Empathy + Gratitude = Success | David Meltzer | TEDxMissionViejo

[Music] if I could guarantee you happiness from the time you open your eyes till you've time you close your eyes who's in it's amazing you know you asked so many people that around the world and I never talked about finances never talk about relationships I don't even talk about health but yet millions of people around the world happiness is enough now I have a lot of different teachers I believe to surround myself with the right people and the right ideas and this guy ran a verdict art in the 17th century taught me I think therefore I am he also taught me that the mind and the body are separate that the body actually belongs to the physical science and the mind to the metaphysical he actually took it further and teaches that the mind body and soul are completely separate they're not one well just because you're a genius and a philosopher doesn't mean you're right I I grew up a little differently I wanted to be rich and I grew up with six kids a single mom who was an elementary school teacher so you can imagine the extravagance that I lived in and through that you know big night for me was to go to my favorite fast-food restaurant share a couple orders of french fries in a bowl in the middle of the table but you know in my life we were very happy and the only time that I wasn't happy was when I'd see my mom crying because you know the car would break down or the dishwasher won't work or she was unable to send any of us to summer camp or something we wanted to do and I just thought to myself at that time I thought wow if I could just be rich then not only would I be happy but I could make my mom happy as well my mom had one thing though she was an extraordinary parent she had six kids extraordinary kids all went to the Ivy League's she was a master she had a black belt in this martial art that many of you know as Jewish guilt she was actually a third degree black belt into his skill she had us all believing that if we weren't educated we were doomed in fact I truly believe that the fetus when I was in a science class wasn't fully developed until after graduate school I was completely lost now unfortunately for me I felt that I was the low end of the gene pool because I actually brought a be home in high school and I thought it broke my mom's heart but fortunately we all got scholarships to college and even went on to graduate school now I have a different vision for myself I wanted to be rich in this extraordinary way because unfortunately for my siblings I'm the highest end of the gene pool when it comes to athleticism well I wanted to be a professional football player of course you know I looked in the mirror and said at five seven a hundred and fifty pounds yeah fifty pounds ago but I wanted to be a professional football player so I went to college and I actually played football and it was almost immediately that I figured out that I better have a back-up plan so like every other nice Jewish boy I decided in order to be rich instead of a football player I better be a doctor so I went to visit my brother after my first season who was in medical school at UCLA and I realized that to be a doctor you had to work in hospitals unfortunately I hate hospitals so like every other nice Jewish boy that can't be an NFL star or a doctor I decided I go to law school and that's the way I'll be rich so I went to law school and upon graduating law school I was fortunate enough to have two job offers one was to be a district attorney and accelerate my litigation career and make tons of money being a dirty lawyer no offense and then two was to work in the Internet and to sell legal research online so of course I went to my favorite advisor my mom and I asked her what should I do mom what should I do and she said quote unquote Dave you should be a real lawyer because this internet thing you know this Internet it's a fad oh thank goodness for the first time in my life for the first time in my life I didn't listen to my mom and I learned a valuable lesson though I learned the lesson that just because someone loves you doesn't mean that they give you good advice just as if great philosophers sometimes support some things that just aren't true well fortunately for me I did take my mom's advice and I worked for West Publishing we put legal content online in the early 90s and within nine months I was a millionaire and I bought my mom a house I bought my mom a car I paid off all my la loans and that's when I learned another valuable lesson and partially because of Descartes money does not buy love right money cannot buy happiness but it sure rents the heck out of it I became my mom's favorite child at 32 though at 32 I ran one of the largest phone companies in the world we created the first convergence device we now call them smart phones I was a multimillionaire I had everything you can have ever imagined even married my dream girl from elementary school who obviously is blind and deaf but I had everything I could buy whatever I wanted but for the first time in my life I wasn't happy I had surrounded myself with all the wrong people and all the wrong ideas I actually self-entitled myself I went into this terrible self-sabotaging downward spiral and I lost everything and you know one day I walked into my house and I saw you know this beautiful wife of mine crying to her uncle and she was telling him I I don't know if Dave can pull us out of this III don't know we haven't really been here I'm really scared I was crushed I was thinking oh my god you know I lost all my money now I'm gonna lose my soulmate in my family and her uncle responded and he said you know dave has accomplished so much in his life so easily I can't wait to see what happens with his back against the wall Wow that fired me up when my wife confronted me and told me for the first time that she wasn't happy and I she had asked me she said you should go back Dave and you should take stock and who you were and also take stock in what you've become and so I went back and I thought about Descartes and I thought about the mind in the body and the soul and I thought about my mom and what I had learned and I realized that my mom and Descartes and others had empowered me with four things to be happy one was gratitude the second was empathy the third accountability and the fourth effective communication now gratitude gratitude was so easy for me right everybody knows what gratitude Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday but gratitude gave me a positive perspective no matter what I had it's so powerful in fact I tell people today if you want to change your life it's as easy as two simple words thank you in fact the best habit that you can have I've done research for the last 10 years in quantum physics metaphysics physics and I will tell you the best effective habit that you can have is to say thank you before you go to bed and before and when you wake up if you can say or think thank you before you go to bed and say it and think it when you wake up for 30 straight days I guarantee you it'll change your life now how many here think you can do that for 30 straight days and variably everybody raises their hand the saddest part is by tonight half of you will not say or think thank you by the morning another half of you will not say or think thank you and unfortunately in 3 days almost all of us will forget to say thank you I've given you the easiest way gratitude to change your life and yet we're so far in our own way we can't even say thank you for 30 straight days the second tool that my mom gave me was empathy now empathy is a lot trickier than gratitude because empathy most people think of as sympathy they think oh I feel so sad for you but I will be here to tell you that you cannot feel sad enough for someone to make them happy you cannot feel sick enough to make them and you definitely can't be poor enough to make them rich empathy is so much more powerful empathy is forgiveness and guess who we have to forgive let's write ourselves we have to forgive ourselves because we can't give what we don't have so I said on this journey to do more research on gratitude and empathy and I found a scientific research article on empathy and it talked about negative energy and holding grudges and how holding grudges and negative energy affects not only our bodies all right it changes our cardiovascular system our sympathetic nervous system all these physical things in our body but it also changes our mind it creates anxiety and stress and furthermore it actually changes our emotions our soul by providing empathy or forgiveness to others we actually can feel compassion for the negative energy that's been perpetrated on us I found a doctor her name is Candace pert and she's a famous neurologist she was the one that discovered the opiate receptors in the brain far above my brain but but anyway she actually has done 250 research articles on the molecules of emotion she actually takes scientific research and legitimizes how the mind body and soul are one and how it creates its own medicine she discovered through her research that we actually can change the way our mind body and soul react by simply understanding that they are not separate in that every illness we have has a psychosomatic component to it unbelievable I was like first my mom's giving me bad advice now Descartes has screwed up my whole life by telling me these things are separate are you kidding me well the one thing that I realized then is that I had find out what was truly the combination of mind body and soul and I luckily manifested it by taking believe it or not a plane to India and next to me was this lovely doctor she was about four feet 11 dr. Sangeeta Saki and she looked at me and she said David she said are you okay and in my arrogant idiot mind I'm thinking about okay I'm rich of course I'm okay are you kidding me she said no you're so full of light but you're blocking it and I found out later that she was a practitioner of theta or quantum healing and she said to me David do you meditate and I rolled my eyes back in my head I'm like are you kidding meditate I make things happen my friends at meditate they're high on their mom's couch right there That's not me I make things happen I work hard my wife is she's spiritual she meditates but that's not for me she said but what if I could teach you to meditate to increase the vibration of your body to increase the vibration of your mind to increase the vibration of your soul and I said well what would that do she said well David everything vibrates the earth vibrates the slowest those are minerals than plants animals and then humans and then sound vibrates faster in light and then the the thought thoughts vibrate faster than anything and David you know what thought vibrates the fastest I looked at repose 'old and she said the truth the truth she said I can teach you to vibrate closer to the truth and you only can be aware of that which vibrates equal to or less than your vibration Wow that changed my whole life I said this meditation thing may change my whole life and I can change it very simply and the one truth I wanted to understand really well was accountability because I never understood when my mom was explaining accountability to me and I thought about sitting at a stop sign and some kid texting behind me and slamming into the back of me and my mom would say oh but you're accountable and as a lawyer I'm thinking BS I'm they're liable well that was the problem right I was confusing accountability with liability and my mom would teach me to ask two questions number one what did I do to attract that into my life and two what am I supposed to learn from that after that I'll call the insurance company so accountability was extremely important then finally it came effective communication an effective communication is the ability to connect to everything that's relative to me all this relatively the people the places the things all the associates all the relationships even the universe and if I can connect to all of those things I can be inspired or in spirit and I can vibrate closer to the truth and be aware of so much more but I had a problem connecting because I had these three levels that I had to connect on one is that body level of conscious thought I have this little guy in my head that is negative but I learned to cancel those negative thoughts so all conscious thoughts to me if they are negative they attract more negative thoughts to me I just say cancel and then what happens is once in a while I attract that same negative thought back having trouble sleeping I wake up early anxious I know no one else is like that and I can't understand why but then I realize this because I have a belief in my mind that negative belief is attracting the negative thought back so I had to come up with a mechanism called clear so when it happens I just clear my mind clear and then finally there was some things that are just made me unhappy I couldn't understand it not at a physical level not at a mental level but I kept attracting the same things back into my life even though I changed my thoughts and I changed my physicality it kept coming back and the same person dating the same business issues the same business part of all these things I can't understand why it's because I had to learn to shift my energy and this is how we do it I closed my eyes and I think about what makes me most unhappy and in what makes me most unhappy I find a light and I find that light and I cover what makes me most unhappy and then in the same mind's eye I look and I see what makes me most happy my family bananas Foster's cheesecake whatever I love and I take what I makes me most unhappy and I take that light and I cover it over what makes me happiest and now I have one big ball light in front of me from what makes me most unhappy and what makes me happy and I put it over myself and I hold that light there until my energy shifts and I feel happy now gratitude will give you a positive perspective empathy will give you peace accountability will liberate you but effective communication connecting to all will empower everyone to empower even more people to be happy and that makes us all happy thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 105,505

Rating: 4.8185792 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Humanities, Happiness

Id: LuzLJrov-9w

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2017