How to connect authentically to anyone | Simone Heng | TEDxYouth@Singapore

I am obsessed with superheroes not the Marvel movie comic kind but everyday human connection superheroes now in the analog days it was really easy to come into contact with these people this was like the lady at the DVD store who if you told her you were really really sick and you couldn't return your DVDs on time she'd waive your fine or when you were a little kid and you went to the food court or the hawker Center and you were one dollar short for your lunch the old uncle who would waive that for you give you a dollar off because he saw you use your money to buy sweets from the store next door we do so much of our lives online now that we interface less and less with these everyday human connection superheros and it's a real shame because we also get to learn from them less as well but if you are really obsessed like me and really really lucky one monsoonal rainy Friday evening 6 p.m. peak hour in the central business district you may bump into one now we all know what the CBD is like 6 p.m. on a Friday even worse when it rains it is the second coming of Armageddon and you just can't get a cab in there because taxi drivers don't want to go in and get stuck in the gridlock so if you are lucky enough to get a cab like me to take you into your live radio show which you cannot be late for you better be waiting where you told the cabbie you would be now I happen to come out of a meeting and be in a place where if I wasn't waiting right at that point the taxi driver couldn't wait we've all been in that position right but because I was distracted by the very apps and devices born to connect us but our disconnecting us my mobile phone I missed the pickup the taxi driver had to go all the way around the entire block to come and get me and while he's doing this loop I'm stressed out I'm sick I've got a going for live radio I'm thinking you are gonna get scolded by your taxi driver who has been scolded by their taxi driver before oh it is such a special Singaporean experience so the driver comes around and I get in and as if I had committed murder I'm like uncle I am so sorry silence and then uncle Arthur as I now know to be his name says go it's okay we must be compassionate during peak hour we must be safe on the roads when it is wet and I knew in that moment that I was in the presence of a human connection superhero over the next 20 minutes uncle and Arthur and I bonded over everything we loved his most interesting customers compassion empathy human connection and by the time the taxi rocked up at the radio studio this happened do you guys - uncle Arthur hi Arthur hi uncle Arthur is legitimately the most polite the most positive the most spiritual taxi driver in all of Singapore you should be made the ambassador of the kindness campaign he should you should be the new courtesy lion are you gonna cry detect it's gonna cry thank you for being joyful during peak hour yeah I'm going to give you a shout-out down here and if any of you are lucky enough to get uncle Arthur you're truly blessed don't - tell anything to the world love and forgive amazing [Applause] now uncle Arthur is amazing we now follow each other on Instagram he puts a lot of videos from his church up there every Sunday he is awesome but seriously how did we go from being a complete strangers to crying out of joy with each other 20 minutes later what human connection superpowers did uncle Arthur use on me that made us bond like that and so they're a couple things happening here firstly uncle Arthur waited and observed me he listened before he spoke so he would have heard that I don't have the quintessential Singaporean accent and so he neutralized his own accent so I could understand him better and I subconsciously when I'm with my Singaporean family and friends augment my accent to be better understood we were both trying to neutralize to expedite connection to pull us closer like magnets but it wasn't just how we were talking to each other it was what we chose to talk about now it's pretty clear there are Australian parts of me but I did not choose to talk to uncle Arthur about the latest Australian reality show on TV he would have known that it would have made him completely excluded it would have disconnected that magnetism we were trying to build so instead I chose to speak to uncle after about courtesy lion the mascot of kindness campaign or a service campaign that was started in the early 80s here in Singapore to improve service standards and probably designed to create the exact scenario that happened with me and uncle Arthur so they did well so this is what I want you to remember if you're trying to connect with someone very quickly commonality connects with your accent with the subject matter commonality connects so how did my obsession with superheroes start okay two years ago in my former life as a radio DJ I had to do a contest giveaway on em giving away tickets to see a superhero movie I think it was wonder won and I asked listeners - what's up voicenote into the station if they could have any superhero power in the world what would it be and why and I got all of the answers that you would predict but one guy wanted to be invisible so he could spy on people I wonder what do you do with that another woman wanted to vow to read people's mind so she always knew what would be what people would be thinking of her but it was this last voice note that I got that completely stopped me in my tracks changed the course of my life and it's not just what this young Singaporean girl Maish wen is saying I want you to listen to how she's saying it the complete first the yearning in a voice hi I'm Misha and one superpower that I'd like to have is to be able to really to people it's not an extraordinary I just feel like in modern day everyone just kind of coke to one another I really just want to be able to connect another person you know yeah you can hear that self-consciousness in her voice right a little bit of sprinkling of shame as well and it just plagued me I couldn't stop thinking about I thought what are we doing that's making us feel so disconnected and I did some research and I realized you know this planet is living in a human connection crisis and then I went further I started finding Simone how can you do human connection better and then I thought who can I study who can teach us all the good things we need to know about human connection and today I can share with you just a sliver but I hope that that sliver is enough that we can all start to earn our superhero capes so before this two year research project began I was like most people I was very good at connecting organically and authentically with people I naturally got along with it was easy but when it came to people that maybe I felt their viewpoint was so disparate than from mine I couldn't really see the commonality to connect with it seems like really hard work who's felt like that sometimes it's just hard work human connection I had a boss at the time that for the life of me I couldn't connect with those that thought of having to start a connection was like biting and tried to eat a hard stone and then something happened in my personal life to completely flip my mindset on this we see what if the person that you're supposed to have the best connection with in the whole world the person who's supposed to know you best the person that gave birth to you can't connect with you my mother has a rare degenerative disease it's literally causing parts of tissue in her brain to break off so there are holes in her memory three years ago she forgot the days of the week and the times of the day two years ago she forgot that my father died of cancer in 2004 and they say eventually she could forget who I am and so when I got this news a year ago I did what any logical person in the media industry would do I started paparazzi my mother and I did this because back in 2004 when my father passed away of cancer we didn't have smartphones so I don't have video of him anybody in this room who's experienced profound human loss will understand that photos only give us so much after years go by soon we forget mannerisms we forget tone of voice I forgotten my dad's smile and I was not allowing that to happen to me a second time so here's a video that I made with my mum last year trade gotten that news in the nursing home and I want you to watch for that moment when disconnection becomes connection [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you saw that moment right you saw that moment in that moment I went from this random crazy girl dancing with her to her remembering everything about taking me or forcing me to go to Chinese school on Saturdays teaching me how to sew giving birth to me in that moment mummy hang was back so what is this an analogy for and how we do human connection in our own lives with people that we don't organically easily connect with well if there is a connection whether it be was a colleague or family member that you need to make and you know that it's gonna completely change the quality of your life and theirs I want you to stand there and I want you to go all out even if your heart is breaking because when you persist it's hard to resist so by now you realize my mom is a really big part of my life she's the og of human connection I realized by being her daughter I haven't been studying this for two years and researching this for two years I've been observing human connection for my entire life and this is how I know that my mother is the original human connection superhero in 2015 when I first moved that to Singapore and I became this sort of public figure of sorts my social media and my emails were inundated by messages from my mother's former students at RTS and my mum taught there 40 years ago so her students are now CFO's ministers community leaders they are busy women but upon me replying back to them and giving my mum's details these women took annual leave from their high-powered jobs and flew 4,000 kilometres to sit next to my mother in that nursing home I mean I don't know about you I barely remember my secondary school teachers names deadlines when I take my holiday go and do that so what human connection superpowers did my mother employ to make these girls feel so bonded to her all these decades later and I got the answer to this in a speech that I had to prepare for International Women's Day and I wanted to feature powerful Singaporean women so I rang my mum and she's sitting there in her wheelchair and she's clutching the phone with the remaining good hand that she has and I said mama um what was the name of your student who was who's now the CFO of DBS Bank and my mother paused and she said Simona I'm just I'm so proud of them and I was like mommy I'm glad you're proud but I need names for this speech so what about the woman who was an engineer on the MIT the mass rapid transit system here in Singapore and mommy hang again this time paused for a little bit longer and she said Simone I'm just so proud of them and I'm getting sassy because we get sassy at our parents so I was like I'm glad you're proud lady but I need names for the speech what about the lady who is a member of Mensa and a surgeon and this time my mother paused for an inordinate amount of time until I realized that she was ashamed because she could not remember their names she said Simone I am just so proud of them and that's when I realized that this story has two massive takeaways about authentic human connection firstly and if you're a young Singaporean kid watching this I really won't you listen to me firstly the details of your achievements what school you went to what job title you had how much money you earned when it comes to human connection that stuff is irrelevant what matters is how you made people feel my mother's pride for those girls set her on fire that pride trickled down through her it inspired her and that inspiration is what raised me in fact growing up I was regarded with so many stories about these students I actually thought they were the ghosts of daughters she gave birth to before I was born the second major takeaway about human connection from this story is once you've done the things that I've mentioned the commonality that connects when you persist it's hard to resist and a lot of the other things that I've found in the research is what you have is a beautiful authentic human relationship and here's how you spot an authentic human relationship okay it's reciprocal it's a two-way street just the same way my mother found teaching those girls an unforgettable experience and she was forever changed by it those girls were forever changed by the experience of being taught by her so much so that it would compel them to fly 4000 kilometers to that nursing home decades later so you see the more about human connection I research the more I completely empathize with matrons yearning in that voice note because see your human connections are actually what defines your happiness right now from your interactions with your husband or your wife all the way to perfect strangers you meet through the day like uncle Arthur your human connections also define how you'll be remembered on this planet they're your legacy just like my mum with her students so when you think about it your human connections define your life so why don't we all aim to do it better thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 9,426

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Communication, Life Hack, Social Change, Social Interaction, Society

Id: Sp1hlVvW8sw

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019