Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
Thank you.
When I was in elementary school,
we had this collection of motivational posters
that hung around on the walls in our classroom.
And one of my favorite ones said,
"Anything is possible if only you believe."
And the word "believe" was written in italic,
so you knew it was really serious, right?
And I was a believer.
I believed in wonder and curiosity.
I believed in imagination and being pleasantly surprised.
And I believed in fat chances and long shots and underdogs.
And I very much believed in myself
and the idea that if I worked hard enough, I could make anything possible.
So to me, that poster was more than just inspirational.
It was a license to move mountain.
And I never forgot it,
and to this day, I still take those words very much to heart.
And when people would see only a slim chance,
I was focused on possibility.
So it's kind of like the scene from the movie "Dumb and Dumber"
where Jim Carrey's character is in love with Lauren Holly's character,
but she tells him that his chances of a relationship with her
are like one in a million, right?
But instead of being devastated,
he says, "So you're saying there's a chance, right?"
And in my personal life, my belief in that chance
has literally taken me all around the world.
And it's led to all kinds of really exciting adventures,
like owning my own business and becoming a published author,
and more recently,
it led to completing a 3,200-mile bicycle ride
across the country
all the way from California to Florida.
Now, believing in possibility gives us strength that helps us grow.
It gives us confidence to be able to take risks.
And like a light at the end of our respective tunnels,
it gives us a strength to keep going when we have every excuse to quit.
Our beliefs are powerful.
They're so powerful that they literally become our realities.
And it turns out
that it doesn't really matter if our beliefs are accurate
or even anywhere near realistic.
All that really matters is that we believe they are possible.
But - there's always a "but," isn't there?
Always a "but."
Because our beliefs have so much power,
if we're not careful about what we believe in
and where those beliefs are leading us,
they can do more harm than good.
My belief in possibility gave me a lot of confidence,
but it also led me to worry, like, a lot
about anything and everything and how it could all possibly go wrong.
And one day, when I was 11 years old,
I suddenly started worrying that my hands were dirty
and I needed to wash them,
but not just before dinner or after using the bathroom,
like, all the time.
And if I even tried to think about not washing them,
they would feel so dirty that I would have to wash them
again and again and again and again and again
hundreds of times a day.
And so they became raw, and they were red.
I mean it actually looked like I had gloves on.
There was a line at my wrist.
And there were cracking and bleeding.
But I couldn't stop,
because I would just think about all the things
that you could possibly catch from touching a doorknob or door handle.
Or what about the chair?
And someone who's sitting in that chair probably touched the door handle
and who knows what else.
"Oh my God, what else did they touch?"
And it just went on and on like that, and then I'd have to wash all of it.
My relentless belief in possibility had become so twisted
that I was absolutely convinced that if I didn't wash often enough
or well enough
or in precisely the right way,
any number of horrible things would happen.
And that's when like an uninvited guest that you just can't get rid of,
obsessive-compulsive disorder just showed up on my doorstep
and barged right into my life
quite without permission, I will say.
And at the time, I didn't realize that what I was experiencing had a name,
but I did know that it was awful.
It was so exhausting,
and it was really humiliating and completely degrading.
But I also knew that something wasn't right.
I knew something was wrong.
I knew that whatever I was feeling and thinking was not "normal."
And I knew that it was completely irrational.
But that didn't matter because guess what?
There was that poster on the wall, reminding me that anything was possible,
and so ...
I scrubbed.
And as my beliefs got stronger,
everything else got worse.
Now, research shows that the more strongly we believe in something,
the more we tend to overlook anything that lies outside of that belief
or anything that contradicts that belief.
In other words, as we become more focused on whatever it is that we're looking for
or looking at,
the more we tend to see only that.
So it's kind of, like, when you buy a new Prius or something,
and then you're out driving around,
and suddenly it seems like everybody's driving a new Prius
or whatever, right?
You've been there.
Yeah, so there's actually a name for that.
It's called confirmation bias, and its effects can literally be blinding.
So in my case, my focus had become so narrow
that all I could see, literally,
was danger and catastrophe and absolute horror
just lurking around every single corner, everywhere,
which of course, made me horribly anxious.
OCD is actually an anxiety disorder,
so I was a wreck, horribly anxious,
and the more anxious I became, the more narrow my focus became.
And the more narrow my focus became,
the more real everything, all those fears, the more real they felt.
And it was just this horrible cycle.
So eventually, I started skipping out on all kinds of things,
skipping out on life,
and I would -
I loved school, but I would skip certain classes.
I actually skipped recess.
I was a kid who skipped recess.
And I loved field trips,
but I would stay home "sick" on field trip days
all in an effort to just keep myself "safe" -
so I thought -
and just really to avoid anything
that might trigger yet another anxiety attack.
And it got to the point
where leaving my house or my bedroom became a real challenge,
and OCD had turned my belief in possibility against me,
and confirmation bias was its accomplice.
And in the 22 years since, it has been a constant battle.
We can manage OCD with medication and therapy,
but there is no cure,
so some days, I have the upper hand,
and some days, I don't.
But the good news is that most of you don't have OCD
because it turns out not everyone can be so lucky.
(Laughter)
Only about one percent of the population can stake that claim,
but you are not immune to the effects of confirmation bias
and the way that it can distort your thinking
and turn your belief against you.
So whether that means that you don't pursue that business idea
that you have had for years
because all you can see are ways that you would surely fail
or maybe you're avoiding the trip of a lifetime
because everywhere you look, you find a reason not to go.
Whenever you let your beliefs -
whether just any belief or especially fear-based beliefs -
whenever you let them drive your focus to such a narrow corner,
you are literally holding yourself back and cutting yourself off
from a world of possibilities
in a very real way.
So, what do you do?
It's a fair question.
Well, you challenge yourself and your beliefs,
and instead of only focusing on things that confirm them,
you have to train yourself or even force yourself
to widen your perspective
and actively seek out other possibilities that you couldn't see before
or that you simply refused to acknowledge.
Explore them, and spend time on them, let them swim around in your head,
and dwell on them with as much passion and energy
as you previously spent dwelling on your fears.
That's what they teach you in OCD therapy, right?
It's called balancing your thinking.
So could that trip that you want to take turn out to be a disaster?
Absolutely.
It is possible.
But what if it's not a disaster?
What if it's actually fun?
What if you learn something new about yourself or the world?
And what about those other trips that you've taken before?
I mean, haven't some of them turned out pretty great?
Isn't it entirely possible that this trip could be great too?
Maybe even one of the best, who knows?
So balancing your thinking can sometimes be easier said than done
especially if you're having to battle against OCD
and your own neurochemistry is fighting against you.
So it really takes commitment, ongoing, lifelong commitment.
And in my case, OCD flares up now and then,
and recently it flared up pretty bad.
Like, it was actually really bad.
And I couldn't handle it on my own.
That's how bad it got.
So I went to get some help.
And I found myself in a therapist office
where I was quickly told
that my case was actually so severe that I needed to drop everything,
leave town, leave the state,
and check myself into a long-term care clinic.
And ...
I was barely able to leave the house at that time
and in a near-constant state of panic.
But that was devastating.
I knew things had gone from bad to very much worse,
but now my own therapist was giving up on me.
And my mind started racing
and immediately started focusing in and catastrophizing
all the horrible ways that my life was about to fall apart
and break into a million tiny pieces.
But then ...
(Inhales)
I took a deep breath.
And like a good little OCD patient,
I widened my focus
to get some perspective and rebalance my thinking.
And that's when I realized
that this therapist who had given up on me
did so after only eight sessions,
which either meant that I was indeed really, really bad
or maybe it was possible she was.
(Laughter)
Right?
And out of the completely irrational things
that I had spent the last 22 years of my life
trying so desperately not to believe,
I suddenly found myself wondering, Why should I believe her?
And that's when things changed.
And suddenly, I had options,
options I couldn't see before,
options that included finding a different therapist, right?
And that's when I began to climb out of this hole
that I had been in for more than six months,
for the better part of the year, really,
and I began to put my life back together again.
Now, no one really knows for sure where our beliefs come from
or how our brains decide what's real and what's not,
but I believe that if we can find a way
to consciously own the beliefs that we have,
to own our beliefs
rather than letting our beliefs own us,
then anything really is possible.
Thank you.
(Applause)