Living Abundantly: Doug Smith at TEDxColumbus

chapter one I've come to our family vacation home the north end of Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York it's 2010 late November tourists have long since gone I've come alone for 10 days of Solitude to read to write and reflect I have a very understanding wife named Phyllis like most mornings I've hiked the mountain behind the house just before sunrise and as I now sit on a ledge overlooking the lake watching the Sun come up over the mountains on the eastern shore I am filled with an incredible sense of awe and gratitude for being here by here I suppose I mean this particular spot on this particular day but in a larger context I realize that gratitude is the overwhelming and predominant sensation in my life it seems like I stopped dozens of times a day every day no matter where I am to give thanks just for the simple privilege of being alive I haven't always felt that way for much of my life I realize I've been a selfish little nerd complaining moaning whining because the world will not adjust itself to my particular whims or desires or suppose it needs the Sun comes out from behind a cloud and shimmers on the water and I smile as I contemplate the strange irony of events some six years earlier that have led to this incredible sense of gratitude chapter two I'm sitting in a hematologist office the Mayo Clinic it's September 2004 I'm there as a result of some rather strange blood test results back in Columbus I've had two days of testing they can seem to find nothing wrong I'm getting ready to pack up and leave the doctor's office and just like in the movie the phone rings doctor picks up the phone jots down a few things writes down a few things and then turns to me ever so slowly and says I don't know how to tell you this but you have blood cancer you have a slow developing but incurable form of blood cancer that's when I ask the question the question that has to be on anybody's mind at that particular point in time but a question you really really do not want to know the answer to how long I hear him answer in generalities and then before I have the wisdom or the courage to withdraw the question I hear him say nobody knows for sure but based on the pathology reports I'd say five to ten years I leave his office it's seven o'clock in the evening the comfort of home in Columbus Ohio is a 14 hour drive away I decide to make the drive cell phones can be absolutely wonderful things my wife is not sleeping I'm driving so we talk I've been on this journey with her for 35 years tonight will be no exception first my thinking is really pretty primitive my wife lovingly tries to elevate my thinking around two or three o'clock in the morning I share a memory with her of when I was a boy five or six years old in my little bedroom in Scotia New York it's snowing outside it's dark it's winter my mom comes in to say our prayers now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take I asked mom what's this crap about dying of course I didn't say it that way I was five years old she tells me about it doesn't sound good neighbor's dog had died a few weeks earlier and that didn't make them any too happy my mom leaves the bedroom and I am consumed with fear now as I Drive through the night 53 years later I realize I have no better concept of idea to how to deal with my inevitable death than I did when I was 5 or 6 years old I arrived the next morning at 8 o'clock in the morning I walk into the front my wife Phyllis greets me at the door with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes and I realize I am NOT alone chapter three chapter three is called a blank calendar I'm CEO of an organization that I meet with the board several weeks after my diagnosis and I resign they asked me to stay on as chairman this could be the best piece of advice I share with you this afternoon if anybody ever ever ever asked you to be chairman take it from my experience you do absolutely nothing and yet it still sounds good at a cocktail party I take the job I now have a blank calendar not for a day not for a week but for months and months and months I think it's a blessing it's an incredible curse within weeks I'm deeply depressed I don't mean the kind of depression where you feel a little blue I can't eat I can't sleep I've gone from being CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation to the point where if the guy at the end of the grocery line asked me papers are plastic I have no idea how I'll answer it and the thought of it sends shivers down my spine with medical help I work my way out of the depression but as I come out of the depression I realize I am a person who needs a purpose escape is not the answer for me I need something to occupy my time and something toward which to devote my humble talents but toward what purpose chapter 4 chapter 4 is called 27 students 20 letters and a new purpose its January 2006 and I'm standing in front of 27 students at DePaul University I've just completed teaching a winter term course in happiness or what leads to really meaningful fulfilling joyful abundant living I have 27 students I have them four hours a day four days a week for four weeks they take one course during the month of January as the 27 students pile out of the room 20 of them hand me personal letters some of them three or four pages long ten of them go make an appointment of the president and go see the president and say every student at DePauw needs to take this course six months later I'm at Canyon Ranch in Tucson Arizona probably the granddaddy of health and well-being spots now I'm speaking not to college students I'm speaking to people in their 40s 50s and 60 70s very successful people I don't change a single story I don't change the single concept the result is equally positive now I'm driving at the airport I'm feeling really good if I was a peacock I'd have my feathers all spread out like this one of the things I've really come to realize is I seek approval and look to get my ego stroked far more than I really should I get to the airport I have great to first-class I deserve it I get on the airplane there's nobody sitting next to me they can probably see the feathers I spread out and just about the tenth time the plane takes off that's when I hear the voice duh what I guess you fooled them huh what do you mean I fooled them they loved it they loved it they liked it okay but you talked about 13 skills that lead to happiness well-being contentment serenity joy how many of them do you practice I leave me alone practise what you preach DUP did you ever hear that expression go away of course we all know it doesn't go away because we all know as George Burns said conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never never ends guilt is a gift that keeps on giving it Badgers me all the way back through Dallas where I changed planes all the way back to Columbus and when I arrived in Columbus I've created a little card that I have the 13 skills on like this and I decided I'm going to put that on my mirror and I'm gonna practice each day one of the skills or the things that I've talked about in terms of the skills that lead to happiness but more importantly I realize I have a new purpose in life and my purpose is to better number one better understand what leads to happiness what leads to joyful meaningful fulfilling abundant living what are the skills that enable that number two to practice those skills in my own life and number three to share my knowledge with as many people as I possibly can Chapter five what's Chapter five it'll come to me a blank calendar then chapter 5 is I've a new purpose and so chapter 5 oh I've lost my train of thought I'm sorry excuse me I will be back oh yeah what is happiness of course chapter 5 is what is happiness so what is happiness well it's not what you think we're not talking about something up here we're not talking about mood we're talking about something much more fundamental and foundational what we're talking about is an underlying and predominant sense of well-being and contempt it underlies somebody's life it's like ballast in the lot in life when I was a kid I had a punching bag I could punch it but knock over it it would always come back I think genuinely people happy people are that way they go through financial loss they bounce back broken relationship they bounce back loss of a job health issues they bounce back they keep coming back to a sense of underlying sense of well-being and contentment they understand the grief and sorrow and anger are stages in life they're not permanent places of residence and I think what enables genuinely happy people to have that kind of ballast in their life is they have a perspective about three things the first is how they remember the past they remember the past with serenity what's ever happened to in the past they've let it go they've learned from it and they've moved on the second thing they've got is they've got confidence about the future they don't know what the future holds but they feel as if I'll plan for it I'll prepare for it but whatever comes my way I'll figure it out I'll figure it out who comes along and if they can do those two things they can have confidence about the future and they can let go of the past and have serenity about the past then they can live in the present where so much joy is to be found but so many of us step out of the present and into the past with anger or remorse or we step into the future with fear and trepidation in sports as we witnessed in the Ryder Cup it's called choking in life it's called unhappiness so what I want to do in my closing minutes is I want to share with you chapter six and seven of my best-selling soon to be published even sooner to be finished book on happiness and those two chapters are going to deal with how we remember the skills about remembering the past and skills about anticipating the future with confidence so chapter six is getting past the past my wife fellows and I were married in Baltimore Maryland in June of 1969 we started a long drive from Baltimore Maryland to Minneapolis where I had my first job as assistant product manager on Bisquick baking mix at General Mills so we're driving in this distance and she when Phyllis gets in the car she likes to stop and she thinks I want to get there she's always wanted to see Niagara Falls we're gonna be traveling about 20 miles from Agra Falls I want to get there I just want to get there when I get in the car she falls asleep around Rochester I don't wake her up I don't want to disturb she wakes up she says where are we I said we're about halfway between Erie and Cleveland I'll save you the ensuing conversation we just get short of Cleveland I turn the car around and I Drive back to Niagara Falls get the night get wise choice I know we judge to Niagara Falls and there is no three o'clock afternoon nobody's at Niagara Falls the place is absolutely deserted I still Pike at the far end of the parking lot with a car facing out so I can make a quick getaway we walk down to Niagara Falls and what we see is a mud hole there is no water coming over the American side of Niagara Falls in June of 1969 they built a dike across closed off the water and diverted it all to the Canadian side so we're looking at a mud hole Phillips makes a perfectly logical suggestion let's drive over to the Canadian side and they see the Canadian side I said get in the car we're going to Minneapolis and we drove in silence from the Niagara mud hole to Minneapolis Minnesota now if you say the words Niagara Falls to my wife today 43 years later she smiles and in fact she could smile about two weeks after and both of us could laugh about what a jerk I was and I was a jerk we could both laugh about it and tell stories and tell our friends about it and I didn't realize it there oh do I wish I'd realized it but we were practicing the most important skill I'll share with you in terms of forgiveness today which is the skill of forgiveness and it is a skill it's two separate skills one is she was practicing the skill of forgiving somebody else which is about being able to release the desire for vengeance you can't have a better illustration that Frederic illustrated this morning with something forgiving somebody who'd cut off his hands you couldn't have a better illustration it's releasing the desire for vengeance to hurt somebody else I was practicing a separate skill my skill had to do a self esteem which is I'm worthy of being able to make a mistake I'm worthy of learning from and worthy of being able to move on two very separate skills there's only the reason that forgiveness works is it gets crap out of your life it gets all the hurts and the junk out of your life there's only four things you can do a junk from your past one is you can hold on to it which is what most of us do we hold on to it to either beat ourselves up unnecessarily or to get back at somebody else the second thing you can do is you can forget about it great if it happens Phyllis and I are not going to forget about Niagara Falls the third thing you can do is you can repress it it always comes back in unsavory ways and the fourth thing you can do is you can forgive it's a magic elixir in terms of happiness it lets you get stuff out of your life that you don't want to carry around with you if I had said 43 years later if you ask Phyllis if you say the words Niagara Falls she turns red in the face you would not have been surprised and think of what that would do to our relationships to our health to our family if you carry that kind of anger around over a simple thing like that for 43 years finally I want to share with you chapter 7 chapter 7 is finding confidence in the future I think there's it's that people that are genuinely happy look at the future with excitement and confidence and they do that in part because they got four skills that I call fofo faith optimism flexibility and openness fofo let me explain we we discovered that Phyllis was pregnant in late 1970 and despite the fact that she did everything that you could do to have a perfectly normal child in the very early mornings of Saturday July 10th 1971 our oldest son Gordon was born through an emergency cesarean as a result of a doctor's misdiagnosed misdiagnosis of placenta separator Gordon wasn't ready to be born boy his lungs weren't fully developed and as he struggled to breathe and live during those first first hours it left him mentally challenged now for years and years I agonized about my son Gordon's future really probably more about my own future than his but I back will he be able to go will he be able to go to school will you be able to walk will he be able to talk when will he be able to walk and talk will it be able to go to normal school will you be able to hold down a job will you'll be able to live independently I about every aspect of Gordon's Gordon's future and some time around when he was in his early teenage years I Scranton garden very differently I began to look at Gordon and realize he was a beautiful son just the way he was what he lacked in IQ he more than made up in EQ we've moved around a lot this country every place we've moved he's the one they missed the most he was a wonderful son and I started to realize it and what I needed when I faced Gordon's future was I needed fofo faith optimism flexibility and openness faith I needed faith that fill us an eye with Gordon's help and God's help would figure it out that we would be able to meet whatever the future brought our way I've come to believe it's an incredibly incredibly benevolent universe it will always always always bring you what you need not necessarily what you want it will bring you what you need you do your part it will do its part the second thing I needed was optimism we have the capacity to think both pessimistically and optimistically optimism and Happiness correlate almost exactly one-to-one I needed to spend positive stories about Gordy's future not negative stories about Gordon's future Eisenhower had it right when he said I never met a pessimistic general who ever won a battle I needed to think with optimism and the third and the fourth thing I needed was flexibility and openness here's how most of us look at the future I'm here I want to go there here's the pathway forward we see a pathway one pathway forward the truth is there's a million pathways that will take me from here to there and as we step into the future we need to realize the universe is going to take us in all kinds of different directions and as opposed to agonizing the fact that we offer our original plan we need to figure out where we are I get back on it and just and move forward again to where we want to go and the other thing we need is openness because Frank quite frankly sometimes we may never get to where we originally envisioned we may end up over there or there or there and that may be just fine we need openness to accept where we are Helen Keller said it well she said when one door to happiest closes another opens but we are so fixated on the closed door we fail to see the open door if I was still fixated on the original vision I had for my son Gordon I would miss so much joy that he offers to me to my wife Phyllis and my other son Gregg this is my oldest son a Gordon 41 years old he's a he lives with us and I think he looks a little bit like me and he's a bagger at that quote some of you may recognize him and I think by the way corporations could learn a lot from Kroger in terms of how it utilized the hint benefit the skills of the handicapped for the benefits of its owners its employees and for its customers faith optimism flexibility and openness I want to end of this I think it's hard to be happy I think it's really hard to live joyfully particularly when the world starts to move against you and things seem to be seeing not turning out the way you wanted it's easy to be miserable the reason it's hard to be happy is I think it's a skill in fact it's a set of skills and like any set of skills we can get better at the skills of happiness so what leads to abundant joyful life a life through practice through focus and through attention and I believe ideas about how to better practice the skills of happiness or ideas worth spreading and that's why I stand before you this afternoon thank you for your attention

Channel: TEDx Talks

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Id: 4T2G_CwlNSU

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 15 2012