Transcriber: Ileana Casanova Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Hello, TEDx Canberra.
(Audience responses)
Have you ever wanted to change the world?
Do you have a dream that sometimes feels like it’s way too big to chase?
Have you or someone you know hit rock bottom
and you don’t quite know where to start to get back up?
Do you sometimes feel like life is passing you by
and you’re not quite where you want to be?
If you’re like me, then you would have said yes
to one or more of those questions,
either today or at some point in your life.
What I want to tell you today
is that there is a way to accelerate to where you want to be.
Today, I want to talk to you about hope and empowerment.
In my job and passion as an economist and a social innovator,
my team and I research social outcomes.
What that means is that we measure social impact
and we unpack how social outcomes can take place
so the causal chains and the impact pathways,
the steps, that ultimately lead to good outcomes.
In our research, I was surprised to find
that the most effective way to achieve empowerment,
which then flows on to other positive social outcomes
actually begins with the first step.
And that first step is
your ability to ask for help.
Let me elaborate.
On a research project that my team undertook
on developing a measurement framework for mental health outcomes,
we spoke to lots of different people with different life experiences,
different life circumstances, income levels, location, many other variables.
What stood out to me
is that it’s really important to have good systems,
timely responses from services.
But no system or service can make you great
unless you yourself are first empowered.
So, if asking for help is so amazing, so impactful,
then why don’t people do more of it?
It is hard to ask for help.
A recent study in the U.S. found that over 70% of people
don’t ask for help
until it’s absolutely at the situation that they need to.
Over 50% of people feel that they didn’t achieve the outcomes that they wanted to
because they didn't reach out for help.
So there are three key reasons why people tend to not ask for help.
The first one, and a big one, is fear.
Fear of looking like you’re incompetent.
Fear of vulnerability, showing people what your shortcomings are.
And the third one is a fear of rejection.
What if I reach out for help and it’s not reciprocated
and I don’t receive the help that I need?
A Stanford research study recently
looked at the help-seeking behaviors of young children.
And what they found is that children tend to not ask for help in classrooms
for the same reasons that adults don’t.
Children as young as seven years of age
associate incompetence with asking for help.
Second reason why people tend to not ask for help
is that they could be in a state that we often refer to as “survival mode.”
So dealing with so many issues, maybe financial stress
maybe juggling bills, budgeting,
all those things result in cognitive impairments
and it leads you to not be able to think through where you’re at
and actively reach out and ask for help.
The third reason
is that you’re waiting for someone to come and help you.
So, spontaneous help.
Yes, it's definitely out there.
But it’s less impactful and less prevalent
than you actually reaching out and asking for help.
It’s not really a surprise that sometimes people wait for people to come and help.
If we think about the fairy tales that we’re told as young children.
So, Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella -
they all have that Prince Charming that they’ve been waiting for,
that they come and and rescue them.
But life is not a fairy tale.
I have never been good at asking for help
until I got to a situation where I had no choice.
In June 2019, my dad had a choking incident at a community event.
And he ended up with hypoxic brain injury.
I had to make the decision together with my mom and sister
on whether or not we remove his life support.
The health system advised me very strongly that he would never open his eyes again,
he would never interact,
and that I would be doing a great disservice to him
by choosing to not take out his life support.
My gut feeling was a little bit different to the advice that I got
because I knew my dad,
and I knew that he would fight as hard as he could to live, be alive.
So I went from someone who never asked for help
because it would show that I’m incompetent and share my vulnerabilities,
to being someone who went and asked everyone for help.
I started by asking God Almighty,
and I went to every person I knew within my networks,
who connected me to other people in their networks
to seek advice and guidance on what the right thing to do was.
Because I sought that advice and support, because I asked for help,
I decided not to take out life support.
And my gut feeling was right.
In two weeks time, he didn’t need life support anymore.
Two months later, he opened his eyes. A little bit after that, he sat up.
A few months after that, he was interacting, blinking.
He recognized me.
For the next two and a half years until he passed away just last December,
we had the best conversations through this all.
We had the best interactions.
And if I didn’t reach out and ask for help at that point,
I would have lost those two and a half years
of really great memories with my dad.
So let’s come back to our four questions in the beginning,
and let’s think about how we can achieve them through asking for help.
So let’s think about if you’re in a situation where you’ve hit rock bottom
and you're stuck in a rut.
Through our research, we got to speak to a fabulous woman,
who was on drugs, in and out of the prison system,
and had her children in the foster care system.
She was also homeless.
So through talking to her, what she said was that she got to a point
where she became very determined that this time things were going to be different.
She wasn’t going to go back into prison,
and she was going to get herself off of drugs,
even though she realized that it was something that was making her feel good.
She did that, and we asked her what was different this time.
And you guessed it -
it’s because she reached out and she asked for help.
She knew that there was someone that she could reach out to.
Seeing this woman in her home, off of drugs, being a total boss,
in the process of getting her kids back, just gives the greatest sense of joy.
You see, the thing is that she didn’t just help herself, actually,
because when you reach out and ask for help
you are actually giving someone else a gift.
You’re giving someone an opportunity to help,
and that has a tremendous impact on well-being.
So well-being research indicates
that one of the biggest factors in having positive well-being
is actually having a clear and defined sense of purpose.
When you're able to help someone, it adds to your purpose.
So what if you’re that person who’s being reached out for help?
So yes, it adds to your purpose.
But also remember that it's not possible always to help everyone.
I know that sometimes when you’re being asked for help,
it might get to a stage where you feel burnt out,
maybe sometimes even resentful,
and perhaps disappointed that you’re not able to help everyone.
So what I wanted to say is that if you’re a person who’s being asked to help,
you can also help by asking others to help.
And I think about my very good friend, Dr. Rebecca Reeve,
who's a brilliant economist, but also a tireless advocate for refugees.
What I’ve noticed about her is that every time she’s asked to help someone -
and they do incredible things -
she reaches out to her network of brilliant lawyers and other advocates,
and together, they achieve an impact that would otherwise not have been achieved
if she was to do it just on her own.
So what if you have a big dream and you want to change the world?
So asking for help on its own is not going to get you to achieve everything.
You still have to work hard; you still have to invest in yourself and resources.
But by asking for help as a first step,
you will be able to accelerate where you want to get to.
Let’s think of an incredible social changemaker -
my favorite, Professor Muhammad Yunus,
the man who inspired me to become an economist.
So,
about four or five decades ago,
he realized that an entire village could be lifted out of poverty
for a simple small sum of 27 U.S. dollars.
So what he could have done is went,
okay, let me just invest in a number of villages
and lift them all out of poverty.
But instead, what he went and did was he reached out to a bank.
And he created access to collateral
for all poor people in Bangladesh.
And by doing so he achieved far greater impact
than if he was just going around taking, you know, that $27 out of his own pocket.
And of course, microfinance, which is the term for this initiative,
has made a huge impact in Bangladesh and all over the world.
So by reaching out, asking for help, and collaborating,
what he actually did was amplified his impact
and achieved great outcomes for other people,
much faster and to a larger extent
than he would have done so if he went at it alone.
So, we’ve established that asking for help is great.
How do we achieve this really tough task of asking for help?
There are six steps.
So firstly, get yourself into an asking-for-help mindset.
That means let’s let go some of those fears.
Put your ego aside. Be vulnerable.
Number two:
Think through the thing that you’re actually needing to get some help on.
It could be anything.
It could be your big dream.
It could be that you’ve hit rock bottom.
Whatever it is, think about it.
What is the problem that you need to have solved right now?
Make a list.
Number three: Make a list of the people that you think could help you.
And if you can't think of someone,
then this is the thing that you need to prioritize.
Find just one person that you think could cause a spark for you.
And keep building that network.
Over time, you’ll find that you have a big list of people that you can reach out to.
So next, make that step and reach out and ask for help.
If you do that via conversation and really explain the impact
that it will have on your life, you’re likely to get a greater response.
Number five:
Be okay with getting rejection.
It’s okay if someone you reach out to can’t help you,
because you don’t know that person might need help themselves.
They might have some kind of a circumstance,
but it’s not an indication of you not being worthy of receiving help.
And the final step:
Be prepared to help others as well when you get the opportunity.
Today, I wanted to talk to you about hope and empowerment.
And I hope that
what we’ve talked about today and what we’ve described
can instill a sense of hope in you, in terms of what you want to achieve.
I hope that it's given you a new light into a way to accelerate your empowerment.
I know that since I’ve adopted this new way of being, which is asking for help,
so many things in my life have changed.
I have a beautiful network of people that I regularly reach out to when I need help.
Whether it’s because I have a project that needs saving,
whether it's because I'm trying to scale a social impact
and I'm trying to figure out the best way of doing that,
whether I need help moving
or if I need some help saving some kind of an activity
during one of my crazy social experiments.
I’ve got these people and it’s so beautiful.
So,
it’s had such a big impact on my day-to-day life,
not to mention the fact that I got that extra two-and-a-half years with my dad;
the person who inspired me to become an economist
because he gave me a book on Professor Muhammad Yunus when I was 14;
the person who encouraged me to go and build social enterprises instead of,
you know, doing more sensible things maybe;
the person who had the most magnificent, magical smile that I’m seeing right now.
So, I want to ask you for help.
It would instill a great sense of purpose to me
if something that I’ve said today can help you as well.
I want you to take a moment to think about something that you would like to achieve.
How big or how small it is, it doesn’t matter.
And I want you to make a list of people that you can reach out to.
And I’d like you to go out and reach out to those people
and see if it makes a difference for you.
I’d love to hear your story.
Please get in touch and let me know. It would make a big difference to me.
I want to finish today by saying: Please don’t underestimate
yourself and your ability to make a difference in the world.
In the words of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī:
“Everything in the universe is within you. And ask all from yourself.”
Thank you so much for listening,
and let’s go out and change the world together.
(Applause) (Cheers)