Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Suppose you'd like to get started changing your life -
maybe improve your relationships at work or at home,
maybe clear some doubt or insecurity.
Where would you begin?
Well, as a psychiatrist practicing for over 20 years,
I can offer you a powerful and practical tool kit
along with one very specific suggestion:
Start with your autobiographical narrative.
It's the story you've been telling yourself about who you are
and how everything always plays out.
It's your personal documentary film.
And if you want to change your life, it needs a re-edit.
You see, the problem with the film playing in our head
is that it's already edited.
Some emotionally difficult scenes are way overincluded -
just think of all the things you can't let go of -
and other scenes are deleted,
such as times when maybe things did go well.
This personal documentary becomes our inner truth.
Yet it's a distortion from childhood.
When you view it from an adult perspective,
you can see that it's not fair or just to ourselves,
and it's responsible for the lion's share of our ongoing suffering,
causing us to settle for a life far beneath our highest potential.
In my clinical experience,
there's actually one central false truth that settles in our minds,
and it happens at a time before we know the difference
between a healthy and unhealthy reaction to something that really scares us.
So we hold on to the wrong conclusion,
but we do so for two very understandable reasons.
The first is our fundamental need to feel in control.
When I was under four, my parents split up.
Since I never heard them fighting,
I naturally convinced myself that it must be all my fault.
Because it's tempting to self-soothe by taking on blame and responsibility
rather than try to struggle with the fact
that life can be unpredictable and out of our control,
especially as a kid.
And the second reason
is that we tend to generalize broadly from very specific circumstances.
So the kid whose parents don't seem to notice small achievements
may convince himself
that maybe no one's ever going to care about anything.
Or in my case, the false truth that I held to so dearly
was that just as much as I couldn't be effective
in keeping my parents together,
I probably couldn't be effective at much of anything else.
And this left me feeling very insecure.
So can you see the worst part about the false truth,
the most costly part of all?
It's that it becomes our self-fulfilling prophecy,
the basis of what we expect from ourselves in the future.
So we need to look at this,
like the author Marilynne Robinson calls it,
as "a mean little myth," something we need to get rid of.
We need to know our autobiographical narrative,
and then if we want to prevent it from determining our future,
we desperately need to do a re-edit.
But how?
Well, as they say,
what's the best way to get out of a hole?
It's to quit digging.
So we need to do these three things:
We need to be compassionate with ourselves
about how this all came into being,
we need to detach from the false truth,
and we need to install a new narrative
built from a position of adult strength and vision.
By shifting your emotional center of gravity,
you can change your story and transform your life.
Now, before I give you some of my tools of the trade to use,
let me tell you how this worked out for me.
I was the insecure little kid; my dad wasn't around much.
So my mom had this idea to send me to a rigorous all-boys school,
so I could get a first-hand sense
of what I needed for myself as a young man.
It was rough.
I was anxious; I had a stutter.
But there, as intimidating as it was for me,
I began to experience validation from my teachers and coaches.
They saw something in me.
And eventually, I started to see something different in myself.
And as my expectations for myself shifted, I was able to prove myself wrong.
If I hadn't cut away from my mean little myth then,
I'm confident now that I wouldn't be here with you today.
In my 20 years of clinical practice,
I've seen this kind of transformation over and over again.
Just the other day, in my office,
I was talking to a young woman who shied away from all adversity
because she suffered from the false truth
that when she fell, she couldn't pick herself up.
Now she knows that she can,
and her future looks entirely different and better.
And you know what's really fantastic
is that you don't necessarily need to come see somebody like me
to shift your own emotional center of gravity.
You can change your story and transform your life
with a straightforward approach combining three therapeutic tools -
tools that work best when used all together,
like a fork, a spoon, and a knife.
So here goes.
Number one:
You start with your narrative -
this is your fork.
Tell yourself your story - out loud even.
Try to identify the central emotional reference point,
that false truth.
What have you been feeding yourself?
Now, try to look at it again from your adult perspective.
Can you see where to start your re-edit?
This is something called narrative therapy,
and you go on and on with it.
Number two:
Use your spoon.
What if you looked at your narrative in a warmer light of greater possibility?
What if you spooned more of your strengths into the story?
Try to appreciate more that's positive about yourself.
You could try right now,
such as maybe you made somebody feel good today.
This is something called positive psychology,
and it's been proven to help remove blocks to empowerment
and foster more self-esteem.
And number three:
Use your knife.
Employ a powerful re-emerging technique called control mastery.
I know many of you might not have heard about this yet,
but it has an edge.
The essential idea
is that already there are more creditable things for you to notice
that you haven't taken into account.
So use your knife to cut through your false truth -
cut away that that no longer serves you
so that you can identify and gather up
all these many exceptions to your long-standing rule.
And then accept that it's safe now to move on.
You no longer have to hold on
to that false security of that mean little myth.
So while I know there are many stories and many possible revisions for all of us,
I truly believe that there's one underlying story
that you deserve to identify and rework first, above all else.
Notice the distorted truths you've been feeding yourself.
Pour in a more compassionate adult view.
Cut away beliefs and ties that undermine you.
Use your fork, knife, and spoon together to build your new narrative with vision,
and let this become your new self-fulfilling prophecy.
If along the way you should fall prey to negative self-talk,
remember to be compassionate, detach from that,
and continue on your journey.
Because with these tools and these insights applied,
you can not only re-edit your story,
but you can also rewrite what will soon become the history of your future.
Thank you.
(Applause)
(Cheers)