Off the grid: how I got off the grid & you can too | Lee Ponsky | TEDxCLE

stand on some of our major high so how many of you feel you're pretty busy in your life does anyone not feel they're busy I mean as a society right we're pretty busy people we have jobs we have school we have activities Sports ballet volunteering friends and family we're pretty in meshed in our society I know I am I mean it's gotten so bad that when my mom wants to go to lunch with me she calls my secretary to schedule it that's not good so you can imagine that people were relatively shocked when I announced that I was going to be taking 2013 and taking my family and going to Sydney Australia for a year this was highly unusual it's not something that I do the most common question that we are asked about this is why did you do this how the hell did you do this and when we came back it was so what was it like well it's interesting you know sabatical and time off are becoming more and more common in the United States up to 24% of employers offer some sort of sabatical it's pretty interesting I didn't know that but when you look at why people do sabatical there's all types of different reasons lots of different reasons people have to take time off and they're all good but when we focus on why I took a year off I need to get a little philosophical on you little philosophical perspective I need to talk to you about my father who I admire very much you see my father always ingrained in us growing up that it's important to set your sights on a goal set a vision work hard and make sure you're focused on point B and work hard to achieve point B there's no substitute for hard work so in 2012 I was 41 years old and I would taken his advice I went to school I worked my ass off I was doing what I needed to do I had a good job I had a good family I had what I thought a good life work balance I had it figured out but as many of you know life sometimes throws us a curveball now some of you may be wondering well what was your curveball the truth is I was was lucky I didn't have a curveball but during my day job I'm a cancer surgeon and these people do have curveballs and I look people in the eye every day who are facing curveballs I hear questions from them how long do I have will I suffer I hear a lot about regret I regret things I didn't do I regret there are things that I should have done you see I can help them with their cancer I can use the latest Innovations the greatest Technologies available and usually we win I can offer them hope because hope is important but one thing I don't have any technology for is their regret people fear cancer and I get it people fear cancer I've come to fear regret things that I hear from my patients every day I wish I would have it sucks getting old yesterday and I'm kid you not yesterday I'm add living a little bit but yesterday patient said to me as I was leaving the office boy it sucks getting old I used to run I was eat healthy I've done everything right but my knees hurt my back hurts I can't do what I used to do I'm listening they tell me if I could do it all over again I would do things differently so here's the deal I believe that not everyone needs to wait for their curveball I believe that not everybody needs to touch the stove to know it's hot you see I think there's two types of people one type of person's like my brother Todd now Todd's a brilliant pediatric surgeon but growing up Todd despite many War mornings was the kid who needed to touch the stove to know it's hot and that may be okay maybe it's actually a good thing who am I to judge but I was a kid in the corner who would watch my little brother Todd touch the stove and deduce from his reaction that in fact the stove was hot now folks I call that free advice you see it's these perspectives on life that explain why why do I take my family and take a year and go to Sydney Australia you see I'm listening to the free advice of my patients I'm listening to the free advice of the people around us who've had life experiences I'm hearing what they're telling me I'm hearing what they're telling us what they're saying is don't wait only to live life when you retire do things differently now don't wait for your curveball don't live with regret so how about how hopefully I've convinced you for me why but how about how well for that I totally blame my wife you see my wife Monica has been working on me for years to take a twoe vacation twoe vacation now let me tell you I don't take two we vacations I'm busy people count on me I got a job I can't take a two we vacation but at some point in a point of weakness I somehow agreed to take a twoe vacation and here's the trouble it was fantastic she was absolutely right don't tell her I said that I don't like to admit that out loud too often but she was right I relaxed I didn't feel like I was in a hurry to relax I had a great time with my kids and the family we I actually Unwound I didn't check my email much but I really felt rejuvenated and when I went back to work I was ready I really felt like I had had vacation it was a big difference and I also found out that when I got back to work they did fine without me so the next year the next year we I was convinced I was all in we were ready to plan our next year's vac vac and we were sitting around talking as a family what should we do there was so many opportunities what can we do together and I jokingly said jokingly said there's so much to do we need a year to do it all my teenage children quickly called my bluff and said that would be awesome we should do it let's go that would be so great they were excited I quickly retreated and said guys I agree that would be so cool but let me explain I got responsibilities I have a job I got to like pay for the shoes on your feet I can't do that that's the things that other people do it's not in the cards for me it's not in the cards for us and my son Eric who was 13 at the time asked a very impactful question why not and I began at first to just respond respond with the same well I work and I can't do it but I stopped and I began to ponder his question and I began to consider the track of life that I was on at that point in time head down working like hell to get from point A to point B I began to consider my patients free advice I also began to consider my father-in-law you see my father-in-law was a wonderful man smart man special I loved him to death and in 1998 he was diagnosed with cancer and he told was told he had 3 months to live we got 13 years out of him due to his persistence but even before he was diagnosed he had a theory on life and it was very complimentary to my father's because he agreed that we should set goals he agreed that we should set a vision and work towards that goal the difference is he thought we should keep our head up he thought we should take detours because he believed that the journey from point A to point B was just as important as reaching point B this is how he lived his life this is what he taught others and this is what he taught me so in thinking about this and thinking about Eric's question why not I realized I don't want to wait for my curveball I don't need to touch the stove to know it's hot I don't want to wait for bad news to decide what's important to me I was going to listen to the free advice I had been given no regrets so I began in my brain because I couldn't tell anyone that I was thinking these crazy thoughts but I began in my brain thinking about instead of why I can't do it I made myself think about how can I make this happen and how would it impact my children their school their friends our family my work my community obligations it seemed way overwhelming the worst was how was I going to break the news of my 95-year-old grandmother it seemed like one of those knots that you can't untie it just seemed like it wasn't doable but then I remembered one of my father's words of wisdom phisms we call it and when I was in medical school and I would be presented with huge amount of material that I had memorized that seemed insurmountable I'd say Dad I can't do this how do people do this he said Lee just imagine you were given an elephant and they told you you have to eat the elephant how would you start eating it one bite at a time so that's what we did one bite at a time we started approaching this thing that seemed impossible this isn't me so we started with money we hadn't planned to take a year off so we didn't put money away for this so how can we do this so we met with our first financial planner and we said look what do you think of this idea we want to take your off can we do this and he said it was a really bad idea so we found another financial planner and we said this is something we really want to do can you work with us to just give us an idea of what it would take if we were able to if we could do this and so we figured out we went through our expenses and we sat down and we figured out well I could sell my cars we could rent our house I could lose a little bit from my savings and if I got a job in Australia and you made this amount of money you could do it but we couldn't be Financial responsible because I've got a family I have to provide for them I'm not willing to be financially responsible so he said if you do this you could do it without being financially irresponsible that was important to us and that was huge that was an important First Step because that gave us a Target whether we could do it or not at that point we didn't know but at least we had a Target to work towards what about my job I had a good job I like my job I didn't want to lose my job so I called HR I didn't even know what HR did but I called HR and I said I heard about these things called sabatical how do I sign up and I said no we don't have sabatical and I was like block but they said but I was hanging up we do have leave of leaves of absence and you can do it for 12 months Bingo but I was worried because again I didn't want to be irresponsible again I have to provide for my family so what if my job wasn't there for me when I came back even though they said it would what if it wasn't so I created two backup plans I had a lot of conversations with different people and I created two backup jobs just in case what about my career I'm an academic phys position meaning I write papers I do research is this going to hurt my career is this career suicide so I talked to two mentors and I said what do you think and they said go for it it won't hurt your career I wish I would have done it myself so after many phone calls and emails and you can imagine how many conversations I was able to find a job in Australia that would provide me that level that I needed to hit to make it work what about my kid school again not willing to compromise not negotiable won't compromise their education talk to their teachers talk to their counselors talk to their College counselors what do you think absolutely won't hurt them it'll be good for them so again after many phone calls and emails and conversations we found a school we could enroll them in things looked like they were working out it wasn't hard it was just a lot of work and I think that's what prevents people from doing it is it's just a lot of work but I still wasn't ready because something was holding me back and I needed some to push me over the Eds and sometimes when you want some advice you look for the advice you want to hear so I went to a TED Talk actually by Stephan segme called The Power of time off and he gave a really great idea he said you know most people in their careers they train for about 25 years they study they train they develop skills and then they work for about 40 years while they're planning and thinking about and dreaming about their next subsequent 15 plus years for retirement this model seems to be broken because who knows what kind of condition we're going to be in when we reach our retirement are we going to be healthy are we going to be here where will our families be what kind of appetite will we have for adventure didn't seem right so he said what if we just borrow some years from our retirement and disperse them throughout our working years brilliant I loved it made sense it was rational I was in I was sold we were going to make it a go so we off middle of January we took off in the airport in here in Cleveland our only plans were as I had a job my kids had a school and we had a hotel reservation for two weeks the rest we were going to figure out there that was our plan so upon our arrival in Sydney we get there early in the morning we dropped off our bags in the hotel and we had things to do we had to open a bank account we had to find a car we had to find an apartment we had to figure out where the kid' school was where my hospital that I was going to be working at was we had to figure out these things and we had to do them together we assembled our furniture together the kids adjusted to uniforms to their new schools we explored as a family together and what we showed the kids is that you can take your life and go somewhere else and be okay you can establish yourself in a community and get a job and find friends and get do get involved in sports and art projects and our classes and it's okay and you can establish a life we talked about there was going to be good days and there was going to be bad days and we needed to talk about that together we took advantage of our time there we visited amazing places throughout Australia and the region like the Great Barrier Reef we went to Southeast Asia and we tried interesting Foods we had a lot of new experiences we laughed a lot together we learned a lot together we met people from Worlds Apart but yet weren't so different from us we offered food to the monks we learned a lot about Buddhism we learned how to use chopsticks the right way we visited a lot of Buddhist temples and saw a lot of Buddhas we had unique experiences that will be with us for a lifetime we met Fascinating People the kids learned to Surf I learned to drive on the opposite side of the road we witnessed some of the most spectacular views in the world we made lifelong friends and we brought back some great souvenirs and of course we couldn't leave Australia without learning how to throw the boomerang one of the most unexpected outcomes of this year was my job when I signed up for it it was just an opportunity to justify where I was going but in fact my job changed my life because there I was doing Innovative research on M Imaging of the prostate which I never would have had the opportunity to do and it has changed the way I practice medicine at home it's changed my academic career my research it's the way I change the way I manage my patients it's amazing I came back rejuvenated excited about what I'm doing now I never would have had this opportunity totally unexpected one of my good friends in Australia said to me one day you know in America y'all live to work in Australia we work to live something to think about so after a year just like a boomerang we'd return back home to the same house the same job in the same school to be perfectly honest not much changes here but we were changed forever you know we could have bought a fancy car or vacation home or something like that which we would never remember new iPhone we wouldn't have remembered that in 20 30 years but my kids will remember this for a lifetime so for those of you are sitting here even trying to comprehend the thought of getting off the grid here are my thoughts don't ignore free advice find opportunity ities they will not find you be flexible be open be responsible be humble plan as best you can but plan for the unexpected and always keep in mind what your priorities are look I never want to look a doctor in the eye and say I wish I would have done things differently I never want to feel stuck I never want to take for granted that life is short I never want to have regret many people say to me since we've been back what a great opportunity you had I wish I would have such an opportunity some of you may be thinking that now guess what you do you have a year to live words that none of us ever want to hear but if I do I know that I've experienced the year I would want to live have you thank you very [Music] much history of Cleveland [Music] ohand

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 22,318

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Adventure, Cancer, Choice, Personal growth

Id: 0-esYRaFe_s

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2015