How being heartbroken was the best thing to ever happen to me: Emma Gibbs at TEDxSouthBankWomen

it's meant to be moving overseas love it our cross reunion of first love that was consuming and intoxicating and only the way that a heart desire can be but on April 6 2012 the day that I was originally meant to be boarding a jet plane to start my new life away from everything that I knew loved and had worked for my relationship ended I emerged from what was meant to be my temper accommodation at my parents house at 6:30 a.m. it was a Sunshine Coast day the bright blue sky claps that I could barely see through my puffy and bloodshot eyes now walking out onto the balcony another wave of sobs took hold another kind of crying that squeezes your chest in your heart like a boa constrictor and strangles your throat so that almost all talking is impossible was that kind of crying now I remember my mum coming over to give me a hug and I said to her I'd I don't know what to do I just I I don't know what to do but looking up at that sky also said but I can't help but think what a great twist this would be if it was a script now the funny thing is it turns out thats exactly what it was now as a writer and a producer i constantly have to try and balance the heart focused creative writer side with the cerebral control freak producer side and this room is a constant battle now when my first love and I reconnected on paper my life was pretty much perfect I had the job as a head of development for a film and television production company I was renting an apartment here in Brisbane that was really nice by myself and a clear career path but I wasn't happy I was lying to myself every single day with the mantra it'll be fine is he for the better part of three years I've been repressing a lot of feelings about my life because I was convincing myself that everything was going to and had to go to plan and when my heart said to say hammer I think we might have a little bit of a problem shut it away in a cupboard so that my head was in control you see I thought that if I tried hard enough to make things work that they would but what ended up happening was I became so emotionally mentally and physically drained because drained because I was putting all of that energy into the parts of my life that were just not what yeah I was in such denial because my plan my plan was going to work and it had to work that I became someone who never went anywhere didn't see my friends and family didn't meet new people didn't have no experiences and most of all didn't want to work on the things that I loved which were my own creative projects what I was actually doing was putting a whole lot of band-aids on what was fast becoming a fundamentally bad approach to my life now the funny thing is about trying to make a plan work or trying to make something in your life work when you know deep down that it just isn't going to is that you start to forget why you had that plan in the first place I said forget why I wanted to be a writer and a producer something that used to feel me was such a measurable passion and joy and I started to hate the things that I once loved all the while my heart was screaming at me from a cupboard that I'd put it in Emma what are you doing but my head would quickly say shut up I'm too busy because that's what I was I was just I was always too busy so when my first love and I reconnected that's when everything started to change I remember the first time we'd spoken on skype after not having seen each other's faces for two years and as soon as I saw him I knew that I was in real trouble so a few months later I flew to visit him and naturally emotional and other fireworks insured but then all of a sudden I was right back back at home in the life that I had convinced myself was everything that I wanted with the cold face-slapping awareness that it wasn't I saw the bundle of band-aids that are created for what it was something that I couldn't fix and something that I realized I didn't want to fix so at this point I did what any rational person would do so while undying love and made plans to move to the other side of the world away from everything I knew now at this point my head is freaking out because I've gone way too far the other way I'm listening just in my heart but I guess that's the inherent problem was having a head and a heart is that it's always going to be a battle and I don't know if there is any solution but when I'd made those plans I realized just how long I'd been lying to myself for about my life and it really scared me so what I did was I made a promise to him but more importantly to myself that if everything all fell apart that I would be 100% responsible for rebuilding my life and now at this part in the story we arrive back at the balcony and I'm in tears what I done was I had applied for the wrong visa without doing enough research which wasn't like me and I'd consequently been barred from entering the country that I was planning on moving to now I've done so much research after that point to try and find a solution to try and find a way around the problem but there was no immediate no immediate fix but I realized hold on I can go anywhere I can just go anywhere except for where he is he has a portable job we can go somewhere else for a little while until we can figure it out and be together but unfortunately for him was all a bit too complicated and all a bit too much so I sat on Skype that morning saying that I could not wait for a solution to magically appear but I could go anywhere to be with but unfortunately it was all too hard he didn't fight for me and it fell apart now it's really difficult to deal with loving someone so much when something when they don't love you enough to fight for you it really it makes you question your own self-worth so later that day I after a lot of crying I did what most women do shut myself away in a room and watch my favorite film but for me it's not love actually or Bridget Jones diary it's Lord of the Rings but that's a totally other story now the next few weeks were really hard I'd go from stopping uncontrollably to feeling surprisedly really awesome but then my head would say to me hold on I know you meant to be heartbroken and then I'd start to feel bad because I was feeling so good but the thing that I realized about being heartbroken is that it's when you are heartbroken it's really hard to lie to yourself and control how you feel at least for me I tried but it would always come back up because of a Regina Spektor song a Pixar film because of a shirt I was wearing when we were together I realized that with that there is no way that I could have with my head or my heart plan for heartbreak and I realized that there was no way I could really keep lying to myself so as time went on I started to feel really good because I think that I realized that my heart knew deep down that it was always going to be okay because I decided to be honest with myself again and the whole process was really quite cathartic in many ways but I guess at this stage that you probably expected me to say that my head was had done that I told you so dance a few times but in actual fact it hadn't because my head had started to realize that maybe my heart knew a little bit of what it was talking about because even though that one out of my life that had to work out didn't everything else started to all of the opportunities that I've been blind to do when I was lying to myself because I was always too busy and I had to make my concrete life plan work all of those things that I was blinded to started to come into my life in the most amazing ways I'd like to share with you some of the things I've done since the heartbreak in April early next year I'm going to be a published author of some fantastic kids books called Mirabella the mermaid detective that I am writing with my writing partner best friend and mum Margot who's here let's say I can't look at her because I cry but we'd been working on these for a while but when I was really closed emotionally I was not the writing and creative partner that I could that I always should have been an in strange way that heartbreak allowed me to be that person that I should have been I also Ahmet Muhtar best friend and our business partner Jonathan Duffy who's speaking here later today and we're making a film about marriage equality called the doctor's wife - an issue that I believe is incredibly important I have started my own business I have more than a lifetime worth of plans of travel and adventure and I'm here today with all of you that so strangely strangely as a result of all of this emotional turmoil I'm living the life that I've always dreamt about but it's not always a smooth ride even the process of writing this speech has been really intense despite my head's newfound respect for my heart now I don't know how many times I've cried during the writing of this speech I think I've been able to read it three times without crying because I've had to truly come to terms with not the fact that my relationship failed but that because I had not been listening to my heart for so long that I was essentially living a lie I was lying to the one person that I believe we should never ever ever lie to myself you see when we lie to ourselves not only are we in denial but we're inadvertently lying to every single other person in our lives particularly when we preach honesty is a beacon of a good relationship and we are always lying to when we're lying to ourselves those people that love and care about us the most and that we love and care about the most now like most women I'm awesome at giving advice but a horrible at taking it but if there's one thing that I can say today that I hope that you can take away and listen and hear and I do as well is that I really believe that nothing good can ever come from line to ourselves now when I was doing my research for this speech I was lucky enough to come across a quote or a paragraph from the amazing Seth Godin who is a marketing guru author and others quote Challenger and it's sucker punched me in the chest with such awareness because what I realized with that quote was that it has only ever been my head's interpretation of what I think everyone else thinks I should be that has ever told me that I'm not good enough that's the only thing and it's called how long are you going to wait they told you to get your resume in order to punch your ticket and to fit in and to follow instructions they told you to swallow your pride and not follow your dream they promised you trinkets and prizes and possibly riches if you would just suck it up and be part of the system if you would merely do what you were told and conform they sold you debt and self storage and reality TV shows they sold your daughters and your sons - all in exchange for what would happen later when it was your turn it's your turn a being heartbroken has allowed me to be my true self again because I am for the first time in far too long I'm honest with myself now our hearts are things that are often relegated to being put on the sidelines and only being brought out when we're really emotional or comfortable but they're with us every step of the way and I believe are a fundamental part of our success in life now what do you call it your gut instinct your intuition your six your woman's intuition that feeling that you get when you know that something is really really right or really really wrong is just as important in business innovation in your careers as it is in love and relationships now when we listen to both our heads and our hearts marrying them with equal respect and recognition it's really hard to lie to ourselves now the truth is not always fun most of the time it's really painful but I believe being honest with ourselves is the only way that we will ever create empower inspire innovate and achieve the greatness that our world so desperately needs thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 2,231,291

Rating: 4.8728724 out of 5

Keywords: Education, tedx, ted talks, Poetry, Head, ted, Queensland, tedx talk, Fear, ted x, Brisbane, Media, TEDxSouthBankWomen, \Heart Ache\, tedx talks, Australia, Heart, English, Love, ted talk

Id: jCiBQu1TAgY

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

OMG Indy!! I kid you not, I watched this my 2nd week of NC too. Cried and bawled like a fool.

"It's really difficult.... to deal with loving someone so much when they don't love you enough to fight for you. It really makes you question your own self worth."

I saved that note on my phone. And I'd look at it every-time I had an urge to call my ex. It really hit home.

[u/Indy80million]

Also, try some of the other TED talks about self-improvement. They're pretty good :)

[u/hardgeeklife]

What happens when my gut is telling me what my head doesn't agree with?