inhabits change
the fear of change
but what if we didn’t fear change at all
why are we not telling our children the
exact same theme
of this ted talk imagine change
why is a society have we accepted this
traditional flow of passage where we
we go to school go to university and get
a job somewhere
no what i’m not saying is that all kids
should just drop out of school and
become youtubers that’s not what i’m
saying but what i’m saying is for kids
to open their eyes more but
let’s let’s rewind a second
what if i told you that stupid young
person who threw his life away
two years later bought his mum and dad
the house of their dreams bought himself
his dream car
became a host in one of the longest
running kids tv programs in the planet
and invested so much so into property
that he wouldn’t have to worry about
paying his mom and dad
their wages to leave their full-time
jobs would you say noy
you know what doesn’t matter it doesn’t
matter because you judged him
you judged him based solely on that
change he committed to
you didn’t give him the chance and it’s
this problem why we don’t have more
young people asking themselves
imagine change it’s that judgment that
makes
imagining change even harder
the funny thing is that making a change
brings about more change
there’s a lot of change in these
sentences if you haven’t noticed already
for example i didn’t think i would ever
be stood here
on this red dot and you know what
i want to fill this with that
that’s that off the bucket list i also
didn’t think i’d be stood here caressing
carpet during my first ted talk but
there you go
but now i’m gonna i’m gonna throw a
spanner in the works that made me want
to imagine change
all the time and everything that i do
breathe work on
and it was this what if instead of being
afraid of change
we feared complacency the complacency of
the norm
is what i’m scared of and it’s why i
have this constant battle with myself
to always be thinking on my toes always
trying to be better
i know that if i ever get comfortable
i’m doing something wrong
i know these middle changes are the
scariest to make but they’re also the
hardest to carry through with personally
it takes a lot of guts to imagine change
in a world where
there’s not a lot of judgment both
online and offline
so i salute you to all those
people who went through one of those
middle changes
in your lives you have my respect
because a lot of the time these people
made the leap
before they could even see the safety
net
we have to imagine change before we
begin
to move toward it thank you for
listening to my ted talk