Life Lessons

TEDxMcGill: Redefining Reality

Yesterday I was thrilled to attend TEDxMcGill 2011. I’ve always been a huge fan of the TED community, and being able to go to the conference in my city two years in a row has been an an amazing experience. If you have an “X” conference where you live, I couldn’t encourage you more to take the opportunity to go and discover all the great ideas that your community is spreading and soaking up.

I would try and convince you to go, but I’ll hold back from telling you why it’s worth it. Hopefully by not desperately trying to convince you, it’ll ensure that those who do go are 100% enthusiastic and committed to the TED experience and are more than happy to donate their money and their whole day to the cause.

If you’re not familiar with the world of TED, get familiar! (This intro video for TEDxAmsterdam is pretty amazing too.)

The tagline of the organization is “ideas worth spreading”, and I’ve never failed to be either inspired, intrigued, informed or opened up after watching any of the talks. The “x” means “independently organized event”, and they’re held all over the world. The most creative and innovative people come together – people from art, science, philanthropy, engineering, healthcare – and share their ideas, and I find that process one of the most inspiring there is. What could be more beautiful than the sharing of ideas? It’s what makes us human.

Yesterday’s event was no different from my past experiences with TED. This year’s theme was redefining reality, and the speakers team really did an amazing job of organizing the talks into 3 sessions that mirror the process of how we can go about redefining our reality. While I enjoyed every single one of the talks, I want to focus on the ones that left the greatest impression so that I can keep this short and sweet! You can check out the rest of the speakers & their ideas here.

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Lessons From NaNoWriMo Week One

Well, it’s official. Today marks the 7th day of National Novel Writing Month, and I am pleased to report that I have been diligently sitting down every day and writing my 1,667 words. Currently I have:

  • 20 pages
  • 10, 219 words
Ooh, it makes me giddy just to see those numbers! It’s true that it’s daunting to have over 39K words left to be written, but I plan to just keep on truckin’ and meet my daily quota. If I do that, I’ll be proud of myself. Today I wanted to share some of the lessons NaNo’s been teaching me over the past week. Hopefully even those who aren’t participating/aren’t planning on it will still find something of value here!

1. It feels good to do something every day.

Lately, I’ve been learning this lesson with respect to my “morning pages” on 750words.com. But adding this crazy project of writing a novel to the mix really hits the lesson right on home. There’s something inexplicably satisfying in doing something, consistently, every day. Gretchen Rubin from The Happiness Project highly recommends doing something every day, saying that it teaches us to find pleasure in our routine.

The things you do every day take on a certain beauty, and provide a kind of invisible architecture to daily life. – Gretchen Rubin

I would also venture to say that doing something every day is a boost to our self-esteem. I know that every time I hit my word quota, my chest practically puffs up with pride. It’s rewarding to see the number creep up, and to have the satisfaction of a job well done.

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Taking Baby Steps

Thanks to mimiBlog for the photo

Here’s the million dollar question: What can you do right now to achieve your goals?

 I just read about this idea in The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Leo has also written about this idea over at ZenHabits.

It’s a very powerful concept. My interpretation is this: many people have big dreams or plans for themselves, and aren’t sure where to start in order to accomplish them. Their aspirations may seem daunting, impossible, or maybe just time-consuming. But the way to achieve them is to start. Somewhere. Anywhere. And according to Tim? You should do it today.

He advocates a very straight-forward approach, and in my opinion the book is worth reading even just for this method of analysis. He includes a monetary calculation as well, which is really helpful for larger goals, but in this post I’m just going to focus on his ideas about first steps in the context of short-term goals.

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Be Who You Are, Not Who You Wish You Were

Photo thanks to WeHeartIt

First off: a caveat. I don’t mean to suggest that there’s something wrong with having aspirations for yourself. Dreams, hopes, future plans, blueprints of your mansion in the Canary Islands – whatever. It’s a beautiful thing to be inspired by life, to be looking forward to things, to wish something for yourself that you don’t currently possess.

There’s also nothing wrong with adjusting your current behaviours in the hopes of becoming a better you, to say no to activities you might enjoy but know are unproductive (like countless hours of watching TV, for example!) or make yourself do the hard work that will get you where you need to be.

The real problem arises wherever we attempt to mold ourselves into somebody else.  When our plans for ourselves don’t match up with our true values, personalities or skills. When we’re operating under a script for our “ideal” self that just doesn’t jibe with who we really are or what truly makes us happy.

Where we get these useless scripts differs from person to person: perhaps they’re sourced from our perceived (or real) parental expectations, our jealousy of a friend, our information from the media of what constitutes beauty or achievement, or our lack of self-reflection. It’s useful to try and isolate the sources of your ineffective scripts, confront them, and keep them in mind as you move through your life. 

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