How changing your mindset can change your future | Mary Young | TEDxYouth@Toronto

[Music] what we perceive and what is to be reality are two very different things today you see me standing here at the age of 26 I'm the CEO and designer of my namesake clothing line marry young I also power a movement called the self-love Club we're encouraged open and authentic conversation around body positivity self love and self care outside of work I'm very passionate about the creative community I encourage women to embrace themselves and to challenge themselves I also focus on my health and my fitness activities and really push myself to the limits this is what you see but ten years ago if you were to tell me this was my future I wouldn't have believed you ten years ago this didn't look like my life this didn't seem something I could have when we look at our lives a lot of moments will happen that will change everything for me that day was November 3rd 2007 I was playing rugby in gym class I grew up with an older brother so I knew how to play and jump in there and so I did I got right in and I ended up taking a few heavy hits to the head and I got a concussion it was a grade one concussion so for those of you no that's not the worst concussion you can get on a scale of concussions it was at the bottom I didn't lose consciousness I knew who I was and I knew where I was these were all good signs in fact one in five students will actually get a concussion in the regular season and 90% of those concussions you won't lose your consciousness and you won't black out so I wasn't rare by any means but what happened next was rare so I followed my doctor's orders I didn't do anything extensive for the next three weeks no gym class no extracurricular activities and I didn't use my brain that intensely no heavy thinking realistically I just took it easy a but it's all pretty good the headaches started to subside the nausea the dizziness started to fade away and I started to come back to myself a little bit and feel more normal then four weeks after the concussion I woke up to something I had never experienced before this was a feeling that I never knew I woke up with a migraine I had headaches before I knew what a headache was and I knew what that felt like but a migraine was different this migraine losted eight months this was eight months every single day with this pain a few days into the migraine all of my symptoms came back with a vengence the dizziness became severe vertigo that even when I was sitting down I couldn't tell it was up or down everything was spinning my visual site was actually affected I would see strobe lights going off my peripherals everywhere the ground was constantly shaking moving through the day became such a challenge that I couldn't figure out where I was going what I was doing and how to even move through my life next my cognitive skills were affected I was unable to read and write the way that I used to so imagine this at age 16 in grade 11 unable to read and write a simple question like what is the date was really hard for me to understand simple just a few words something we are asked every single day for me I would have to break it down a word by word what what is what is the what is the date if I was able to even understand what the sentence was it could take me up to two or three minutes to understand it answering the question was even harder you would see words that would blend together a word that I didn't mean to be there would suddenly show up and none of it made sense and I couldn't understand why this was happening I didn't know what was going on this affected me every single day on top of that I was struggling with speaking you know that feeling when you have a word on the tip of your tongue and you can feel it you know it and you just can't say it that was me every single day to the point where I was unable to have proper conversations this was the new normal for me as this progressed I started to see different doctors and it was finally diagnosed with post concussion syndrome I believe it or not a lot of people actually have post concussion syndrome with around 50% of patients having these symptoms up to three months after the concussion and another ten to 15% having those lasts for over one year I was the 10 to 15% my symptoms lasted nearly seven years this wasn't something I was prepared for this wasn't something that I knew was going to happen as I was moving through this the first year was the hardest I was prescribed a lot of different medication to deal with this pain the dizziness the nausea everything that I was feeling I had to have different medications to control this first year was a blur for me I don't remember most of it I don't remember who I was in that year actually when I speak to my mom about it she'll often recall seeing her daughter my body my personality and everything but something was missing I was emotionless my personality was muted and I was distant there is one memory I have of that year when I was 16 standing in front of my mirror at home looking at myself and feeling so lost what I saw wasn't who I was my physical appearance had changed I had gained away from the medication so what I saw wasn't who I knew and then my personality wasn't there I didn't feel like myself I didn't know who I was anymore so what I looked at myself I felt two separate things my mind and my body were separate they didn't work together my mind felt extremely betrayed by my body why was I in this pain I didn't want this I don't want this confusion this dizziness this nausea I didn't want to be 16 and not know who I was and to be just moving through the world without any sense of care or any sense of direction I felt betrayed by myself this was the biggest challenge for me to move past that over the next two years I was able to lower down my medication and I was able to get down to one or two different medications a day at this time my migraines were about 20 to 25 days of a month now that sounds pretty horrendous imagine 20 days with a migraine for me this was my new normal and for me that was progress so when I was 18 I decided to move to Toronto five hours away from my hometown really exciting time going to school getting my post-secondary education I had a few friends in the city but I had no family the biggest struggle was actually to find a new doctor I was willing to find any doctor that was willing to try anything I wanted to try anything to get rid of this pain to solve what was going on so I visited numerous different doctors tried many different techniques and at the age of 22 I was still categorized as living in chronic pain with migraines anywhere from 15 to 25 days of a month this was out while I was in university working a part-time job and I had an internship so my doctor had an idea he explained to me about these neurons that we all have called nociceptors neurons what they do is they actually detect signals of damage or potential damage and then they let your your action potential know and it will actually signal to your brain that you're in pain so if you're playing soccer and you scrape your knee the air action potential will allow your brain to know that you've scraped your knee so therefore you know your knee is bleeding or it's hurt sometimes when you're playing soccer or your adrenaline will carry you through and you won't actually feel that so you'll be playing it all something in the game you realize wow my knee really hurts that's because the adrenaline actually washed away those potential actions so for me my doctor said that my body may have been actually sending these messages of pain when there was no damage so there was such strong pain waves my body that they might have been firing even when nothing was happening and no damage was being done so what his approach was was to stop all those pain waves and how he did this was he took general anaesthetic a small amount of freezing it's a small needle and he inserted on every vertebrae down my neck and into my shoulders an order to freeze any pain I did this three times the first time I did it I was so confused after I had it done that I had to take a cab home I was stuck in my bed for two days I could barely move I didn't understand what was happening to my body the second time I knew a little bit more and you what to expect and by the third time I knew what was happening but there was no progress nothing changed the pain was still there I was just as dizzy I didn't understand why it wasn't working so this is what I went back to my doctor and we down and he said he had a solution he told me to quit that I should quit school that I should quit my part-time job I should quit my internship and I should focus solely on my recovery and that should be all of my attention is getting better so for me when I heard that that was terrifying I was 23 in my third year of university I had already worked so hard to move to Toronto to pursue my education to have a life to build my future to have someone to tell me to quit and stop everything it was gut-wrenching so I found myself at a fork in the road to the right I could do what my doctor said I could quit I could move home to my small town where with my mom and focus on my health and focus on my recovery but I knew in my gut that if I were to do that I wouldn't have the strength to move back to Toronto that I already put so much on the line to come here and pursue my education that I wouldn't be able to do that up for a second time so the other path was to change my mindset and to flip it these were my two paths that I had at 23 I had to decide I chose to change my mindset when it comes to changing your mindset I'm sure most of you have heard different lists you know five steps to be more positive the way to look at the world through brighter eyes this isn't something that happens overnight I could admit that but it is something that is very powerful when I was growing up my parents always taught us to be thankful and grateful for the things we had we would always note the house our family our friends whatever it was and be very thankful for that and so I decided to take that one step further and I started a thankful journal for me I would write down anything I was thankful for whether that was the smallest thing of watching TV and enjoying it or laughing with my friends it didn't always have to be related to my physical health but I always wrote down what I was thankful for God changed my outlook I stopped looking at the negative things the things I didn't have the things that I was losing out on but rather the things I did have next I decided to use some positive self-talk I noticed the way that we speak to our friends we're always encouraging them we're building them up we're supporting them but then when we speak to ourselves oftentimes we're tearing ourselves down we're not supporting ourselves we're not saying anything positive to ourselves so I changed that I would stand in front of the mirror and speak to myself in third person to encourage myself now this is very strange trust me if you ever try this looking at yourself in the mirror and saying Mary your pain doesn't define you Mary your body offers you more than pain it felt very strange but it worked I started to listen and believed what I was saying my body also started to listen lastly I looked at what my body and my mind could do these are our two most powerful tools that all of us possess and I decided to use those for the past seven years I was told not to workout not to increase my heartrate and to not jump bounce or move around to the point that I would actually get a migraine so what I decided to do was go to the gym I started working out I started with the smallest amount of workouts and trust me I was exhausted and eventually I started to go back and I start to feel stronger and my body started to feel more powerful because I was using it and because I recognized it as I was doing these three things my migraine started to soften they went from 25 to 20 days a month down to 15 by the age of 24 I was no longer living in chronic pain this was the first time in my life that I had less than 10 migraines a month to the point where now I have less than one migraine a month it's usually every second month so these three things really shifted my future these mindset changes were controlling what I was able to change in my life in order to move past that fork in the road I'm sure most of you have faced a fork in the road or maybe all the odds have been stacked against you and you felt at a loss what do you do where do you go who do you turn to but the thing to remember is you actually turn to yourself you look at your mindset what you're able to do and you remember these three things to help you move past whatever is blocking your path so take a look at your life look at what you're grateful for be thankful for it we're all in here today this is an amazing experience we are all are pursuing our education something that not everyone our age gets to do in this world be very grateful for those things start speaking to yourself the way you would speak to your friends encourage yourself speak to yourself in third person if that helps but always have positive self-talk and affirmation and lastly know that your body and your mind are your most powerful tools that you have use those tools remember that they are yours to use for the your entire life and they are more powerful than you can ever imagine at the end of the day when you're stuck and you're trying to go up hill and you're trying to push through and you're looking to what's next remember that your mindset can truly change your future thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 67,967

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Body, Entrepreneurship, Hope, Mental health, Recovery

Id: bnZCZ-lL4JY

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2018