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You know, I had a wake-up call, and it changed my life,
and it started when I met this woman some years ago.
Not many people know about her.
She was born in Porto Rico, in 1924.
She grew up in a very strict and religious household.
She moved to the United States when she was seventeen,
went to college, married a doctor, had a couple of kids
[and] was a school teacher.
And by the outside, you'd say that she had a good life.
What you may not have known about her
was that how strict and controlling she was with herself,
with her relationship, with her kids.
And as a school teacher,
she had a reputation of being quite harsh and mean sometimes.
When she was 86, she had a stroke, and it wiped out her ability to speak.
And in fact, for the eight months from the time she had her stroke to the time she died,
she only spoke two words.
In the hospital, one day, she grabbed my arm,
and she looked at me and she said, "I'm desperate!"
And those words sucked all the air out of the room.
And it was just me and her and that feeling of desperation.
You know, and she struggled everyday.
She never really accepted her situation.
And it was really painful to see my mom so unhappy.
As Christmas approached, I wanted to sing her a Christmas carol for a Christmas present.
So I memorized "O Holy Night", and I –
on Christmas Eve, a little voice came to me and said,
"You should go sing that song tonight. Don't wait till tomorrow."
So I packed up my iPod and my speakers, because when I was a little boy,
my mom would say that if I was in my room singing –
she'd have to come in and see whether I was singing or crying. (Laughter)
And I needed a little vocal backup.
And she was on hospice medication, and I held her hands, and I sang her the song.
And then, I said to her, "Mom, you've been a good mom to me and my brother,
you've loved us, you've loved our families, and I want to let you know
that when you're ready to let go,
God will take you up in his arms and love you forever.
And then I want to let go of her hands and realized
that she was holding on tightly to mine.
And something happened in that moment, there was an energy that came in the room,
and it gave me chills like it is now, and I just went, "Wow, it's amazing."
And I said, "Good night", and I went home.
And when the phone rang some hours later, I knew that my mom had made her decision.
Khalil Gibran says that we choose our joys and sorrows long before they happen.
And I saw how my mom had chosen a life of desperation without even knowing it.
And I think that we fall asleep to a lot of our choices
and a lot of our decisions about ourself.
But I think it's also possible to be awake for those decisions that define us,
who we are, and how we're going to be in life.
It sounds easy, but how do you do that?
How do you stay awake to your choices,
how do you deal with that shadow part of ourselves,
and how do you continue to grow with your strengths?
Well, one way is to have a visual.
And this is a simple one, you know. It's like, "Oh, I can choose to have
a positive spin on things and be of service to myself and others,
or I can choose a negative spin and sabotage myself and others."
But I wanted to see all my choices at once, so this idea of a periodic table,
with mindsets as elements, kind of came into my mind.
It made a lot of sense because of my medical background
and my work with leaders who were mostly engineers and scientists.
And what I did was, I put those things, what I called
"the four food groups for the soul", on the right hand side.
You know, having a vision and direction,
being able to take action towards that vision,
being able to connect with people in a meaningful way,
and being able to reflect on ourselves and bring wisdom into our lives.
And I put the things that really cause us to de-energize
and contract from life, on the other side.
And then, what I did is, I populated the chart with symmetrical mindsets.
So, if I found myself in the red zone,
I could look across on the other side and see where to go.
So I could be either frustrated or engaged,
I could be angry or passionate,
I could be sarcastic or really humorous.
I could be, you know, blaming or I could be accountable.
I could be an adversary, who just would rather be right
and do what's right or I could be an activator.
And I went through each of the rows, until the whole chart was complete.
And I went, "Wow!
This would make a good eye chart at a doctor's office." (Laughter)
You know, what started out to be a real simple process,
got really complicated, because then I started going,
"Oh, what about all those – you know, whole brain neurophysiology,
and what about all the different ways that we think",
and it all just really, really expanded and grew.
And it was so ironic, because I hated the periodic table
when I was growing up. (Laughter)
So, I saw these patterns emerge, you know, for myself and others,
and like, with my daughter, I could see how – my daughter is twenty four –
I could see how I could be controlling, arrogant and critical.
I mean, I just, I just wanted her to have a good life – my way!
Or I could be, you know, confident that I'm doing a good job as a father,
I could be appreciative and supportive,
and know that she needs to make her decisions for herself.
And these molecules begin to appear.
At work, you know, companies struggle, and being able to see, you know,
where their struggles are, where they want to go
and what they need to do to create the culture that they really want to have,
so they could use the tool in this way.
Personal relationships are a whole other dimension,
where we can see ourselves and be able to make choices.
I'm still working on what happens when I get stuck in traffic.
(Laughter)
It's a tough one. (Laughter)
Sometimes, it's really easy to make the switch from the red to the green,
but sometimes I've found myself getting stuck, you know.
And what happens is that when I get frustrated, when I get plugged in,
as I keep thinking the same thought over and over again –
and this is where the 90-second pause comes in,
because most emotions last 90 seconds.
And if I can pause for 90 seconds, then I can allow my system to calm down.
So, all that I would've to do is stop thinking that person is a complete idiot
for 90 seconds, and then I could choose a way forward. (Laughter)
Sometimes we need a little different way to work with ourselves.
And I used to have this recurring nightmare.
There was a Cyclops that was chasing me, and I had a large sword,
and I would kill the Cyclops, and then, as soon as I turned away from it,
it would come back to life and start chasing me again.
And dream after dream, I killed it, I turned, it would come back and chase me.
And this happened over and over and over again.
One day, I was in my driveway. I killed it, I hacked it into pieces,
I put it in the trash can, and as soon as I turned,
the lid popped off, and there it was again, right in front of me.
But this time, I turned and I faced him and I said,
"What do you want with me?"
And a big tear came to his eye and in the softest voice, he said,
"I just want you to love me."
And I realized in that moment that I was trying to kill my fears
in order to be fearless, and that would never work.
But if I was able to embrace those aspects of myself,
then my whole life would transform.
When it comes to strengths and operating from our strengths,
Pam Boney, who created the Tilt 365, says that we need to balance our strengths,
that human nature will have us, so that we'll tend to lean
and use just one of our strengths,
and then we can actually get out of balance with ourselves,
and it can become a liability.
So, if we take the dimension of thinking, at where we have new ideas,
we need to balance that with data and research.
If we have the dimension of feeling,
we need to balance taking action with consideration of others.
And then, if we balance ourselves in these two dimensions,
we'll create the optimum environment for ourselves and each other.
You know, I learned a lot from my mom in the last moments of her life.
And so, I invite you to stay awake to those decisions that define you.
I invite you to take that 90-second pause.
I invite you to embrace those parts of yourself that maybe you've been rejecting,
and to balance your strengths.
And I'm going to leave and ask you a question that I ask myself every single day:
When you get to the end of your life,
what's the story that you're going to tell yourself about your life?
Is it going to be a drama? Is it going to be a tragedy?
Is it going to be a comedy? Or an exciting adventure?
That choice is up to you, and it starts right now.
Thank you. (Applause)