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