ted英语演讲稿十篇
What I'd like to do today is talk about one of my favorite subjects, and that is the neuroscience of sleep.
Now, there is a sound -- (Alarm clock) -- aah, it worked -- a sound that is desperately, desperately familiar to most of us, and of course it's the sound of the alarm clock. And what that truly ghastly, awful sound does is stop the single most important behavioral experience that we have, and that's sleep. If you're an average sort of person, 36 percent of your life will be spent asleep, which means that if you live to 90, then 32 years will have been spent entirely asleep.
Now what that 32 years is telling us is that sleep at some level is important. And yet, for most of us, we don't give sleep a second thought. We throw it away. We really just don't think about sleep. And so what I'd like to do today is change your views, change your ideas and your thoughts about sleep. And the journey that I want to take you on, we need to start by going back in time.
"Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber." Any ideas who said that? Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Yes, let me give you a few more quotes. "O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?" Shakespeare again, from -- I won't say it -- the Scottish play. [Correction: Henry IV, Part 2] (Laughter) From the same time: "Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together." Extremely prophetic, by Thomas Dekker, another Elizabethan dramatist.
But if we jump forward 400 years, the tone about sleep changes somewhat. This is from Thomas Edison, from the beginning of the 20th century. "Sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days." Bang. (Laughter) And if we also jump into the 1980s, some of you may remember that Margaret Thatcher was reported to have said, "Sleep is for wimps." And of course the infamous -- what was his name? -- the infamous Gordon Gekko from "Wall Street" said, "Money never sleeps."
What do we do in the 20th century about sleep? Well, of course, we use Thomas Edison's light bulb to invade the night, and we occupied the dark, and in the process of this occupation, we've treated sleep as an illness, almost. We've treated it as an enemy. At most now, I suppose, we tolerate the need for sleep, and at worst perhaps many of us think of sleep as an illness that needs some sort of a cure. And our ignorance about sleep is really quite profound.
Why is it? Why do we abandon sleep in our thoughts? Well, it's because you don't do anything much while you're asleep, it seems. You don't eat. You don't drink. And you don't have sex. Well, most of us anyway. And so therefore it's -- Sorry. It's a complete waste of time, right? Wrong. Actually, sleep is an incredibly important part of our biology, and neuroscientists are beginning to explain why it's so very important. So let's move to the brain.
Now, here we have a brain. This is donated by a social scientist, and they said they didn't know what it was, or indeed how to use it, so -- (Laughter) Sorry. So I borrowed it. I don't think they noticed. Okay. (Laughter)
The point I'm trying to make is that when you're asleep, this thing doesn't shut down. In fact, some areas of the brain are actually more active during the sleep state than during the wake state. The other thing that's really important about sleep is that it doesn't arise from a single structure within the brain, but is to some extent a network property, and if we flip the brain on its back -- I love this little bit of spinal cord here -- this bit here is the hypothalamus, and right under there is a whole raft of interesting structures, not least the biological clock. The biological clock tells us when it's good to be up, when it's good to be asleep, and what that structure does is interact with a whole raft of other areas within the hypothalamus, the lateral hypothalamus, the ventrolateral preoptic nuclei. All of those combine, and they send projections down to the brain stem here. The brain stem then projects forward and bathes the cortex, this wonderfully wrinkly bit over here, with neurotransmitters that keep us awake and essentially provide us with our consciousness. So sleep arises from a whole raft of different interactions within the brain, and essentially, sleep is turned on and off as a result of a range of
Okay. So where have we got to? We've said that sleep is complicated and it takes 32 years of our life. But what I haven't explained is what sleep is about. So why do we sleep? And it won't surprise any of you that, of course, the scientists, we don't have a consensus. There are dozens of different ideas about why we sleep, and I'm going to outline three of those.
The first is sort of the restoration idea, and it's somewhat intuitive. Essentially, all the stuff we've burned up during the day, we restore, we replace, we rebuild during the night. And indeed, as an explanation, it goes back to Aristotle, so that's, what, 2,300 years ago. It's gone in and out of fashion. It's fashionable at the moment because what's been shown is that within the brain, a whole raft of genes have been shown to be turned on only during sleep, and those genes are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways. So there's good evidence for the whole restoration hypothesis.
What about energy conservation? Again, perhaps intuitive. You essentially sleep to save calories. Now, when you do the sums, though, it doesn't really pan out. If you compare an individual who has slept at night, or stayed awake and hasn't moved very much, the energy saving of sleeping is about 110 calories a night. Now, that's the equivalent of a hot dog bun. Now, I would say that a hot dog bun is kind of a meager return for such a complicated and demanding behavior as sleep. So I'm less convinced by the energy conservation idea.
But the third idea I'm quite attracted to, which is brain processing and memory consolidation. What we know is that, if after you've tried to learn a task, and you sleep-deprive individuals, the ability to learn that task is smashed. It's really hugely attenuated. So sleep and memory consolidation is also very important. However, it's not just the laying down of memory and recalling it. What's turned out to be really exciting is that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep. In fact, it's been estimated to give us a threefold advantage. Sleeping at night enhances our creativity. And what seems to be going on is that, in the brain, those neural connections that are important, those synaptic connections that are important, are linked and strengthened, while those that are less important tend to fade away and be less important.
Okay. So we've had three explanations for why we might sleep, and I think the important thing to realize is that the details will vary, and it's probable we sleep for multiple different reasons. But sleep is not an indulgence. It's not some sort of thing that we can take on board rather casually. I think that sleep was once likened to an upgrade from economy to business class, you know, the equiavlent of. It's not even an upgrade from economy to first class. The critical thing to realize is that if you don't sleep, you don't fly. Essentially, you never get there, and what's extraordinary about much of our society these days is that we are desperately sleep-deprived.
So let's now look at sleep deprivation. Huge sectors of society are sleep-deprived, and let's look at our sleep-o-meter. So in the 1950s, good data suggests that most of us were getting around about eight hours of sleep a night. Nowadays, we sleep one and a half to two hours less every night, so we're in the six-and-a-half-hours-every-night league. For teenagers, it's worse, much worse. They need nine hours for full brain performance, and many of them, on a school night, are only getting five hours of sleep. It's simply not enough. If we think about other sectors of society, the aged, if you are aged, then your ability to sleep in a single block is somewhat disrupted, and many sleep, again, less than five hours a night. Shift work. Shift work is extraordinary, perhaps 20 percent of the working population, and the body clock does not shift to the demands of working at night. It's locked onto the same light-dark cycle as the rest of us. So when the poor old shift worker is going home to try and sleep during the day, desperately tired, the body clock is saying, "Wake up. This is the time to be awake." So the quality of sleep that you get as a night shift worker is usually very poor, again in that sort of five-hour region. And then, of course, tens of millions of people suffer from jet lag. So who here has jet lag? Well, my goodness gracious. Well, thank you very much indeed for not falling asleep, because that's what your brain is craving.
One of the things that the brain does is indulge in micro-sleeps, this involuntary falling asleep, and you have essentially no control over it. Now, micro-sleeps can be sort of somewhat embarrassing, but they can also be deadly. It's been estimated that 31 percent of drivers will fall asleep at the wheel at least once in their life, and in the U.S., the statistics are pretty good: 100,000 accidents on the freeway have been associated with tiredness, loss of vigilance, and falling asleep. A hundred thousand a year. It's extraordinary. At another level of terror, we dip into the tragic accidents at Chernobyl and indeed the space shuttle Challenger, which was so tragically lost. And in the investigations that followed those disasters, poor judgment as a result of extended shift work and loss of vigilance and tiredness was attributed to a big chunk of those disasters.
So when you're tired, and you lack sleep, you have poor memory, you have poor creativity, you have increased impulsiveness, and you have overall poor judgment. But my friends, it's so much worse than that.
(Laughter)
If you are a tired brain, the brain is craving things to wake it up. So drugs, stimulants. Caffeine represents the stimulant of choice across much of the Western world. Much of the day is fueled by caffeine, and if you're a really naughty tired brain, nicotine. And of course, you're fueling the waking state with these stimulants, and then of course it gets to 11 o'clock at night, and the brain says to itself, "Ah, well actually, I need to be asleep fairly shortly. What do we do about that when I'm feeling completely wired?" Well, of course, you then resort to alcohol. Now alcohol, short-term, you know, once or twice, to use to mildly sedate you, can be very useful. It can actually ease the sleep transition. But what you must be so aware of is that alcohol doesn't provide sleep, a biological mimic for sleep. It sedates you. So it actually harms some of the neural proccessing that's going on during memory consolidation and memory recall. So it's a short-term acute measure, but for goodness sake, don't become addicted to alcohol as a way of getting to sleep every night.
Another connection between loss of sleep is weight gain. If you sleep around about five hours or less every night, then you have a 50 percent likelihood of being obese. What's the connection here? Well, sleep loss seems to give rise to the release of the hormone ghrelin, the hunger hormone. Ghrelin is released. It gets to the brain. The brain says, "I need carbohydrates," and what it does is seek out carbohydrates and particularly sugars. So there's a link between tiredness and the metabolic predisposition for weight gain.
Stress. Tired people are massively stressed. And one of the things of stress, of course, is loss of memory, which is what I sort of just then had a little lapse of. But stress is so much more. So if you're acutely stressed, not a great problem, but it's sustained stress associated with sleep loss that's the problem. So sustained stress leads to suppressed immunity, and so tired people tend to have higher rates of overall infection, and there's some very good studies showing that shift workers, for example, have higher rates of cancer. Increased levels of stress throw glucose into the circulation. Glucose becomes a dominant part of the vasculature and essentially you become glucose intolerant. Therefore, diabetes 2. Stress increases cardiovascular disease as a result of raising blood pressure. So there's a whole raft of things associated with sleep loss that are more than just a mildly impaired brain, which is where I think most people think that sleep loss resides.
So at this point in the talk, this is a nice time to think, well, do you think on the whole I'm getting enough sleep? So a quick show of hands. Who feels that they're getting enough sleep here? Oh. Well, that's pretty impressive. Good. We'll talk more about that later, about what are your tips.
So most of us, of course, ask the question, "Well, how do I know whether I'm getting enough sleep?" Well, it's not rocket science. If you need an alarm clock to get you out of bed in the morning, if you are taking a long time to get up, if you need lots of stimulants, if you're grumpy, if you're irritable, if you're told by your work colleagues that you're looking tired and irritable, chances are you are sleep-deprived. Listen to them. Listen to yourself.
What do you do? Well -- and this is slightly offensive -- sleep for dummies: Make your bedroom a haven for sleep. The first critical thing is make it as dark as you possibly can, and also make it slightly cool. Very important. Actually, reduce your amount of light exposure at least half an hour before you go to bed. Light increases levels of alertness and will delay sleep. What's the last thing that most of us do before we go to bed? We stand in a massively lit bathroom looking into the mirror cleaning our teeth. It's the worst thing we can possibly do before we went to sleep. Turn off those mobile phones. Turn off those computers. Turn off all of those things that are also going to excite the brain. Try not to drink caffeine too late in the day, ideally not after lunch. Now, we've set about reducing light exposure before you go to bed, but light exposure in the morning is very good at setting the biological clock to the light-dark cycle. So seek out morning light. Basically, listen to yourself. Wind down. Do those sorts of things that you know are going to ease you off into the honey-heavy dew of slumber.
Okay. That's some facts. What about some myths?
Teenagers are lazy. No. Poor things. They have a biological predisposition to go to bed late and get up late, so give them a break.
We need eight hours of sleep a night. That's an average. Some people need more. Some people need less. And what you need to do is listen to your body. Do you need that much or do you need more? Simple as that.
Old people need less sleep. Not true. The sleep demands of the aged do not go down. Essentially, sleep fragments and becomes less robust, but sleep requirements do not go down.
And the fourth myth is, early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Well that's wrong at so many different levels. (Laughter) There is no, no evidence that getting up early and going to bed early gives you more wealth at all. There's no difference in socioeconomic status. In my experience, the only difference between morning people and evening people is that those people that get up in the morning early are just horribly smug.
(Laughter) (Applause)
Okay. So for the last part, the last few minutes, what I want to do is change gears and talk about some really new, breaking areas of neuroscience, which is the association between mental health, mental illness and sleep disruption. We've known for 130 years that in severe mental illness, there is always, always sleep disruption, but it's been largely ignored. In the 1970s, when people started to think about this again, they said, "Yes, well, of course you have sleep disruption in schizophrenia because they're on anti-psychotics. It's the anti-psychotics causing the sleep problems," ignoring the fact that for a hundred years previously, sleep disruption had been reported before anti-psychotics.
So what's going on? Lots of groups, several groups are studying conditions like depression, schizophrenia and bipolar, and what's going on in terms of sleep disruption. We have a big study which we published last year on schizophrenia, and the data were quite extraordinary. In those individuals with schizophrenia, much of the time, they were awake during the night phase and then they were asleep during the day. Other groups showed no 24-hour patterns whatsoever. Their sleep was absolutely smashed. And some had no ability to regulate their sleep by the light-dark cycle. They were getting up later and later and later and later each night. It was smashed.
So what's going on? And the really exciting news is that mental illness and sleep are not simply associated but they are physically linked within the brain. The neural networks that predispose you to normal sleep, give you normal sleep, and those that give you normal mental health are overlapping. And what's the evidence for that? Well, genes that have been shown to be very important in the generation of normal sleep, when mutated, when changed, also predispose individuals to mental health problems. And last year, we published a study which showed that a gene that's been linked to schizophrenia, which, when mutated, also smashes the sleep. So we have evidence of a genuine mechanistic overlap between these two important systems.
Other work flowed from these studies. The first was that sleep disruption actually precedes certain types of mental illness, and we've shown that in those young individuals who are at high risk of developing bipolar disorder, they already have a sleep abnormality prior to any clinical diagnosis of bipolar. The other bit of data was that sleep disruption may actually exacerbate, make worse the mental illness state. My colleague Dan Freeman has used a range of agents which have stabilized sleep and reduced levels of paranoia in those individuals by 50 percent.
So what have we got? We've got, in these connections, some really exciting things. In terms of the neuroscience, by understanding the neuroscience of these two systems, we're really beginning to understand how both sleep and mental illness are generated and regulated within the brain. The second area is that if we can use sleep and sleep disruption as an early warning signal, then we have the chance of going in. If we know that these individuals are vulnerable, early intervention then becomes possible. And the third, which I think is the most exciting, is that we can think of the sleep centers within the brain as a new therapeutic target. Stabilize sleep in those individuals who are vulnerable, we can certainly make them healthier, but also alleviate some of the appalling symptoms of mental illness.
So let me just finish. What I started by saying is take sleep seriously. Our attitudes toward sleep are so very different from a pre-industrial age, when we were almost wrapped in a duvet. We used to understand intuitively the importance of sleep. And this isn't some sort of crystal-waving nonsense. This is a pragmatic response to good health. If you have good sleep, it increases your concentration, attention, decision-making, creativity, social skills, health. If you get sleep, it reduces your mood changes, your stress, your levels of anger, your impulsivity, and your tendency to drink and take drugs. And we finished by saying that an understanding of the neuroscience of sleep is really informing the way we think about some of the causes of mental illness, and indeed is providing us new ways to treat these incredibly debilitating conditions.
Jim Butcher, the fantasy writer, said, "Sleep is God. Go worship." And I can only recommend that you do the same.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
01. Remember to say thank you
Hi. I'm here to talk to you about the importance of praise, admiration and thank you, and having it be specific and genuine.
And the way I got interested in this was, I noticed in myself, when I was growing up, and until about a few years ago, that I would want to say thank you to someone, I would want to praise them, I would want to take in their praise of me and I'd just stop it. And I asked myself, why? I felt shy, I felt embarrassed. And then my question became, am I the only one who does this? So, I decided to investigate.
I'm fortunate enough to work in the rehab facility, so I get to see people who are facing life and death with addiction. And sometimes it comes down to something as simple as, their core wound is their father died without ever saying he's proud of them. But then, they hear from all the family and friends that the father told everybody else that he was proud of him, but he never told the son. It's because he didn't know that his son needed to hear it.
So my question is, why don't we ask for the things that we need? I know a gentleman, married for 25 years, who's longing to hear his wife say, "Thank you for being the breadwinner, so I can stay home with the kids," but won't ask. I know a woman who's good at this. She, once a week, meets with her husband and says, "I'd really like you to thank me for all these things I did in the house and with the kids." And he goes, "Oh, this is great, this is great." And praise really does have to be genuine, but she takes responsibility for that. And a friend of mine, April, who I've had since kindergarten, she thanks her children for doing their chores. And she said, "
But before I show you what’s inside,
I will tell you that’s going to do incredible things for you .
It will bring all of your family together.
You will feel loved and appreciated like never before.
And reconnect to friends and acquaintances you haven’t heard from in years.
Adoration and admiration will overwhelm you.
It will recalibrate what’s important in your life.
It will redefine your sense of spirituality and faith.
You’ll have a new understanding and trust in your body.
You’ll have unsurpassed vitality and energy.
You’ll expand your vocabulary, meet new people, and you’ll have a healthier lifestyle. And get this, you’ll have an eight-week vacation of doing absolutely nothing.
You’ll eat countless gourmet meals.
Flowers will arrive by the truck load.
People will say to you: “you look great! Have you had any work done?”
And you’ll have a life-time supply of good drugs.
You’ll be challenged, inspired, motivated and humbled.
Your life will have new meaning: peace, health, serenity, happiness, nirvana.
The price?
Fifty-five thousand dollars.
And that’s an incredible deal.
By now, I know you’re dying to know what it is and where you can get one.
Does Amazon carry it?
Dose it have the Apple logo on it?
Is there a waiting list?
Not likely.
This gift came to me about five months ago.
And looked more like this when it was all wrapped up.
Not quite so pretty.
And this.
And then this.
It was a rare jam.
A brain tumor.
Hemangioblastoma.
The gift that keeps on giving.
And while I’m ok now.
I wouldn’t wish this gift for you.
I’m not sure you’d want it.
But I would’t change my experience.
It profoundly altered my life in ways it didn’t expect.
In all the ways I just shared with you.
So the next time you are faced with something that’s unexpected, unwanted and uncertain. Consider that it just may be a gift.
When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.
Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.
See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.
But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.
For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.
Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.
But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.
Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?
Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.
So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.
But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.
In 20__, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.
Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.
Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?
Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.
Every kid needs a champion
每个孩子都需要一个冠军演讲稿中英对照：
I have spent my entire life either at the schoolhouse, on the way to the schoolhouse, or talking about what happens in the schoolhouse. Both my parents were educators, my maternal grandparents were educators, and for the past 40 years I've done the same thing. And so, needless to say, over those years I've had a chance to look at education reform from a lot of
perspectives. Some of those reforms have been good. Some of them have been not so good. And we know why kids drop out. We know why kids don't learn. It's either poverty, low attendance, negative peer influences. We know why. But one of the things that we never discuss or we rarely discuss is the value and importance of human connection, relationships.
我这辈子，要么是在学校，要么在去学校的路上，要么是在讨论学校里发生了什么事。我的父母都是教育家，我的外祖父母也都是搞教育的，过去40年我也在从事同样的事业。所以，很显然，过去的这些年里，我有机会从各个角度审视教育改革。一些改革是有成效的。而另一些却收效甚微。我们知道孩子们为什么掉队辍学。我们知道孩子们为什么学不下去。原因无非是贫穷，低出席率，同龄人的坏影响。我们知道为什么。但是我们从未讨论或者极少讨论的是人和人之间的那种联系的价值和重要性，这就是“关系”。
James Comer says that no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. George Washington Carver says all learning is understanding relationships. Everyone in this room has been affected by a teacher or an adult.
For years, I have watched people teach. I have looked at the best and I've look at some of the worst.
James Comer (美国著名儿童精神科医师）说过，没有强有力的联系，学习就不会有显著的进步。 George Washington Carver（美国著名教育学家）说过，学习就是理解各种关系。在座的各位都曾经被一位老师或者一个成年人影响过。这么多年，我都在看人们怎么教学。我看过最好的也看过最差的。
A colleague said to me one time, "They don't pay me to like the kids. They pay me to teach a lesson. The kids should learn it. I should teach it. They should learn it. Case closed."
一次有个同事跟我说， “我的职责不是喜欢那些孩子们。我的职责是教书。孩子们就该去学。我管教课，他们管学习。就是这么个理儿。”
Well, I said to her, "You know, kids don't learn from people they don't like." 然后，我就跟她说， “你知道，孩子们可不跟他们讨厌的人学习。”
(Laughter) (Applause)
（笑声）（掌声）
She said, "That's just a bunch of hooey."
她接着说，“一派胡言。”
And I said to her, "Well, your year is going to be long and arduous, dear." 然后我对她说，“那么，亲爱的，你这一年会变得十分漫长和痛苦。”
Needless to say it was. Some people think that you can either have it in you to build a relationship or you don't. I think Stephen Covey had the right idea. He
said you ought to just throw in a few simple things, like seeking first to
understand as opposed to being understood, simple things like apologizing. You ever thought about thatTell a kid you're sorry, they're in shock.
事实也果真如此。有些人认为一个人或者天生可以建立一种关系或者不具有这种能力。我认为Stephen Covey（美国教育家）是对的。他说你只需要做一些简单的事情，比如试着首先理解他人，而不是想要被理解，比如道歉。你想过吗？跟一个孩子说你很对不起，他们都惊呆了。
I taught a lesson once on ratios. I'm not real good with math, but I was working on it. And I got back and looked at that teacher edition. I'd taught the whole lesson wrong. (Laughter)
我有一次讲比例。我数学不是很好，但是我当时在教数学。然后我下了课，翻看了教师用书。我完全教错了。（笑声）
So I came back to class the next day, and I said, "Look, guys, I need to apologize. I taught the whole lesson wrong. I'm so sorry."
所以我第二天回到班上说， “同学们，我要道歉。我昨天的课都教错了。我非常抱歉。”
They said, "That's okay, Ms. Pierson. You were so excited, we just let you go." (Laughter) (Applause)
他们说，“没关系，Pierson老师。你当时教得非常投入，我们就让你继续了。” （笑声）（掌声）
I have had classes that were so low, so academically deficient that I cried. I wondered, how am I going to take this group in nine months from where they
are to where they need to beAnd it was difficult. It was awfully hard. How do I raise the self-esteem of a child and his academic achievement at the same time
我曾经教过程度非常低的班级，学术素养差到我都哭了。我当时就想，我怎么能在9个月之内把这些孩子提升到他们必须具备的水平？这真的很难，太艰难了。我怎么能让一个孩子重拾自信的同时他在学术上也有进步？
One year I came up with a bright idea. I told all my students, "You were chosen to be in my class because I am the best teacher and you are the best students, they put us all together so we could show everybody else how to do it."
有一年我有了一个非常好的主意。我告诉我的学生们， “你们进了我的班级，因为我是最好的老师，而你们是最好的学生，他们把我们放在一起来给其他人做个好榜样。”
One of the students said, "Really" (Laughter)
一个学生说，“真的吗？” （笑声）
I said, "Really. We have to show the other classes how to do it, so when we walk down the hall, people will notice us, so you can't make noise. You just have to strut." And I gave them a saying to say: "I am somebody. I was
somebody when I came. I'll be a better somebody when I leave. I am powerful, and I am strong. I deserve the education that I get here. I have things to do, people to impress, and places to go."
我说，“当然是真的。我们要给其他班级做个榜样，当我们走在楼道里，因为大家都会注意到我们，我们不能吵闹。大家要昂首阔步。” 我还给了他们一个口号：“我是个人物。我来的时候是个人物。我毕业的时候会变成一个更好的人物。我
很有力，很强大。我值得在这里受教育。我有很多事情要做，我要让人们记住我，我要去很多地方。”
And they said, "Yeah!"
然后他们说：“是啊！”
You say it long enough, it starts to be a part of you.
如果你长时间的这么说，它就会开始变成事实。
And so — (Applause) I gave a quiz, 20 questions. A student missed 18. I put a "+2" on his paper and a big smiley face.
所以－（掌声）我做了一个小测验，20道题。一个孩子错了18道。我在他了卷子上写了个“＋2”和一个大的笑脸。
He said, "Ms. Pierson, is this an F"
他说，“Pierson老师，这是不及格吗？”
I said, "Yes."
我说，“是的。”
He said, "Then why'd you put a smiley face"
他接着说，“那你为什么给我一个笑脸？”
I said, "Because you're on a roll. You got two right. You didn't miss them all." I said, "And when we review this, won't you do better"
我说，“因为你正渐入佳境。你没有全错，还对了两个。” 我说，“我们复习这些题的时候，难道你不会做得更好吗？”
How many of you are tired of seeingcelebrities adopting kids from the African continent?
你们之中有多少人已经对那些从非洲领养小孩的明星而感到厌倦了?
Well, it's not all that bad. I was adopted.I grew up in rural Uganda, lost both my parents when I was very, very young.And when my parents passed, I experienced all the negative effects of poverty,from homelessness, eating out of trash piles, you name it.
嗯，那也不全是坏事。我就是被其中领养的一员。我在乌干达的郊区长大，在我很小的时候，我的父母就去世了。在我父母离世之后，我经历了所有贫困带来的困难，从无家可归，到捡食路边的垃圾，所有你能想得到的。
But my life changed when I got acceptedinto an orphanage. Through one of those sponsor-an-orphan programs, I wassponsored and given an opportunity to acquire an education. I started off inUganda. I went through school, and the way this particular program worked, youfinished high school and after high school, you go learn a trade -- to become acarpenter, a mechanic or something along those lines.
但自从我被一家孤儿院收养 我的生活就发生了巨变。通过孤儿院的一个补助项目，我获得了接受教育的机会，以及相应的资助。一开始是在乌干达。我去了学校念书，而根据这个项目的运作流程，他们会在你读完高中以后，送你去学一门手艺，比如木匠，或者机修工或者其他的一些专业技术。
My case was a little different. The sponsorfamily that was sending these 25 dollars a month to this orphanage to sponsorme, which -- I had never met them -- said, "Well ... we would like to sendyou to college instead." Oh -- it gets better.
而我的情况却有所不同。每个月我会在孤儿院收到25美元补助。这钱来自资助我的家庭，我从未见过他们他们说，“我们希望资助你去上大学” 哦，那再好不过了。
And they said, "If you get thepaperwork, we'll send you to school in America instead." So with theirhelp, I went to the embassy and applied for the visa. I got the visa.
他们还说：“如果你能通过申请 我们会把你送到美国的大学读书。“ 所以，在他们的帮助下，我去大使馆申请了签证。并且通过了签证。
I remember this day like it was yesterday.I walked out of the embassy with this piece of paper in my hand, a hop in mystep, smile on my face, knowing that my life is about to change. I went homethat night, and I slept with my passport, because I was afraid that someonemight steal it.
那一天对我来说就像昨天一样。我拿着手里的文件走出大使馆，一路蹦跳，难掩笑意，我明白我的生活将不复从前。那天晚上我回到家里，抱着我的护照睡着了，因为我担心有人会把它偷走。
I couldn't fall asleep. I kept feeling it.I had a good idea for security. I was like, "OK, I'm going to put it in aplastic bag, and take it outside and dig a hole, and put it in there." Idid that, went back in the house. I could not fall asleep. I was like,"Maybe someone saw me." I went back --
而我辗转反侧。那念头依然挥之不去。我突然想到了一个万全的主意。我说：”好吧，我可以把它放进一个塑料袋里然后在外面地上挖一个洞，把袋子放进去。” 我真的做了，然后又回到屋子里。但我依然无眠，我想，“也许有人看到我了。” 我又回去了
I pulled it out, and I put it with me theentire night -- all to say that it was an anxiety-filled night.
我把袋子拿出来，然后抓着它度过了一宿 我只想说那真是焦虑的一晚。
Going to the US was, just like anotherspeaker said, was my first time to see a plane, be on one, let alone sit on itto fly to another country. December 15, 20xx. 7:08pm. I sat in seat 7A. FlyEmirates. One of the most gorgeous, beautiful women I've ever seen walked up,red little hat with a white veil. I'm looking terrified, I have no idea whatI'm doing. She hands me this warm towel -- warm, steamy, snow white. I'mlooking at this warm towel; I don't know what to do with my life, let alonewith this damn towel --
来到美国的感受，和其他初来乍到的人一样 那是我第一次坐飞机，坐在座位上，飞向另一个国家。20xx年12月15日 晚上7点08分 我坐在7A座位上。乘坐阿联酋航班。一个我有生以来见过的最美的女人朝我走来，她戴着红色的帽子和白色的口罩。我真的吓坏了，我简直手足无措。她递给我一张温热的纸巾 温暖，湿润，白净如雪。我盯着这张温暖的纸巾; 我都不知道我该拿我的生活怎么办，更别说这张纸巾了
I did one of the -- you know, anythinganyone could do in that situation: look around, see what everyone else isdoing. I did the same. Mind you, I drove about seven hours from my village tothe airport that day. So I grab this warm towel, wipe my face just likeeveryone else is doing, I look at it -- damn.
我做了一件——你懂的，任何人都会做的事：我环顾四周，看其他人的举动。然后我也跟着他们做。顺便一提，从村子到机场，那一天我开了7个小时的车。所以我拿起那张温暖的纸，效仿着别人擦拭了自己的脸，我看了看纸巾——该死。
It was all dirt brown.I remember being so embarrassed that whenshe came by to pick it up, I didn't give mine.I still have it.
已经变成屎黄色了。我记得我是那么的尴尬，以至于当她来回收纸巾的时候，我没好意思给她。我现在都还带着它。
Going to America opened doors for me tolive up to my full God-given potential. I remember when I arrived, the sponsorfamily embraced me, and they literally had to teach me everything from scratch:this is a microwave, that's a refrigerator -- things I'd never seen before. Andit was also the first time I got immersed into a new and different culture.These strangers showed me true love. These strangers showed me that I mattered,that my dreams mattered.Thank you.
美国向我敞开了大门让我能够发挥自己最大的潜力。我记得我刚到的时候，我的资助家庭迎接了我，然后他们就把一切从头开始教给我：这是一个微波炉，那是一个冰箱——那些都是我以前闻所未闻的东西。那也是我第一次 被放置在全新的文化环境当中。这些陌生人向我展示了真正的关爱。这些陌生人让我明白，我很重要 我的梦想很重要。谢谢。
These individuals had two of their ownbiological children. And when I came in, I had needs. They had to teach meEnglish, teach me literally everything, which resulted in them spending a lotof time with me. And that created a little bit of jealousy with their children.So, if you're a parent in this room, and you have those teenager children whodon't want anything to do with your love and affection -- in fact, they find itrepulsive -- I got a solution: adopt a child.
他们有两个亲生孩子。当我走进他们家庭的时候，我急需帮助。他们要教我英文，教我几乎所有的事情，这导致他们要在我的身上 花费很多的精力。而这致使他们的亲生孩子对我产生了一丝妒忌。所以，如果你们有人是家长，而你又有这样一群青少年小孩 他们对你们的爱和关心置若罔闻 事实上，还对你们很冷淡 我有一个办法： 领养一个孩子。
It will solve the problem.
问题就会迎刃而解。
I went on to acquire two engineeringdegrees from one of the best institutions in the world. I've got to tell you:talent is universal, but opportunities are not. And I credit this to theindividuals who embrace multiculturalism, love, empathy and compassion forothers. We live in a world filled with hate: building walls, Brexit, xenophobiahere on the African continent. Multiculturalism can be an answer to many ofthese worst human qualities.
在一所世界一流学府中 我习得了两个工程师学位。我必须要说： 天赋人人都有，但机会一缘难求。我想要赞美 那些拥抱多元文化的人，那些关爱，理解并且同情他人的人。我们生活在一个充满憎恨的世界上：高筑围墙，英国脱欧，非洲大陆的仇外心理。而这些人类最负面的东西 都可以被多元文化海涵。
Today, I challenge you to help a youngchild experience multiculturalism. I guarantee you that will enrich their life,and in turn, it will enrich yours. And as a bonus, one of them may even give aTED Talk.
今天，我挑战你们在座的观众们 去帮助一个年轻的孩子 感受多元文化的魅力。我保证那会充实他的生活，作为回报，你们的生活也会得到升华。而作为奖励，他们其中之一也许还会在TED演讲。
We may not be able to solve the bigotry andthe racism of this world today, but certainly we can raise children to create apositive, inclusive, connected world full of empathy, love and compassion.
我们也许无力解决 当今社会的种族歧视与偏见，但我们完全可以引导我们的孩子 去创建一个积极的，包容的，紧密相连的世界。那里将充满理解，关爱，同情。
Love wins.Thank you.
真爱无敌。谢谢
When I was nine years old I went off to summer camp for the first time. And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. Because in my family, reading was the primary group activity. And this might sound antisocial to you, but for us it was really just a different way of being social. You have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your own mind. And I had this idea that camp was going to be just like this, but better. (Laughter) I had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns.
当我九岁的时候 我第一次去参加夏令营 我妈妈帮我整理好了我的行李箱 里面塞满了书 这对于我来说是一件极为自然的事情 因为在我的家庭里 阅读是主要的家庭活动 听上去你们可能觉得我们是不爱交际的 但是对于我的家庭来说这真的只是接触社会的另一种途径 你们有自己家庭接触时的温暖亲情 家人静坐在你身边 但是你也可以自由地漫游 在你思维深处的冒险乐园里我有一个想法 野营会变得像这样子，当然要更好些 (笑声) 我想象到十个女孩坐在一个小屋里 都穿着合身的女式睡衣惬意地享受着读书的过程
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. And on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. And it went like this: "R-O-W-D-I-E, that's the way we spell rowdie. Rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie." Yeah. So I couldn't figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. (Laughter) But I recited a cheer. I recited a cheer along with everybody else. I did my best. And I just waited for the time that I could go off and read my books.
野营这时更像是一个不提供酒水的派对聚会 在第一天的时候呢 我们的顾问把我们都集合在一起 并且她教会了我们一种今后要用到的庆祝方式 在余下夏令营的每一天中 让“露营精神”浸润我们 之后它就像这样继续着 R-O-W-D-I-E 这是我们拼写“吵闹"的口号 我们唱着“噪音，喧闹，我们要变得吵一点” 对，就是这样 可我就是弄不明白我的生活会是什么样的 为什么我们变得这么吵闹粗暴 或者为什么我们非要把这个单词错误地拼写 (笑声) 但是我可没有忘记庆祝。我与每个人都互相欢呼庆祝了 我尽了我最大的努力 我只是想等待那一刻 我可以离开吵闹的聚会去捧起我挚爱的书
But the first time that I took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, "Why are you being so mellow?" -- mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of R-O-W-D-I-E. And then the second time I tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
但是当我第一次把书从行李箱中拿出来的时候 床铺中最酷的那个女孩向我走了过来 并且她问我：“为什么你要这么安静?” 安静，当然，是R-O-W-D-I-E的反义词 “喧闹”的反义词 而当我第二次拿书的时候 我们的顾问满脸忧虑的向我走了过来 接着她重复了关于“露营精神”的要点并且说我们都应当努力 去变得外向些
And so I put my books away, back in their suitcase, and I put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. And I felt kind of guilty about this. I felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and I was forsaking them.But I did forsake them and I didn't open that suitcase again until I was back home with my family at the end of the summer.
于是我放好我的书 放回了属于它们的行李箱中 并且我把它们放到了床底下 在那里它们度过了暑假余下的每一天 我对这样做感到很愧疚 不知为什么我感觉这些书是需要我的 它们在呼唤我，但是我却放弃了它们 我确实放下了它们，并且我再也没有打开那个箱子 直到我和我的家人一起回到家中 在夏末的时候
Now, I tell you this story about summer camp. I could have told you 50 others just like it --all the times that I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of beingwas not necessarily the right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. But for years I denied this intuition, and so I became a Wall Street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that I had always longed to be -- partly because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive too. And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. And I made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that I wasn't even aware that I was making them.
现在，我向你们讲述这个夏令营的故事 我完全可以给你们讲出其他50种版本就像这个一样的故事-- 每当我感觉到这样的时候 它告诉我出于某种原因，我的宁静和内向的风格 并不是正确道路上的必需品 我应该更多地尝试一个外向者的角色 而在我内心深处感觉得到，这是错误的内向的人们都是非常优秀的，确实是这样 但是许多年来我都否认了这种直觉 于是我首先成为了华尔街的一名律师 而不是我长久以来想要成为的一名作家 一部分原因是因为我想要证明自己 也可以变得勇敢而坚定 并且我总是去那些拥挤的酒吧 当我只是想要和朋友们吃一顿愉快的晚餐时 我做出了这些自我否认的抉择 如条件反射一般 甚至我都不清楚我做出了这些决定
When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.
Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.
See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.
But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.
For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.
Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.
But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.
Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?
Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.
So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.
But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.
In 20__, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.
Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.
Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?
Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.
Hackers are innovators, hackers are people who challenge and change the systems to make them work differently, to make them work better, it’s just how they think, it’s a mindset.
I’m growing up in a world that needs more people with the hacker mindset, and not just for technology, everything is up for being hacked, even skiing, even education. So whether it’s Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Shane McConkey having the hacker mindset can change the world.
Healthy, happy, creativity in the hacker mindset are all a large part of my education. I call it Hackschooling, I don’t use any one particular curriculum, and I’m not dedicated to any one particular approach, I hack my education.
I take advantage of opportunities in my community, and through a network of my friends and family. I take advantage of opportunities to experience what I’m learning, and I’m not afraid to look for shortcuts or hacks to get a better faster result. It’s like a remix or a mash-up of learning. It’s flexible, opportunistic, and it never loses sight of making happy, healthy and creativity a priority.
And here is the cool part, because it’s a mindset, not a system. Hackschooling can be used anyone, even traditional schools. Soo what does my school look like? Well, it looks like Starbucks a lot of the time, but like most kids I study lot of math, science, history and writing. I didn’t used to like to write because my teachers made me write about butterflies and rainbows, and I wanted to write about skiing.
It was a relief for my good friend’s mom, started the Squaw Valley Kids Institute, where I got to write through my experiences and my interests, while, connecting with great speakers from around the nation, and that sparked my love of writing.
I realized that once you’re motivated to learn something, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, and on your own, Starbucks is pretty great for that. Hacking physics was fun, we learned all about Newton and Galileo, and we experienced some basic physics concepts like kinetic energy through experimenting and making mistakes.
My favorite was the giant Newton’s cradle that we made out of bowling balls, no bocce balls. We experimented with lot of other things like bowling balls and event giant jawbreakers.
Project Discovery’s ropes course is awesome, and slightly stressful. When you’re 60 feet off the ground, you have to learn how to handle your fears, communicate clearly, and most importantly, trust each other.
Community organizations play a big part in my education, High Fives Foundation’s Basics Program being aware and safe in critical situations. We spent a day with the Squaw Valley Ski Patrol to learn more about mountain safety, then the next day we switched to science of snow, weather and avalanches.
But most importantly, we learned that making bad decisions puts you and your friends at risk. Young should talk, well brings history to life. You study a famous character in history, and so that you can stand on stage and perform as that character, and answer any question about their lifetime.
In this photo, you see Al Capone and Bob Marley getting grilled with questions at the historical Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, the same stage where Harry Houdini got his start.
Time and nature is really important to me, it’s calm, quiet and I get to just log out of reality. I spend one day a week, outside all day. At my Fox Walkers classes, our goal is to be able to survive in the wilderness with just a knife. We learn to listen to nature, we learn to sense our surroundings, and I’ve gained a spiritual connection to nature that, I never knew existed.
But the best part is that we get to make spears, bows and arrows, fires with just a bow drill and survival shelters for the snowy nights when we camp out. Hanging out at the Moment Factory where they hand make skis and design clothes, has really inspired me to one day have my own business. The guys at the factory showed me why I need to be good at math, be creative and get good at selling.
So I got an internship at Big Shark Print to get better at design and selling. Between fetching lunch, scrubbing toilets and breaking their vacuum cleaner, I’m getting to contribute to clothing design, customizing hats and selling them. The people who work there are happy, healthy, creative, and stoked to be doing what they are doing, this is by far my favorite class.
So, this is why I’m really happy, powder days, and it’s a good metaphor for my life, my education, my hackschooling. If everyone ski this mountain, like most people think of education, everyone will be skiing the same line, probably the safest and most of the powder would go untouched.
I look at this, and see a thousand possibilities, dropping the corners, shredding the spine, looking for a churning from cliff-to-cliff. Skiing to me is freedom, and so is my education, it’s about being creative; doing things differently, it’s about community and helping each other. It’s about being happy and healthy among my very best friends.
So I’m starting to think, I know what I might want to do when I grow up, but if you ask me what do I want to be when I grow up? I’ll always know that I want to be happy. Thank you.
I'd like to share with you a discovery that I made a few months ago while writing an article for Italian Wired. I always keep my thesaurus handy whenever I'm writing anything, but I'd already finished editing the piece, and I realized that I had never once in my life looked up the word "disabled" to see what I'd find.
Let me read you the entry. "Disabled, adjective: crippled, helpless, useless, wrecked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated, run-down, worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile, decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done-for, done-in cracked-up, counted-out; see also hurt, useless and weak. Antonyms, healthy, strong, capable." I was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing, it was so ludicrous, but I'd just gotten past "mangled," and my voice broke, and I had to stop and collect myself from the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed.
You know, of course, this is my raggedy old thesaurus so I'm thinking this must be an ancient print date, right? But, in fact, the print date was the early 1980s, when I would have been starting primary school and forming an understanding of myself outside the family unit and as related to the other kids and the world around me. And, needless to say, thank God I wasn't using a thesaurus back then. I mean, from this entry, it would seem that I was born into a world that perceived someone like me to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them, when in fact, today I'm celebrated for the opportunities and adventures my life has procured.
So, I immediately went to look up the 20__ online edition, expecting to find a revision worth noting. Here's the updated version of this entry. Unfortunately, it's not much better. I find the last two words under "Near Antonyms," particularly unsettling: "whole" and "wholesome."
So, it's not just about the words. It's what we believe about people when we name them with these words. It's about the values behind the words, and how we construct those values. Our language affects our thinking and how we view the world and how we view other people. In fact, many ancient societies, including the Greeks and the Romans, believed that to utter a curse verbally was so powerful, because to say the thing out loud brought it into existence. So, what reality do we want to call into existence: a person who is limited, or a person who's empowered? By casually doing something as simple as naming a person, a child, we might be putting lids and casting shadows on their power. Wouldn't we want to open doors for them instead?
One such person who opened doors for me was my childhood doctor at the A.I. duPont Institute in Wilmington, Delaware. His name was Dr. Pizzutillo, an Italian American, whose name, apparently, was too difficult for most Americans to pronounce, so he went by Dr. P. And Dr. P always wore really colorful bow ties and had the very perfect disposition to work with children.
I loved almost everything about my time spent at this hospital, with the exception of my physical therapy sessions. I had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of exercises with these thick, elastic bands -- different colors, you know -- to help build up my leg muscles, and I hated these bands more than anything -- I hated them, had names for them. I hated them. And, you know, I was already bargaining, as a five year-old child, with Dr. P to try to get out of doing these exercises, unsuccessfully, of course. And, one day, he came in to my session -- exhaustive and unforgiving, these sessions -- and he said to me, "Wow. Aimee, you are such a strong and powerful little girl, I think you're going to break one of those bands. When you do break it, I'm going to give you a hundred bucks."
Now, of course, this was a simple ploy on Dr. P's part to get me to do the exercises I didn't want to do before the prospect of being the richest five-year-old in the second floor ward, but what he effectively did for me was reshape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me. And I have to wonder today to what extent his vision and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong, powerful and athletic person well into the future.
This is an example of how adults in positions of power can ignite the power of a child. But, in the previous instances of those thesaurus entries, our language isn't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we would all want, the possibility of an individual to see themselves as capable. Our language hasn't caught up with the changes in our society, many of which have been brought about by technology. Certainly, from a medical standpoint, my legs, laser surgery for vision impairment, titanium knees and hip replacements for aging bodies that are allowing people to more fully engage with their abilities, and move beyond the limits that nature has imposed on them -- not to mention social networking platforms allow people to self-identify, to claim their own descriptions of themselves, so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing. So, perhaps technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth: that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society, and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset.
Have you ever held a question in mind for so long that it becomes part of how you think? Maybe even part of who you are as a person? Well I’ve had a question in my mind for many, many years and that is: how can you speed up learning? Now, this is an interesting question because if you speed up learning you can spend less time at school. And if you learn really fast, you probably wouldn’t have to go to school at all.
Now, when I was young, school was sort of okay but I found quite often that school got in the way of learning so I had this question in mind: how do you learn faster? And this began when I was very, very young, when I was about eleven years old I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia, this is sleep learning, where you get a tape recorder, you put it beside your bed and it turns on in the middle of the night when you’re sleeping, and you’re supposed to be learning from this.
A good idea, unfortunately it doesn’t work. But, hypnopaedia did open the doors to research in other areas and we’ve had incredible discoveries about learning that began with that first question. I went on from there to become passionate about psychology and I have been involved in psychology in many ways for the rest of my life up until this point. In 1981 I took myself to China and I decided that I was going to be native level in Chinese inside two years.
Now, you need to understand that in 1981, everybody thought Chinese was really, really difficult and that a westerner could study for ten years or more and never really get very good at it. And I also went in with a different idea which was: taking all of the conclusions from psychological research up to that point and applying them to the learning process. What was really cool was that in six months I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese and took a little bit longer to get up to native. But I looked around and I saw all of these people from different countries struggling terribly with Chinese, I saw Chinese people struggling terribly to learn English and other languages, and so my question got refined down to: how can you help a normal adult learn a new language quickly, easily and effectively?
Now this a really, really important question in today’s world. We have massive challenges with environment we have massive challenges with social dislocation, with wars, all sorts of things going on and if we can’t communicate we’re really going to have difficulty solving these problems. So we need to be able to speak each other’s languages, this is really, really important.
The question then is how do you do that. Well, it’s actually really easy. You look around for people who can already do it, you look for situations where it’s already working and then you identify the principles and apply them. It’s called modelling and I’ve been looking at language learning and modelling language learning for about fifteen to twenty years now.
And my conclusion, my observation from this is that any adult can learn a second language to fluency inside six months. Now when I say this, most people think I’m crazy, this is not possible. So let me remind everybody of the history of human progress, it’s all about expanding our limits.
In 1950 everybody believed that running one mile in four minutes was impossible and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956 and from there it’s got shorter and shorter. 100 years ago everybody believed that heavy stuff doesn’t fly. Except it does and we all know this. How does heavy stuff fly? We reorganise the materials using principles that we have learned from observing nature, birds in this case. And today we’ve gone ever further, so you can fly a car. You can buy one of these for a couple hundred thousand US dollars. We now have cars in the world that can fly. And there’s a different way to fly that we’ve learned from squirrels. So all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does, build a suit called a wing suit and off you go, you can fly like a squirrel.
No, most people, a lot of people, I wouldn’t say everybody but a lot of people think they can’t draw. However there are some key principles, five principles that you can apply to learning to draw and you can 2 actually learn to draw in five days. So, if you draw like this, you learn these principles for five days and apply them and after five days you can draw something like this. Now I know this is true because that was my first drawing and after five days of applying these principles that was what I was able to do. And I looked at this and I went ‘wow,’ so that’s how I look like when I’m concentrating so intensely that my brain is exploding. So, anybody can learn to draw in five days and in the same way, with the same logic, anybody can learn a second language in six months.
This is Tim Ferriss circa 1979 A.D. Age two. You can tell by the power squat, I was a very confident boy -- and not without reason. I had a very charming routine at the time, which was to wait until late in the evening when my parents were decompressing from a hard day's work, doing their crossword puzzles, watching television. I would run into the living room, jump up on the couch, rip the cushions off, throw them on the floor, scream at the top of my lungs and run out because I was the Incredible Hulk. (Laughter) Obviously, you see the resemblance. And this routine went on for some time.
When I was seven I went to summer camp. My parents found it necessary for peace of mind. And at noon each day the campers would go to a pond, where they had floating docks. You could jump off the end into the deep end. I was born premature. I was always very small. My left lung had collapsed when I was born. And I've always had buoyancy problems. So water was something that scared me to begin with. But I would go in on occasion. And on one particular day, the campers were jumping through inner tubes, They were diving through inner tubes. And I thought this would be great fun. So I dove through the inner tube, and the bully of the camp grabbed my ankles. And I tried to come up for air, and my lower back hit the bottom of the inner tube. And I went wild eyed and thought I was going to die. A camp counselor fortunately came over and separated us. From that point onward I was terrified of swimming. That is something that I did not get over. My inability to swim has been one of my greatest humiliations and embarrassments. That is when I realized that I was not the Incredible Hulk.
But there is a happy ending to this story. At age 31 -- that's my age now -- in August I took two weeks to re-examine swimming, and question all the of the obvious aspects of swimming. And went from swimming one lap -- so 20 yards -- like a drowning monkey, at about 200 beats per minute heart rate -- I measured it -- to going to Montauk on Long Island, close to where I grew up, and jumping into the ocean and swimming one kilometer in open water, getting out and feeling better than when I went in. And I came out, in my Speedos, European style, feeling like the Incredible Hulk.
And that's what I want everyone in here to feel like, the Incredible Hulk, at the end of this presentation. More specifically, I want you to feel like you're capable of becoming an excellent long-distance swimmer, a world-class language learner, and a tango champion. And I would like to share my art. If I have an art, it's deconstructing things that really scare the living hell out of me. So, moving onward.
Swimming, first principles. First principles, this is very important. I find that the best results in life are often held back by false constructs and untested assumptions. And the turnaround in swimming came when a friend of mine said, "I will go a year without any stimulants" -- this is a six-double-espresso-per-day type of guy -- "if you can complete a one kilometer open water race." So the clock started ticking. I started seeking out triathletes because I found that lifelong swimmers often couldn't teach what they did. I tried kickboards. My feet would slice through the water like razors, I wouldn't even move. I would leave demoralized, staring at my feet. Hand paddles, everything. Even did lessons with Olympians -- nothing helped. And then Chris Sacca, who is now a dear friend mine, had completed an Iron Man with 103 degree temperature, said, "I have the answer to your prayers." And he introduced me to the work of a man named Terry Laughlin who is the founder of Total Immersion Swimming. That set me on the road to examining biomechanics.
So here are the new rules of swimming, if any of you are afraid of swimming, or not good at it. The first is, forget about kicking. Very counterintuitive. So it turns out that propulsion isn't really the problem. Kicking harder doesn't solve the problem because the average swimmer only transfers about three percent of their energy expenditure into forward motion. The problem is hydrodynamics. So what you want to focus on instead is allowing your lower body to draft behind your upper body, much like a small car behind a big car on the highway. And you do that by maintaining a horizontal body position. The only way you can do that is to not swim on top of the water. The body is denser than water. 95 percent of it would be, at least, submerged naturally.
So you end up, number three, not swimming, in the case of freestyle, on your stomach, as many people think, reaching on top of the water. But actually rotating from streamlined right to streamlined left, maintaining that fuselage position as long as possible. So let's look at some examples. This is Terry. And you can see that he's extending his right arm below his head and far in front. And so his entire body really is underwater. The arm is extended below the head. The head is held in line with the spine, so that you use strategic water pressure to raise your legs up -- very important, especially for people with lower body fat. Here is an example of the stroke. So you don't kick. But you do use a small flick. You can see this is the left extension. Then you see his left leg. Small flick, and the only purpose of that is to rotate his hips so he can get to the opposite side. And the entry point for his right hand -- notice this, he's not reaching in front and catching the water. Rather, he is entering the water at a 45-degree angle with his forearm, and then propelling himself by streamlining -- very important. Incorrect, above, which is what almost every swimming coach will teach you. Not their fault, honestly. And I'll get to implicit versus explicit in a moment. Below is what most swimmers will find enables them to do what I did, which is going from 21 strokes per 20-yard length to 11 strokes in two workouts with no coach, no video monitoring. And now I love swimming. I can't wait to go swimming. I'll be doing a swimming lesson later, for myself, if anyone wants to join me.