Transcriber: Trang Phạm
There are pivotal moments in our life when we can recall the smallest detail.
In those times, it's like time stands still.
And those moments were called to adjust our focus.
The birth of a child.
Parents can usually recall those moments vividly.
The birth of my second child, Callum.
I have no recollection.
So the events that happened afterwards, I can recall with clarity and focus.
Due to a bizarre complication,
my heart stopped beating for almost 30 minutes after he was born.
For almost 30 minutes,
the doctors tried to revive me.
I had what can only be described as an out-of-body experience.
While the doctors were looking after me on the bed,
I was at this elevated position.
And I was looking down at the chaos and commotion.
While all this was happening, I could see scenes from my life.
The scenes showed me
that the theme of my life was that
I didn't feel safe being me.
As a child, I would hide in plain sight just so I wouldn't get into trouble.
As a teenager, it was like I was in the periphery of my own life.
I wasn’t really getting involved.
I was just observing.
Being invisible.
Playing small.
And being quiet.
This is what I believe would keep me safe.
But it wasn’t me.
How many times do we compromise our true self
in order to be accepted by others
or just to survive?
On the 4th of August,
2006,
at 3:01 p.m,
26 minutes after my heart stopped beating.
I could see the doctor.
Tell his staff to discontinue their efforts.
My husband, Fran.
What a newborn baby.
Looked on helplessly.
And if you were there,
you would have seen the nurse approach from
and putting her hand on his shoulder and said she’s gone.
I was slipping away
quietly
unheard.
Yet the screaming whisper inside of me said,
Be seen,
be heard.
And in that moment, I readjusted my focus onto me.
Beep. Beep, beep.
As the manager announced my return,
there was a flurry of activity as the doctors attended to my new status.
My recovery from this wake up call had many challenges.
That little voice got stronger and louder.
Be seen, be heard.
Since then, I have found my own voice.
And I hope others find theirs.
When we wear glasses,
it helps us see the external world.
When there’s debris on us
or it’s blurred,
we can change them, we can clean them,
we put them back on and we can see clearly again.
How about the lenses in our eyes?
Those windows to the soul,
those internal lenses,
can they be blurred?
Is there debris on those?
Do we need to readjust our focus?
So as as we see each other and ourselves through a softer lens.
These are the questions
that I spent months thinking about after my wake up call.
And this led me in a journey to find out how can I clear out internal lands?
My research led me to some interesting information.
As children, we are shaped by the rules, the conditioning, the expectations
of our family, our teachers, our society.
And this creates a blurred lens through which we experience life.
I knew my lands needed some serious readjustment.
How’s it going to do that?
Part of my research, I found out about this amazing system we have.
It’s called the reticular activating system.
It’s inside of us, it’s in our heads, it has lots of functions.
But the one thing it does, it can get us to consciously focus our attention.
That's the good news and the bad news.
If our attention is focused on something negative,
Our reticular activating system or auras,
Well, certain information in our environment
and bring it to us to validate that thought.
So if even a negative thought like it’s a world is a dangerous place.
That’s the information that’s going to come to you.
Have you ever thought
that you’re a failure?
That’s the information that’s going to come to you.
But we have the opportunity to change that.
We can reprogram our US in my book, Discover Your Energy.
As I mentioned, many ways of cleaning that lens
and I want to share one with you here.
If you have a negative thought about yourself,
you can changes.
So let’s say the negative thought is
I’m a failure.
See a stop sign.
Turn that thought around.
The opposite is on a success.
I’m a winner.
Now give your mind a job to do.
Send it to the filing cabinets of your life and pull out all
the times when you're a success.
I’m going to give few to start which some of them may relate to you
probably at the age of four or five
when you were learning how to ride a two wheel bicycle
an older sibling or a parent took off the stabilizers
give you one final push
and you’re off,
you’re holding the handlebars,
you’re a little speeder pedaling with bikes.
And you did it.
You achieved it.
You cycled your bicycle and you felt on top of the world.
I want you to take that feeling, that factual representation,
and put it over here on a collage of your successes.
Now I trust
All the times you succeeded
that exam you passed.
For your girl, you asked that and they said yes, add that.
Now you have the facts that you are a success, you can succeed.
Program your roads,
get it to search at the information that makes that
a valid statement.
My question to you is,
how are you programming your rice?
Are you allowing it to default to an old thought?
That's one way of working internally.
I don’t know about you but sometimes I need some external support,
and my support comes in an amazing group of people.
These lift me up.
They support me.
They help me see life through a different lens
or from a different perspective.
These are my parachutes.
They helped me adjust my vision.
Throughout your life, you're going to meet amazing people,
people who support you, who are there for you,
help you go wherever you want to go.
These are your parachutes.
When I look back on my life,
I had some amazing parachutes and one of my first was my Auntie Vera.
She had a lot of time for me and she was so kind and patient
and with fear,
I could be me.
Who are your parachutes?
I love being parachutes to people.
I’m always surrounded by my parachutes
and together we adjust our vision.
I was sleepwalking through my life.
My wake up call uncovered my true potential.
And my life's purpose, and that was to help people find theirs.
By adjusting your focus, you can communicate with clarity
and be truly heard in the boardroom of life.
My message to you is don’t wait for some life altering event.
Do it now.
Adjust your focus.
And I invite you to clear away any of the debris
that might be on that internal lens that you no longer need.
Program your roads
And with the help of your parachutes,
uncover your brilliance,
don’t play small.
Be seen.
Be heard.
Thank you.
(Applause)