How to Build Power Wherever You Are | Damon Brown | TEDxToledo

how many times have you said if i only could focus a little bit more i'd be able to get through this or if i could adapt to this new situation i i want to get to this new thing but i haven't let go of a new thing i can't let it go if i can only adapt to this new situation embrace this new normal then i'm gonna be all right or if i had more time uh extra night uh an hour something a moment that i could really help this project fly or if i could just get a little bit more energy a good night's sleep a nap something at the bottom of this cup of coffee that would be amazing and i could truly shine how many times have you said that i know i've said that countless times usually when i'm praying to the gods of deadlines but what i found over the years as a entrepreneur as a creative as a public speaker and speaking to literally thousands of them is that we always have that we always have the ability to focus to adapt to uh have time and to have energy you can call them the fates f-a-t-e we always have them they are actually part of our human experience if we don't have any more we're not alive if you have zero energy you're not functioning and so as long as we're living and breathing we can continue to create and make amazing things we have that ability we tend to get confused though because those resources that focus that agility that time and energy tends to change depending on our personal and professional circumstances for instance if you're 85 year old a retiree then you're probably hyper focused f because you spent nine decades spending time trying to figure out what you really care about that's actually the blessing of being that old but you might not be as agile a because you spent nine decades figuring out what you care about you don't need as much stimuli to figure out what your life meant what matters in your life now you might have a lot of time t because if you're blessed enough to have no major health issues and be in good shape otherwise then you're only focused on yourself and or your partner and lastly energy e you might not have as much now i have good friends that are in their 80s even in their 90s we talk regularly they have a lot of energy they understand we understand that they are the exception to the rule so we start to get into trouble and start to have challenges when we start to see what we lack compared to another person we start to feel guilt and shame when we worry about how someone else is executing something and not how we would execute it or vice versa we start to ch shame and judge other people when they're doing things differently than how we would do them so let's say this 85 year old retiree is connected with a 25 year old grad student the grad student their focus f might not be that great because they have so much stuff going on and they're only 25 they're still trying to figure out for lack of better term their life purpose but they might be really agile a because they're trying to figure out their life purpose you know when you're in your 20s that next book the next quote the next class you take next person you date could end up changing the course of your life that is amazing so of course you're going to be adaptable different things because you don't know what's going to change the course of your life time t might not be that high i remember being a 20-something grad student and i know my time was spent working on my dissertation i know my time was spent trying to figure out how i was going to make a living to pay for the grad school and lastly i was just trying to have a social life in between all that time was very much a premium but energy though that's off the charts because you're 25 it's until you get older where you realize how much energy you actually had when you were 25 right but what happens when you get these two people in the room 85 year old retiree and a 25 year old grad student imagine the younger person saying hey let's work on this project together let's get this done let's make an impact on the world let's just do a couple all-nighters and we can get it done this week it's probably not going to work that well right because remember 85 year olds focus or main thing is focus and time so that's powerful enough to make the grand canyon but it's not necessarily powerful enough to make you stable and strong when you're doing all-nighters or imagine 85 year old going to 25 year old and saying hey we care about this we're both passionate about it why don't we spend the rest of our lives focused on this one thing you probably get laughed after and that's because there are different places so we tend to have challenges because we look at what we lack if we're having a hard time focusing then we tend to not pay attention to how much time we might have if we don't have a lot of time we have more time then we tend to not pay attention to how adaptable we are to different circumstances that's where our strengths lie and they vary from moment to moment and life to life now this has been an interesting year to study this stuff for a numerous amount of reasons but two in particular back in march every one of my social circles from friends and family to to clients the people that i saw from afar suddenly went into one of two camps i don't mean politically i mean as far as time you can call it pandemic time so there were a group of people that had more time than perhaps they ever had in their life since they were children or babies their time resources went through the roof and now they're trying to read war and peace now they're learning how to code now they're making bread from scratch i don't mean getting a starter from somebody down the street or going to a bakery i'm talking about feeding the yeast day in day out i have never done it but i heard it takes a lot you need a lot of time for that suddenly they're able to do all these things that they wanted to do and trying to fill up this time hopefully in a healthful way so that's one group then you have this other group who actually have their time reserves diminish significantly they are their first responders bless them for all the work they do for still to this day for months they've been time deficient and try and take care of all of us there are the people who are food insecure we're financially insecure the unemployment rate is off the charts now still and they're just trying to get through the day i've been broke before it takes a lot of time to just get through the day and people are really struggling right now just to get through the day and then there are those who have health issues that are significant during this pandemic or taking care of people in particularly vulnerable situations such as people who are physically challenged or people who have um very young children or people who have older older relatives that are taken care of i have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old my partner and i have not had a day of peace since march 11th not that we're counting but with this former group who has more time than they ever experienced before what an opportunity within the pain within the challenges within the suffering mentally and otherwise that all of us are facing right now this particular group who has more time than ever has such a gift again how many times have we said if only had the time for this then i would do that imagine if the universe swept in and said i'm gonna move that boulder here you go here now what are you going to do this isn't from a place of judgment or that you should be productive it's not a treatise on that it's more a level of self-honesty if you believe that you would do this thing if you had more time and you have more time and you're still not doing that thing then there must be something else that's stopping you it doesn't matter whether you do it or not what matters is why so remember there's two things that came out this past year the first one is this pandemic time the second thing isn't really new well it's new to some people and it has to do with time and it's more of a reckoning perhaps more of a recognition for all of us my friend and fellow author nila for merchant when i talk to her about this about these resources these faiths this focus this agility this time and this energy she said well what about the headwinds and i just nodded the headwinds that are against you when you're a person of color the headwinds that wrap around you and try to hold you when you're born a cis woman the head ones that try to push you down when you're part of the lgbtq community what about those the late author tony morrison said the very serious function of racism is distraction its goal is to stop you from doing your work the very serious function of racism is distraction it stops you from doing your work so you can replace that with respect to mrs morrison with any type of ism and you'll probably have a similar effect you might be affected by these isms that's when i say that i bootstrapped my company it's different to you than it is to me that's why we don't have the same 24 hours in a day because we might have these same resources these these this focus this agility this time this energy this these fates but how they come out might be different because they might be deluded or disturbed or disrupted that means that if your main thing is energy then a lot of that energy might be spent yelling and fighting to get into as they say in hamilton in the room where it happened where people are making judgments about your life and the life of people like you your energy is spent trying to get a seat at that table if your main thing is time then a lot of that can be spent healing or unwinding a life of setbacks and challenges towards you or people like you and that might not stop with you that could be unwinding damage from a generation or two or ten if your main resource is agility then you're bobbing and weaving going around the traps the setbacks the the roadblocks that are put in front of you consciously or unconsciously by people or by people who created systems to do just that and if your main thing is focus then it might be a little wavering sometimes because you have to worry about the target on your back but i want you to understand and i need this to be understood by you that your resource could be deluded could be denied could be stopped but they will always be there they will always be at your disposal they will always be part of you and no jim crow laws no lavender laws no voter suppression no no gaslighting can stop you from having your life force from having your fate from having your power and that very combination of things that you have will help rock a world that's better for all of us so if your main thing is then you're able to see beyond the distraction beyond the circus you're able to see what's important keep your eyes on the prize if your main thing is agility then you're able to bob and weave and run circles around the people or the systems that consciously are unconsciously trying to keep you down in a way where you might actually destroy those very systems if your main resource is time then you're able to understand this is a marathon not a sprint and that time bends towards justice as one wise man said and if your main thing is energy then people can look you in the eye and they understand that you will not stop until that battle is won our particular chemistry your particular chemistry your particular resource allows you to perform an alchemy a change from lead to gold in this world that is your secret and those proverbial headwinds will always bow towards the positive power of human nature your simple task is to figure out what your best nature is

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,401

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Humanities, Relationships, Work

Id: FFRTfHTgYG4

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020