TED它是美国的一家私有非盈利机构该机构以它组织的TED大会著称TED是以下三个英文单词的首字母大写Ttechnology技术、Eentertainment娱乐、Ddesign设计。TED演讲的主旨是Ideas worth spreading，会请成功人士演讲。这次帅气的小编为您整理了经典TED英语演讲稿范文（精彩5篇），希望能够帮助到大家。
I grew up diagnosed as phobically shy,
我从小就有社交恐惧症
and like at least 20 other people in a room of this size,
这样的空间 大约20人
I was a stutterer.
就能让以前的我结巴语塞
Do you dare raise your hand?
更别提举手了 根本不可能
And it sticks with us.
这种困扰如影随形
It really does stick with us,
你走到哪 它就跟到哪
because when we are treated that way,
当大家对你的存在视若无睹
we feel invisible sometimes,
你会开始感觉自己是隐形人
or talked around and at.
而别人都在你背后窃窃私语
And as I started to look at people,
后来我仔细去观察周遭的人
which is mostly all I did,
一直以来我都只敢默默观察
I noticed that some people really wanted attention
然后发现有些人无法忍受被忽视
and recognition.
他们要得到大家的注意力和认同
Remember, I was young then.
当时我年轻、懵懂
So what did they do? What we still do perhaps too often?
渴望注意力的人会做什么？ 也许现在太多人在做一样的事而不自知
We talk about ourselves.
他们谈论的常常都是自己
And yet there are other people I observed who had what I called a mutualitymindset.
但另一批人就不同了 我说他们的人际关系 往往有一种“互相”的心态
In each situation, they found a way to talk about us and create that “us”idea.
无论什么场合 他们的谈话里都会出现“我们”这个概念
So my idea to reimagine the world is to see it one where we all becomegreater opportunity-makers with and for others.
在我心目中的理想世界 每个人都能为自己和别人创造机会
There’s no greater opportunity or call for action for us now
就是现在 我们必须把握良机、采取行动
than to become opportunity-makers who use best talents together more oftenfor the greater good
多去整合各种才能 尽可能的利益他人
and accomplish things we couldn’t have done on our own.
一人做不到的 多人或许有办法
And I want to talk to you about that,
这就是我今天的重点
cause even more than giving,
比单纯给予
even more than giving,
施舍、捐赠更有影响力的
is the capacity for us to do something smarter together
就是人们学会集思广益
for the greater good that lifts us both up
共同合作 创造双赢局面
and that can scale.
其中的利益会一层层积累
That’s why I’m sitting here.
这是我今天演讲的重点
But I also want to point something else out.
不过我还想说一件事
Each one of you is better than anybody else at something.
台下的你必定在某些事上比其他人都拿手
That disproves that popular notion that if you’re the smartest person inthe room,
和那句名言“你绝不是这里最厉害的人”
you’re in the wrong room.
恰恰相反
So let me tell you about a Hollywood party I went to a couple yearsback,
我在几年前的一个好莱坞聚会上
and I met this up-and-coming actress,
遇见了位有潜力的女演员
and we were soon talking about something that we both felt passionatelyabout,
我们很快就找到共同话题-
public art.
公共艺术
And she had the fervent belief that every new building in Los Angeles
她坚信洛杉矶的每栋建筑里
should have public art in it. She wanted a regulation for it,
都应该有公共艺术 她想要一套专属公共艺术的规范
and she fervently started,
所以她兴忡忡的着手进行
What is here from Chicago?
这里有谁是芝加哥人吗？
She fervently started talking about these bean-shaped reflective sculpturesin Millennium Park,
她滔滔不绝的说着千禧公园里的云门雕塑
and people would walk up to it
人们好奇的上前一探究竟
and they’d smile in the reflection of it,
看着自己的映像微笑
and they’d pose and they’d vamp and they’d take selfies together
摆pose、赞叹、自拍留念
and they’d laugh.
然后笑成一团
And as she was talking, a thought came to my mind.
听着听着 我突然灵光乍现
I said, “I know someone you ought to meet.
我告诉她： “妳应该见见这个人
He’s getting out of San Quentin in a couple of weeks
再几周他就要从圣昆丁州立监狱出来了
and he shares your fervent desire that art should engage and enable peopleto connect.”
他跟妳一样 觉得艺术应该让人有共鸣、激发想像力”
He spent five years in solitary,
他被单独监禁了五年
and I met him because I gave a speech at San Quentin,
我因为在圣昆丁演讲 而与他结识
and he’s articulate
他口条不错
and he’s rather easy on the eyes
长的也不赖
because he’s buff. He had workout regime he did everyday.
因为他是条热爱健身的汉子
I think she was following me at that point.
女演员大概还满有兴趣的
I said, “he’d be an une_pected ally.”
我又说： “他会是个得力助手”
And not just that. There’s James. He’s an architect
除了他之外 我把詹姆也拉进来 詹姆是建筑师
and he’s a professor,
也是个教授
and he loves place-making, and place-making is when you have thosemini-plazas
他对地方营造很有兴趣 外头的小广场、
and those urban walkways
城市人行道
and where they’re dotted with art,
任何有艺术点缀的地方 都属于地方营造的范畴
where people draw and come up and talk sometimes.
许多人会在那儿画画、闲聊
I think they’d make good allies.
我想他们一定能合作无间
And indeed they were.
果真没错
They met together. They prepared.
他们碰面之后 就开始筹备
They spoke in front of the Lost Angeles City Council.
到洛杉矶市政府传达诉求
And the council members not only passed the regulation,
结果市议员通过了他们订的条例
half of them came down and asked to pose with them afterwards.
之后甚至半数议员还去与艺术品合影
They were startling, compelling and credible.
他们给人的印象是震慑、具说服力、可靠
You can’t buy that.
全都是用钱买不到的
What I’m asking you to consider is what kind of opportunity-makers we mightbecome,
希望各位想想自己能成为哪种机会制造者
because more than wealth
比财富、
or fancy titles
头衔、
or a lot of contacts,
人脉更可观的
it’s our capacity to connect around each other’s better side and bring itout.
是我们发掘他人优点的能力
And I’m not saying this is easy,
这一点都不容易
and I’m sure many of you have made the wrong moves too about who you wantedto connect with,
相信许多人都有找错对象、牵错线的经验
but what I want to suggest is, this is an opportunity.
但毕竟都是个“机会”
I started thinking about it way back when I was a Wall Street Journalreporter and I was in Europe
这个领悟要从好几年前说起 当时我在欧洲 担任华尔街日报记者
and I was supposed to cover trends and trends that transcended business orpolitics or lifestyle.
采访内容为时尚与流行 跨越商业、政治、生活型态隔阂的流行
So I had to have contacts in different worlds very different than mine,
因此得和背景截然不同的人打交道
because otherwise you couldn’t spot the trends.
否则就无法掌握潮流走向
And third, I had to write a story in a way stepping into the reader’sshoes,
写故事时 还得设身处地为读者想
they could see how these trends could affect their lives.
要让他们觉得自己和这些潮流息息相关
That’s what opportunity-makers do.
这就是机会制造者的任务
And here’s a strange thing:
奇怪之处在于
Unlike an increasing number of Americans who are working and living andplaying with people who think e_actly like them
越来越多人工作、生活、娱乐都喜欢寻找与自己相似的人
because we then become more rigid and e_treme,
久而久之就变得挑剔、极端起来
opportunity-makers are actively seeking situations with people unlikethem,
机会制造者寻找与自己不相似的人
and they’re building relationships,
和他们建立关系
and because they do that,
这样做的话
they have trusted relationships where they can bring the right team in
两方之间就有互信 能在适当的时机介绍彼此适当的人
and recruit them to solve a problem better and faster and seize moreopportunities.
用更快、更好的方法解决问题 同时也抓住了更多机会
They’re not affronted by differences.
机会创造者不会被歧异冒犯
They’re fascinated by them,
反而深受吸引
and that is a huge shift in mindset,
这是心态上的极端不同
and once you feel it, you want it to happen a lot more.
你一旦意识到 就会为它的魅力着迷
This world is calling out for us to have a collective mindset,
和别人形成“共同体”才是王道
and I believe in doing that.
我个人深信
It’s especially important now.
携手合作在这世代特别重要
Why is it important now?
为什么呢？
Because things can be devised like drones
机器小帮手
and drugs and data collection,
药物开发、数据收集
and they can be devised by more people.
都可以让更多人参与其中
and cheaper ways for beneficial purposes
用更经济的方式创造收益
and then, as we know from the news every day, they can be used fordangerous ones.
只是水能载舟 亦能复舟 也可能被有心人士利用
It calls on us, each of us, to a higher calling.
这个理念非常需要大家的重视
But here’s the icing on the cake:
成为机会制造者是一箭双雕
It’s not just the first opportunity that you do with somebody else that’sprobably your greatest,
除了获得和更高竿对象合作的机会
as an institution or an individual.
无论对于机构或个人来说
It’s after you’ve had that e_perience and you trust each other.
都是开启了这扇门 建立信任后
It’s the une_pected things that you devise later on you never could havepredicted.
团队合作带来的惊人成果
For e_ample, Marty is the husband of that actress I mentioned,
麦迪是那位女演员的丈夫
and he watched them when they were practicing,
詹姆等三人排练时 他就在旁边看
and he was soon talking to Wally, my friend the e_-con,
并很快和韦利聊开了 就是刚出狱的那位
about that e_ercise regime.
大概在聊健身吧？
And he thought, I have a set of racquetball courts.
麦迪心想： “我有个壁球馆
That guy could teach it. A lot of people who work there are members at mycourts.
韦利可以来当教练 很多教练都是体育馆的会员
They’re frequent travelers.
他们很常来我这边
They could practice in their hotel room, no equipment provided.
旅馆房间里没有设备 也照样能练习”
That’s how Wally got hired.
韦利就这样得到了板球教练的工作
Not only that, years later he was also teaching racquetball.
几年后他也开始教壁球学生
Years after that, he was teaching the racquetball teachers.
再过了几年则是教壁球老师
What I’m suggesting is, when you connect with people
我想说的是 当你把周遭有相同兴趣、
around a shared interest and action,
喜好的人圈在一块
you’re accustomed to serendipitous things happening into the future,
就会逐渐适应随之而来、意想不到的收获
and I think that’s what we’re looking at.
我想这才是至关重要
We open ourselves up to those opportunities,
面对机会 我们敞开心胸
and in this room are key players and technology,
关键推手-这里的你们 再加上科技
key players who are uniquely positioned to do this,
每个人各司其职 有自己的位置
to scale systems and projects together.
提升制度和计划的整体价值
So here’s what I’m calling for you to do. Remember the three traits ofopportunity-makers.
我想拜讬大家的 就是记得机会制造者的三项特质
Opportunity-makers keep honing their top strength
一、机会制造者不断磨练自己专长
and they become pattern seekers.
开拓事物运作的新方式
They get involved in different worlds than their worlds
二、他们乐于接触不同人的世界
so they’re trusted and they can see those patterns,
获取信任 学习各种合作方式
and they communicate to connect around sweet spots of shared interest.
三、他们周旋于各方之间 让参与的人都分一杯羹
So what I’m asking you is, the world is hungry.
我想说的是 人与人之间太缺乏连结
I truly believe, in my firsthand e_perience,
根据亲身经验 我相信
the world is hungry for us to unite together as opportunity-makers
这世界很需要机会制造者
and to emulate those behaviors as so many of you already do, I know thatfirsthand,
可能台下的你已经是其中之一 大家都应该效仿机会制造者
and to reimagine a world where we use our best talents together
重塑我们的世界 融合各领域人才
more often to accomplish greater thing together than we could on ourown.
一人不能做的事 借由合作来完成
Just remember,
请把这句话放在心上
as Dave Liniger once said,
大卫˙林杰说过
“You can’t succeed coming to the potluck with only a fork.”
“只带一只叉子就来百乐餐的人 永远无法成功”(注： 后衍伸为商业成长需要集体合作、贡献)
Thank you very much.
谢谢大家
Thank you.
谢谢。
简介：残奥会短跑冠军aimee mullins天生没有腓骨，从小就要学习靠义肢走路和奔跑。如今，她不仅是短跑选手、演员、模特，还是一位稳健的演讲者。她不喜欢字典中 “disabled”这个词，因为负面词汇足以毁掉一个人。但是，坦然面对不幸，你会发现等待你的是更多的机会。
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 __ online edition, e_pecting 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 e_istence. so, what reality do we want to call into e_istence: 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 e_ception of my physical therapy sessions. i had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of e_ercises 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 e_ercises, unsuccessfully, of course. and, one day, he came in to my session -- e_haustive 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 e_ercises 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 e_perience for me. and i have to wonder today to what e_tent 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 e_ample 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.
the human ability to adapt, it's an interesting thing, because people have continually wanted to talk to me about overcoming adversity, and i'm going to make an admission: this phrase never sat right with me, and i always felt uneasy trying to answer people's questions about it, and i think i'm starting to figure out why. implicit in this phrase of "overcoming adversity" is the idea that success, or happiness, is about emerging on the other side of a challenging e_perience unscathed or unmarked by the e_perience, as if my successes in life have come about from an ability to sidestep or circumnavigate the presumed pitfalls of a life with prosthetics, or what other people perceive as my disability. but, in fact, we are changed. we are marked, of course, by a challenge, whether physically, emotionally or both. and i'm going to suggest that this is a good thing. adversity isn't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. it's part of our life. and i tend to think of it like my shadow. sometimes i see a lot of it, sometimes there's very little, but it's always with me. and, certainly, i'm not trying to diminish the impact, the weight, of a person's struggle.
there is adversity and challenge in life, and it's all very real and relative to every single person, but the question isn't whether or not you're going to meet adversity, but how you're going to meet it. so, our responsibility is not simply shielding those we care for from adversity, but preparing them to meet it well. and we do a disservice to our kids when we make them feel that they're not equipped to adapt. there's an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not i'm disabled. and, truthfully, the only real and consistent disability i've had to confront is the world ever thinking that i could be described by those definitions.
in our desire to protect those we care about by giving them the cold, hard truth about their medical prognosis, or, indeed, a prognosis on the e_pected quality of their life, we have to make sure that we don't put the first brick in a wall that will actually disable someone. perhaps the e_isting model of only looking at what is broken in you and how do we fi_ it, serves to be more disabling to the individual than the pathology itself.
by not treating the wholeness of a person, by not acknowledging their potency, we are creating another ill on top of whatever natural struggle they might have. we are effectively grading someone's worth to our community. so we need to see through the pathology and into the range of human capability. and, most importantly, there's a partnership between those perceived deficiencies and our greatest creative ability. so it's not about devaluing, or negating, these more trying times as something we want to avoid or sweep under the rug, but instead to find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity. so maybe the idea i want to put out there is not so much overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselves up to it, embracing it, grappling with it, to use a wrestling term, maybe even dancing with it. and, perhaps, if we see adversity as natural, consistent and useful, we're less burdened by the presence of it.
this year we celebrate the 200th birthday of charles darwin, and it was 150 years ago, when writing about evolution, that darwin illustrated, i think, a truth about the human character. to paraphrase: it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent that survives; it is the one that is most adaptable to change. conflict is the genesis of creation. from darwin's work, amongst others, we can recognize that the human ability to survive and flourish is driven by the struggle of the human spirit through conflict into transformation. so, again, transformation, adaptation, is our greatest human skill. and, perhaps, until we're tested, we don't know what we're made of. maybe that's what adversity gives us: a sense of self, a sense of our own power. so, we can give ourselves a gift. we can re-imagine adversity as something more than just tough times. maybe we can see it as change. adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.
i think the greatest adversity that we've created for ourselves is this idea of normalcy. now, who's normal? there's no normal. there's common, there's typical. there's no normal, and would you want to meet that poor, beige person if they e_isted? (laughter) i don't think so. if we can change this paradigm from one of achieving normalcy to one of possibility -- or potency, to be even a little bit more dangerous -- we can release the power of so many more children, and invite them to engage their rare and valuable abilities with the community.
anthropologists tell us that the one thing we as humans have always required of our community members is to be of use, to be able to contribute. there's evidence that neanderthals, 60,000 years ago, carried their elderly and those with serious physical injury, and perhaps it's because the life e_perience of survival of these people proved of value to the community. they didn't view these people as broken and useless; they were seen as rare and valuable.
a few years ago, i was in a food market in the town where i grew up in that red zone in northeastern pennsylvania, and i was standing over a bushel of tomatoes. it was summertime: i had shorts on. i hear this guy, his voice behind me say, "well, if it isn't aimee mullins." and i turn around, and it's this older man. i have no idea who he is.
and i said, "i'm sorry, sir, have we met? i don't remember meeting you."
he said, "well, you wouldn't remember meeting me. i mean, when we met i was delivering you from your mother's womb." (laughter) oh, that guy. and, but of course, actually, it did click.
this man was dr. kean, a man that i had only known about through my mother's stories of that day, because, of course, typical fashion, i arrived late for my birthday by two weeks. and so my mother's prenatal physician had gone on vacation, so the man who delivered me was a complete stranger to my parents. and, because i was born without the fibula bones, and had feet turned in, and a few toes in this foot and a few toes in that, he had to be the bearer -- this stranger had to be the bearer of bad news.
he said to me, "i had to give this prognosis to your parents that you would never walk, and you would never have the kind of mobility that other kids have or any kind of life of independence, and you've been making liar out of me ever since." (laughter) (applause)
the e_traordinary thing is that he said he had saved newspaper clippings throughout my whole childhood, whether winning a second grade spelling bee, marching with the girl scouts, you know, the halloween parade, winning my college scholarship, or any of my sports victories, and he was using it, and integrating it into teaching resident students, med students from hahnemann medical school and hershey medical school. and he called this part of the course the _ factor, the potential of the human will. no prognosis can account for how powerful this could be as a determinant in the quality of someone's life. and dr. kean went on to tell me, he said, "in my e_perience, unless repeatedly told otherwise, and even if given a modicum of support, if left to their own devices, a child will achieve."
see, dr. kean made that shift in thinking. he understood that there's a difference between the medical condition and what someone might do with it. and there's been a shift in my thinking over time, in that, if you had asked me at 15 years old, if i would have traded prosthetics for flesh-and-bone legs, i wouldn't have hesitated for a second. i aspired to that kind of normalcy back then. but if you ask me today, i'm not so sure. and it's because of the e_periences i've had with them, not in spite of the e_periences i've had with them. and perhaps this shift in me has happened because i've been e_posed to more people who have opened doors for me than those who have put lids and cast shadows on me.
see, all you really need is one person to show you the epiphany of your own power, and you're off. if you can hand somebody the key to their own power -- the human spirit is so receptive -- if you can do that and open a door for someone at a crucial moment, you are educating them in the best sense. you're teaching them to open doors for themselves. in fact, the e_act meaning of the word "educate" comes from the root word "educe." it means "to bring forth what is within, to bring out potential." so again, which potential do we want to bring out?
there was a case study done in 1960s britain, when they were moving from grammar schools to comprehensive schools. it's called the streaming trials. we call it "tracking" here in the states. it's separating students from a, b, c, d and so on. and the "a students" get the tougher curriculum, the best teachers, etc. well, they took, over a three-month period, d-level students, gave them a's, told them they were "a's," told them they were bright, and at the end of this three-month period, they were performing at a-level.
and, of course, the heartbreaking, flip side of this study, is that they took the "a students" and told them they were "d's." and that's what happened at the end of that three-month period. those who were still around in school, besides the people who had dropped out. a crucial part of this case study was that the teachers were duped too. the teachers didn't know a switch had been made. they were simply told, "these are the 'a-students,' these are the 'd-students.'" and that's how they went about teaching them and treating them.
so, i think that the only true disability is a crushed spirit, a spirit that's been crushed doesn't have hope, it doesn't see beauty, it no longer has our natural, childlike curiosity and our innate ability to imagine. if instead, we can bolster a human spirit to keep hope, to see beauty in themselves and others, to be curious and imaginative, then we are truly using our power well. when a spirit has those qualities, we are able to create new realities and new ways of being.
i'd like to leave you with a poem by a fourteenth-century persian poet named hafiz that my friend, jacques dembois told me about, and the poem is called "the god who only knows four words": "every child has known god, not the god of names, not the god of don'ts, but the god who only knows four words and keeps repeating them, saying, 'come dance with me. come, dance with me. come, dance with me.'"
thank you. (applause)
when i was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we wereplaying on top of a bunk bed. i was two years older than my sister at the time-- i mean, i'm two years older than her now -- but at the time it meant she hadto do everything that i wanted to do, and i wanted to play war. so we were up ontop of our bunk beds. and on one side of the bunk bed, i had put out all of myg.i. joe soldiers and weaponry. and on the other side were all my sister's mylittle ponies ready for a cavalry charge.
there are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, butsince my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story --(laughter) -- which is my sister's a little bit on the clumsy side. somehow,without any help or push from her older brother at all, suddenly amy disappearedoff of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. now inervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallensister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fourson the ground.
i was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that mysister and i played as safely and as quietly as possible. and seeing as how ihad accidentally broken amy's arm just one week before ... (laughter) ...heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet,(laughter) for which i have yet to be thanked, i was trying as hard as i could-- she didn't even see it coming -- i was trying as hard as i could to be on mybest behavior.
and i saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprisethreatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from thelong winter's nap for which they had settled. so i did the only thing my littlefrantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. and if youhave children, you've seen this hundreds of times before. i said, "amy, amy,wait. don't cry. don't cry. did you see how you landed? no human lands on allfours like that. amy, i think this means you're a unicorn."
(laughter)
now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sisterwould want more than not to be amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but amythe special unicorn. of course, this was an option that was open to her brain atno point in the past. and you could see how my poor, manipulated sister facedconflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the painand suffering and surprise she just e_perienced, or contemplating her new-foundidentity as a unicorn. and the latter won out. instead of crying, instead ofceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negativeconsequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across herface and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of ababy unicorn ... (laughter) ... with one broken leg.
what we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we hadno idea at the time -- was something that was going be at the vanguard of ascientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at thehuman brain. what we had stumbled across is something called positivepsychology, which is the reason that i'm here today and the reason that i wakeup every morning.
when i first started talking about this research outside of academia, outwith companies and schools, the very first thing they said to never do is tostart your talk with a graph. the very first thing i want to do is start my talkwith a graph. this graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason i gete_cited and wake up every morning. and this graph doesn't even mean anything;it's fake data. what we found is --
(laughter)
if i got this data back studying you here in the room, i would be thrilled,because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there, and that means thati can get published, which is all that really matters. the fact that there's oneweird red dot that's up above the curve, there's one weirdo in the room -- iknow who you are, i saw you earlier -- that's no problem. that's no problem, asmost of you know, because i can just delete that dot. i can delete that dotbecause that's clearly a measurement error. and we know that's a measurementerror because it's messing up my data.
so one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statisticsand business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do weeliminate the weirdos. how do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the lineof best fit? which is fantastic if i'm trying to find out how many advil theaverage person should be taking -- two. but if i'm interested in potential, ifi'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy orcreativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average withscience.
if i asked a question like, "how fast can a child learn how to read in aclassroom?" scientists change the answer to "how fast does the average childlearn how to read in that classroom?" and then we tailor the class right towardsthe average. now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologistsget thrilled, because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder,or hopefully both. we're hoping for both because our business model is, if youcome into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leaveknowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. we'll go backinto your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do is make younormal again. but normal is merely average.
and what i posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we studywhat is merely average, we will remain merely average. then instead of deletingthose positive outliers, what i intentionally do is come into a population likethis one and say, why? why is it that some of you are so high above the curve interms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability,creativity, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your senseof humor? whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what i want to do is studyyou. because maybe we can glean information -- not just how to move people up tothe average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies andschools worldwide.
the reason this graph is important to me is, when i turn on the news, itseems like the majority of the information is not positive, in fact it'snegative. most of it's about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters.and very quickly, my brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negativeto positive in the world. what that's doing is creating something called themedical school syndrome -- which, if you know people who've been to medicalschool, during the first year of medical training, as you read through a list ofall the symptoms and diseases that could happen, suddenly you realize you haveall of them.
i have a brother in-law named bobo -- which is a whole other story. bobomarried amy the unicorn. bobo called me on the phone from yale medical school,and bobo said, "shawn, i have leprosy." (laughter) which, even at yale, ise_traordinarily rare. but i had no idea how to console poor bobo because he hadjust gotten over an entire week of menopause.
(laughter)
see what we're finding is it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us,but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.and if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we canchange every single educational and business outcome at the same time.
when i applied to harvard, i applied on a dare. i didn't e_pect to get in,and my family had no money for college. when i got a military scholarship twoweeks later, they allowed me to go. suddenly, something that wasn't even apossibility became a reality. when i went there, i assumed everyone else wouldsee it as a privilege as well, that they'd be e_cited to be there. even ifyou're in a classroom full of people smarter than you, you'd be happy just to bein that classroom, which is what i felt. but what i found there is, while somepeople e_perience that, when i graduated after my four years and then spent thene_t eight years living in the dorms with the students -- harvard asked me to; iwasn't that guy. (laughter) i was an officer of harvard to counsel studentsthrough the difficult four years. and what i found in my research and myteaching is that these students, no matter how happy they were with theiroriginal success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains werefocused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or theirphysics. their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles,the stresses, the complaints.
when i first went in there, i walked into the freshmen dining hall, whichis where my friends from waco, te_as, which is where i grew up -- i know some ofyou have heard of it. when they'd come to visit me, they'd look around, they'dsay, "this freshman dining hall looks like something out of hogwart's from themovie "harry potter," which it does. this is hogwart's from the movie "harrypotter" and that's harvard. and when they see this, they say, "shawn, why do youwaste your time studying happiness at harvard? seriously, what does a harvardstudent possibly have to be unhappy about?"
embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science ofhappiness. because what that question assumes is that our e_ternal world ispredictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if i know everything aboutyour e_ternal world, i can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness.90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the e_ternal world,but by the way your brain processes the world. and if we change it, if we changeour formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that wecan then affect reality. what we found is that only 25 percent of job successesare predicted by i.q. 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimismlevels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challengeinstead of as a threat.
i talked to a boarding school up in new england, probably the mostprestigious boarding school, and they said, "we already know that. so everyyear, instead of just teaching our students, we also have a wellness week. andwe're so e_cited. monday night we have the world's leading e_pert coming in tospeak about adolescent depression. tuesday night it's school violence andbullying. wednesday night is eating disorders. thursday night is elicit druguse. and friday night we're trying to decide between risky se_ or happiness."(laughter) i said, "that's most people's friday nights." (laughter) (applause)which i'm glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. silence on thephone. and into the silence, i said, "i'd be happy to speak at your school, butjust so you know, that's not a wellness week, that's a sickness week. whatyou've done is you've outlined all the negative things that can happen, but nottalked about the positive."
the absence of disease is not health. here's how we get to health: we needto reverse the formula for happiness and success. in the last three years, i'vetraveled to 45 different countries, working with schools and companies in themidst of an economic downturn. and what i found is that most companies andschools follow a formula for success, which is this: if i work harder, i'll bemore successful. and if i'm more successful, then i'll be happier. thatundergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that wemotivate our behavior.
and the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for tworeasons. first, every time your brain has a success, you just changed thegoalpost of what success looked like. you got good grades, now you have to getbetter grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a betterschool, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your salestarget, we're going to change your sales target. and if happiness is on theopposite side of success, your brain never gets there. what we've done is we'vepushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. and that's because wethink we have to be successful, then we'll be happier.
but the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. if you canraise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their braine_periences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain atpositive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral orstressed. your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levelsrise. in fact, what we've found is that every single business outcome improves.your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain atnegative, neutral or stressed. you're 37 percent better at sales. doctors are 19percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis whenpositive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. which means we can reversethe formula. if we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then ourbrains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and moreintelligently.
what we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start tosee what our brains are actually capable of. because dopamine, which floods intoyour system when you're positive, has two functions. not only does it make youhappier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you toadapt to the world in a different way.
we've found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able tobecome more positive. in just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in arow, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually workmore optimistically and more successfully. we've done these things in researchnow in every single company that i've worked with, getting them to write downthree new things that they're grateful for for 21 days in a row, three newthings each day. and at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a patternof scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.
journaling about one positive e_perience you've had over the past 24 hoursallows your brain to relive it. e_ercise teaches your brain that your behaviormatters. we find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural adhdthat we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows ourbrains to focus on the task at hand. and finally, random acts of kindness areconscious acts of kindness. we get people, when they open up their inbo_, towrite one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social supportnetwork.
and by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we trainour bodies, what we've found is we can reverse the formula for happiness andsuccess, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create areal revolution.
thank you very much.
(applause)
that was pretty powerful. we are in the white house. smallbusiness owners, you heard from a large former business owner and tremendous entrepreneur, and we're sitting withadministrator mcmahon, who has an incredible entrepreneurial history. but it is very powering. really, this administration day in day out is steadfast in its commitment to jobs and job creation.you are feeling that and driving that. we are looking to unleashyou. you can bring your full potential, create more jobs. 60 million jobs in this country are a direct result of small businessentrepreneurs sell it is tremendously impactful on the ecosystem of job creation. we are doing every)(thing we can and look forward to your input on how we can do even more. through comprehensive tax reform to enable you to have more money toreinvest in the growth of your businesses. there are 800 regulations put on the books by the previous administration that really many of which stifle your ability to grow and continue to create and produce. we are committed to addressing thosethings, creating increased access to capital, mentorship, as the fca does through its transformative and innovative programs.access to networks, to markets to trade with across state lines.we are committed to supporting the american worker and the american job creator. we are excited to be here to celebrate anagency doing just that. and in incredible director as shecommences her 65th year of the sba. not quite your 65th. [laughter] i will turn it over now to administrator mcmahon. she will tell us about initiatives and how they can support your businesses. then we will takes and questions from the audience.
I was one of the only kids in college who had a reason to go to the P.O.bo_ at the end of the day, and that was mainly because my mother has neverbelieved in email, in Facebook, in te_ting or cell phones in general. And sowhile other kids were BBM-ing their parents, I was literally waiting by themailbo_ to get a letter from home to see how the weekend had gone, which was alittle frustrating when Grandma was in the hospital, but I was just looking forsome sort of scribble, some unkempt cursive from my mother.
And so when I moved to New York City after college and got completelysucker-punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think ofat the time. I wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written mefor strangers, and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens ofthem. I left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the U.N.,everywhere. I blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary,and I posed a kind of crazy promise to the Internet: that if you asked me for ahand-written letter, I would write you one, no questions asked. Overnight, myinbo_ morphed into this harbor of heartbreak -- a single mother in Sacramento, agirl being bullied in rural Kansas, all asking me, a 22-year-old girl who barelyeven knew her own coffee order, to write them a love letter and give them areason to wait by the mailbo_.
Well, today I fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips tothe mailbo_, fueled by the ways in which we can harness social media like neverbefore to write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, but most ofall, fueled by crates of mail like this one, my trusty mail crate, filled withthe scriptings of ordinary people, strangers writing letters to other strangersnot because they're ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, butbecause they have found one another by way of letter-writing.
But, you know, the thing that always gets me about these letters is thatmost of them have been written by people that have never known themselves lovedon a piece of paper. They could not tell you about the ink of their own loveletters. They're the ones from my generation, the ones of us that have grown upinto a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our bestconversations have happened upon a screen. We have learned to diary our painonto Facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.
But what if it's not about efficiency this time? I was on the subwayyesterday with this mail crate, which is a conversation starter, let me tellyou. If you ever need one, just carry one of these. (Laughter) And a man juststared at me, and he was like, "Well, why don't you use the Internet?" And Ithought, "Well, sir, I am not a strategist, nor am I specialist. I am merely astoryteller." And so I could tell you about a woman whose husband has just comehome from Afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thingcalled conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a wayto say, "Come back to me. Find me when you can." Or a girl who decides that sheis going to leave love letters around her campus in Dubuque, Iowa, only to findher efforts ripple-effected the ne_t day when she walks out onto the quad andfinds love letters hanging from the trees, tucked in the bushes and the the man who decides that he is going to take his life, uses Facebook as a wayto say goodbye to friends and family. Well, tonight he sleeps safely with astack of letters just like this one tucked beneath his pillow, scripted bystrangers who were there for him when.
These are the kinds of stories that convinced me that letter-writing willnever again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she isan art form now, all the parts of her, the signing, the scripting, the mailing,the doodles in the margins. The mere fact that somebody would even just sitdown, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through,with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up andthe iPhone is pinging and we've got si_ conversations rolling in at once, thatis an art form that does not fall down to the Goliath of "get faster," no matterhow many social networks we might join. We still clutch close these letters toour chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages intopalettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we haveneeded to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far toolong. Thank you.