What should I do with my life? | Charlie Parker | TEDxHeriotWattUniversity

I want to ask you a question that question is what do you want to be how many times have you been asked that question what do you want to be i was asked at plenty of times when I was growing up I mean if you ask me when I was four years old my answer would have been I'm going to be a pirate can you remember what you wanted to be when you were four years old I appreciate that was a long time ago and you probably can't so I did a little research this is my sister she teaches a class of three to four year olds the primary school in London she asked them for me the same question what do you want to be she wrote down their answers and then she gave them to me those answers were first one I'm going to be a princess when I grow up I think we've all heard that one before someone said yes second one was a I'm going to be the teeth fairy I mean I don't know if that's more or less realistic than the first one to be honest third one Iron Man going to take a stab in the dark that was inspired by movies that you watched fourth one I'm going to be on The X Factor didn't have that when I was a kid and the last but certainly not the least I'm going to kill all the baddies by chopping them up I was a little bit worried when I heard that last one watch him he's trouble now I know you're probably thinking why did you choose children this question their answers pretty unrealistic right I mean some of them are outright fairytales I mean how many people do you know who have been on the x-factor exactly see what didn't interest me was the answers themselves it was how the children decided to answer the question itself see I spotted a pattern as soon as I write these down you could probably see it because I've actually highlighted it for you to see it each and every one of these kids well almost all of these kids answered with the words I'm going to be they didn't say I want to be they didn't say maybe they answered with absolute conviction that kid is going to be Iron Man there's no doubt about it now I'm willing to bet metaphorically not physically because I don't have the money to pay all you back if I lose I'm willing to bet that when I opened this talk with the question what you want to be you answered inside your mind with the words I want to be in fact let's be more specific some of you didn't answer with words I want to be some of you answered with the words I don't know don't know it's a very common answer so what's this say about you does it say you don't know what you want in life maybe maybe it says you're just not sure that the thing you want to be is realistic enough realistic enough to just say I'm going to be that thing maybe you're just superstitious you think if you said I'm going to be a movie star you jinx that any chance of you doing it all together so let's see what happened when I asked this question to adults instead of children to do this I used a website called ready a lot of you may know it it's similar to social media pages like Facebook and Twitter you can do all the same things differences you can post anonymously and that was the important part of my research that they could post anonymously see I believe if someone can post anonymously they're not worrying about other people's opinions of the thing they're about to say that means they can be honest so in theory and if you're anonymous you can be honest so there's the question gave it a little bit more context and they gave the children because it is the Internet and you know what the Internet is like so the first answer I received first serious answer I received was I want to be a small farmer use horses instead of machines trade produce with the neighbors tend to the bees power my house with solar energy you know slowly and quietly make the world a better place unfortunately I'll be next to impossible to start what with just realised agriculture and that butter dreams a dream right second one an animator I've been in love with cartoons my entire life clearly probably is a sucker dot I don't know if that's Ronnie Corbett or Michael Caine I'm trying there but I'm going to awkwardly keep doing it third one I want to affect the world in a positive way on a large scale how I get there is not important to me sorry what deleted that because the Diddley buyouts are was specific relevant enough see the adults answers had a pattern similar to those of the children not the same pattern but pattern nonetheless see if you take out the context of each the answers like I did with the children's you start to notice they actually all gave me the same answer they all started differently they're all worded differently but they all came to the same conclusion so what I did is I paraphrased each answer so you can see the pattern I saw the first answer again I want to be a small farmer but I can't second one I want to be an animator but I can't third one I want to affect the world in a positive way but I shouldn't have said that now you see each and every one of these people convinced me that they can't be what they want to be I'm a complete stranger to these guys and they were anonymous yet they still decided to be pessimistic with their answers now what does that say about them so say what they want to be isn't realistic perhaps but what confused me was wait a second the four-year-old said he was going to be Ironman but this guy the first guy said he wanted to be a farmer and then later said it was a dream he said it was impossible a farmer it's not impossible to be a farmer there's loads of them in the world so what point did four-year-old Ironman become maybe a farmer I think it's to do with a thing called social conditioning that's what social conditioning is it's a is the environment you're raised in and how it affects your decisions at life so it's heavily influenced by things like the people who raised you people you're raised with it's also heavily influenced by your own experiences I mean we all know the phrase you learn from your mistakes right the idea is that you made a mistake once well you did a thing once which you now labeled a mistake because you didn't enjoy the out the outcome of that thing so in the future you're not going to do that thing again because you now consider it a mistake that's a very small example of what social conditioning is you've decided not to do this thing again because of an experience and I have a theory my theory is is as a child gets older and with age in ratio to their age their expectations drop so as you get older your expectations drop now this I say theoretically but I also say as a victim of this cycle I've been through this cycle hundreds of times growing up in fact I had so many dreams of grandeur I threw them away just as quickly this is me at the age of 13 I know what you're thinking this guy is a pioneer of fashion yes my hair is red and blue at the same time that'll trend in two years time you're welcome at this age I ditch the pirate dream by now and I decided I'm going to be a violinist at the violin at the teacher I had the lessons I was set to go in fact it was better than that my violin lessons ran over my English class I mean it wasn't just a spiring career choice it was a get-out-of-jail-free card this was awesome however my English teacher found out why I was truanting her class I was off learning to play the violin so she had my class moved and this is the hard part grab tissues if you have them she had my violin lessons moved to lunchtime this was my favorite time how was I supposed to give up snackable x' to go pluck some strings in some weird-ass closet with some lady I was going to do that so without further ado I gave up on dream number two so let's fast forward to when our sweet 16 like a fine wine my fashion sense gets better with age looking like someone who dropped out of skate boarding school I happen to be single and because I single I also had a lot of spare time on my hands and with the spare time I decided to play a lot of video games as a lot of us do now I was quite creative and quite an imaginative child growing up I like to think I still AM hopefully and I used to create stories in my head fictional stories with characters and arcs and all that kind of stuff so I thought I play a lot of video games I like making stories when I combine these two and I can make a career out there I can be a video games designer it's genius however I'm sure as a lot of you know if you're going into software programming you have to learn a thing called programs so the first thing that I had to learn was one called basic and I don't know if you can tell by the name it was one of the easy ones basic this was the single most depressing thing I'd ever done in my life and this was step one on a hundred stepladder how on earth was I going to climb that ladder if I couldn't get past the first step I had to give this street map that streamed dream three dead so let's fast forward to one of seventeen my head was literally in the sand I had so many dreams growing up and I thrown them all the way at university leering over my shoulder saying hey Charlie what do you want to be what do you want to do I couldn't answer that question I needed help but who was going to help me careers advisor my parents my friends none of them could really help me could they because they didn't know what I wanted only I know what I wanted but the problem is is I couldn't focus it so what I needed to do was help myself and instead of telling you my experience the next part of this story I want to bring you guys with me I want you guys to go on what I call a visualization exercise because this is what I did a lot throughout my life and it might just help you answer the question we started with but to do this I've invented a couple of characters just to explain the way your mind works I've characterized them it's a visual journey so you want to bring them with you on this journey the first character is your inner voice I like this guy this the guy who tells you what you enjoy most and what you enjoy least he's that part your mind he tells you that classical music is soothing it's that part of your mind who says electronic music is energizing and Heights are scary and kittens are cute this is the guy who holds the keys to everything that you enjoy ie he holds the keys to what it is you want ie he holds the keys to what it is you want to be however the only reason you can't communicate with this guy is there's another guy blocking blocking your your communication channel with your inner voice this is called your inner doubt this guy is a jerk I don't like this guy this the guy who creates all your mental barriers he creates the excuses that stops you doing those things who want to enjoy he's the guy who tells you classical music is dorky he's the guy who tells you electronic music is samey Heights dangerous kittens expensive him and the inner voice are in constant collision with each other for that reason that reason alone for the purpose of this visualization exercise we're about to go on I want you to ignore you're in forget about it he's not coming in a voice yes in a doubt No so close your eyes if it helps you visualize you're looking at yourself in a mirror make eye contact with yourself a little bit or good but that's you so it's okay this is a special mirror it's not a reflection of yourself you're actually looking at in fact it's a portal to an alternate dimension this is another you this guy is leading a slightly different light from yours I want you to extract your mind from your own head and I want you to float float through that mirror your mind is going inside that of the other you you're on the other side of the mirror now looking back at yourself can you see itself now this universe that you're now in is exactly identical to ours except for one thing that's different at the end of this talk a radio broadcast is heard on this radio broadcast we hear the world's gone and a meteor is going to crash onto the surface of the earth and wipe out everything living or dead we can't escape we can't dig underground and hide we can't escape in a rocket we're all doomed sorry this is really grim but it does have a point now what I want you to do is not think about what you're going to do with your final two weeks I want you to think about what you're going to miss because if your untimely death think about it that's two weeks time you're going to miss the launch of the next Star Wars movie that's pretty disappointing right now use this visualizing visualization exercise as a template you can create another hundreds of scenarios just like it and the point is is to find out what it is that you enjoy most in life I did this a lot when I was 17 years old and I needed to see I pictured myself as a billionaire what would happen if I had a billion pounds you know that question what would happen if you won the lottery I spent the money and I bought film studio so I could bring those stories I always had to life you know through through film I pictured myself being famous what did I do I was famous for making films again see this there's a recurring theme through all my little visualizations was that I wanted to make films and they're in light the answer I wanted to make films and you know what I knew that for a lot longer than I let on but the only problem was those might you know doubt was telling me that was impossible he was telling me that was a fairytale dream much like the guy on reddit who thought being a farmer was a dream I thought the same about filmmaking and now here we are 24 year old Charlie stands before you you know what I do I run my own independent film company I did it I'm now doing being an effective part of the film industry I'm bringing my stories to life this is what I always wanted to do I just ignored the fact that I wanted to do it because I doubted myself and once you ignore you're in a doubt and focus on your inner voice you're able to realize why not just chase what it is I want why worry about whether or not it's possible why not just do it when you think about having two weeks left on this earth you realize I'm going to die so what do you regret when you die I regretted not ever chasing up this dream so I want to finish off this talk with a quotation that I think summarizes it better than I could in words the number one reason most people don't get what they want is because they don't know what they want so what I'm trying to tell you is if the sooner you can communicate with your inner voice and make it your outer voice ignoring your inner doubt the sooner you can answer that question what you want to be and the sooner you can answer that question what you want to be the sooner you two can take your dreams and turn them into realities thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,474,567

Rating: 4.9142156 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Life, Career, Consciousness, Control, Decision making, Dreams, Future, Goal-setting, Motivation, Passion, Purpose, Self, Self improvement, Self-help, Success

Id: Fo3e_0ITVjo

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/mrlr]

I also wanted to be a pirate when I grew up. Much to my surprise...