Make a more purposeful life with design thinking | Carolyn Buck Luce | TEDxKC

[Music] [Applause] [Music] sea foam over dawn that was the name of the dress that was the center of my games of make-believe when i was a child it was my mother's wedding dress a profusion of seafoam-colored tulle netting over an eggshell pink satin sheath when i put it on i entered the magical space of power and possibility do you remember playing make believe that power to become whatever you dream to make it happen for even a moment is to believe in that moment that the story could go on forever but something happens along the way we start by dreaming big but end up playing progressively smaller we end up living a life by default instead of a life by design living a life by design means choosing the story we tell about ourselves because the truth is stories have the power to limit or liberate to keep us stuck or propel us forward i work with women to embrace their most powerful story which means subverting the persistent good girl narrative in a steam shaping tale in which we end up believing were either not enough or too much where our ambition to lead collides with the guardians of the status quo irrespective of gender identity we all have archetypes and social constructs to contend with but these are just stories choices we make about what reality we live in let me tell you two stories to illustrate this point a societal story the story of us and a personal one the story of me first the story of us 1974 america was in the deep freeze of the cold war and the u.s and the soviet union bristling with nuclear weapons pointed at each other it was increasingly untenable and both sides wanted a way out of the impasse one way they tried was a cultural exchange program led by a citizen army of whom i was one for a time right after graduating college as a russian scholar i was chosen along with 19 other americans to live behind the iron curtain and connect directly to the soviets as a guide to life in america we had a sprawling exhibition that was in the form of a life-size american home ten thousand soviets came through every day entranced yet deeply skeptical of what they were seeing and hearing steeped in state propaganda about america they assumed that what we were showing them was fake i had two assigned positions the modern living room all white vinyl and chrome furnishings and another very exciting station heating air conditioning and ventilation about 200 people at a time would gather around each station six deep until the pressure of the surging crowd would push them to the next attraction i could always feel their hostility jaws set arms crossed lips pressed thin you see i knew they couldn't ask me though what they really wanted to know we had kgb agents that we knew were sprinkled through the crowd to monitor and control the curious my goal was to dismantle their belief in an evil enemy threatening war and enslaving people under the boot of capitalism i wanted to help them believe in america the beautiful as you can imagine we had lots of shiny objects to impress our visitors consumer goods and creature comforts that the average soviet could only dream of my head was stuffed with facts and figures i was a walking combination of a sears catalog and a state department briefing but facts don't change minds stories do so i told mine 50 times a day and i would start with why i decided to learn russian i began simply by saying i bet you're wondering how it is that i speak your language heads would not russia is my homeland my ancestors were born here but they didn't speak russian only yiddish you see i'm a jew but only i know that it's not even written on my passport in america freedom of religion is guaranteed in our constitution and i have the right to choose where i want to live travel study and work i would let that settle in for a second and then i would continue my hero is my russian great grandmother who wanted her children to have these rights so she told her son my grandfather when he was only nine walk to the sea find a boat travel to america because of her vision and his courage i grew up american but i wanted to know where i came from so i studied russian and followed my dreams which brought me here free to speak my mind in under two minutes i was able to tell the universal story of faith and freedom and like that we were one people heart to heart in other words my story went up against the larger institutional myth and like david taking down goliath it connected in some way that was more powerful than all the anti-american propaganda this experience taught me that to transcend old conflicts we need new stories so the story of me now let's go back a little further to what laid the foundation for my representing our country to a foreign power 1960 i was eight when john f kennedy was elected the cold war had my elementary school preparing for atomic bomb attacks having us hide under our desks in what they called duck and cover drills but i had heard another kind of call in jfk's inaugural speech ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country and what was jfk doing for us founding the peace corps throwing down the gauntlet for the dream of a moon shot by the end of the decade he didn't seem like a duck and cover guy he was a discover guy a design the future visionary that's how i saw him anyway and i was like reporting for duty sir at the same age eight i was molested by a man on my first airplane trip ever flying solo to visit my grandparents in new york city that entire trip i was rooted to my seat afraid to cry out afraid to ask for help i remember feeling so confused because it felt both good and so very wrong that confusion turned into shame and that shame had me disassociating from my body for years as i kept that secret buried deep inside me i never told anyone including my parents until my 60s when i was able to finally say something and confess this to my husband at eight i couldn't have grasped all the implications of these two conflicting narratives but i did have a decision to make which story was going to be my story does the past determine my future and i'm am i the victim or the heroine you see i knew what heroes were my great-grandmother envisioning a new life for her nine-year-old son who she might never see again my mother one of only two women in her law school class in the 1940s at the university of chicago and of course jfk imagining a different future for the country he loved and that's when i started playing a game of my own invention the decade game i didn't call it that at the time but it was when i started living my life by design instead of default and i chose as my design partner my future self instead of that conflicted confused little girl you see design thinking is about listening for what's longing to happen letting go of perceived outcomes and hurdles and creating conditions or scaffolding for possibilities to emerge so what emerges for you the story of next going back to the game of make believe in the decade game we combine epic storytelling with game design it's like a jigsaw puzzle you buy the puzzle because you fall in love with a picture on the cover and you empty all the pieces out on the table and if you're like me within the first 30 minutes you're convinced that we must be missing a few pieces but they're all there the fun is in figuring out how they fit together this is the essence of the decade game and here's the secret sauce there are 87 hundred hours in a decade eighty seven thousand six hundred it turns out that's all the time in the world you need to design the best decade of your life so far filled with stories of your own choosing and even if you sleep eight hours a night which i do you're left with over fifty thousand hours all yours to pour into new levels of mastery at work at home and in the world all the same time in the decade game you designed a game board that becomes a framework to make the best choices over time you start by designing your avatar which in design thinking parlance is your future persona it's a game piece an iconic super action hero who will help guide your moves through a series of exercises that allow you to prototype iterate move by next transformative move the most epic life of your dreams when given permission to make believe and tell an epic story about yourself magic happens in my own experience over six decades the decade game is the single most potent way i've found to unleash the full power and purpose of an individual life and if it seems dubious to you that imaginative play can create deep sustaining transformation all i can tell you is i've seen confidence restored careers launch relationships blossom new businesses open and adventure spark like you would not believe but believing is where it starts and epic is where it leads epic is a choice i'm not talking about the hierarchical construct of epic the greater than larger than richer than master of the universe kind of epic no i'm using this in a relational construct of getting closer to the core of what's essential not climbing to the top but discovering the vital center the word epic actually means a long-form story of daring do daring to do an epic life is an off-road journey it brings you to a place you've never find otherwise to an authentic powerfully generative you you can't get there from here but you can get here from there designing from that future state connecting back to where you are now we are experiencing crises in the world on so many fronts both in the story of us and the story of me a crisis arises when the longing for a news story is threatening the old that's how the coral war ended it's how all wars and crises end news stories built on the bones of old hospicing the old midwifing the new it's always high stakes never simple always fraught as jfk famously said we choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard emphasis on we choose so you choose if you're anxious restless uninspired or you're just not having fun most likely you're playing someone else's game i want to leave you with this we were born with the knowing of an epic life within us and when you let go for dear life of the old story the power of the new one comes flying back to you on the wings of a future that always has had your name on it thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 3,646

Keywords: Empowerment, English, Happiness, Life, Life Development, Personal growth, Purpose, Studio Talk, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:50426]

Id: CDWHUEA-WRA

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 22 2022