Translator: Timothy Duffy Reviewer: Denise RQ
Well everyone has something about themselves they want to change,
so I want you to think about what is it that you'd like to change about yourself.
I'm going to share from my area of deepest personal failure and frustration,
but before I do, I want you to think about
what is the one thing you'd like to change about yourself.
The more times you failed, the better.
Ready?
OK.
I'm going to show you where I was 130 pounds ago.
This was me, buried under all of that weight.
Hard to believe, isn't it?
I had failed so many times,
I convinced myself that there is no way I could ever change.
But I decided I was going to give it just one more try.
I don't want you to think that this is a talk on weight-loss,
because it's not.
What I want you to do is, I'll use this as an example
to walk you through how you can sustain any change,
no matter how many times you've failed at it.
So while I'm giving examples from my life, you think about your example,
because what it all came down to me, for me was mindset,
a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset.
Because when you are in a fixed mindset, you think you can't change.
You're stuck.
That's it, it is never going to get any better.
But a growth mindset, you start to look at situations and think,
"You know what, with enough effort, I can make this different.
I can change something. I can do it."
Well I had become stuck, and I thought that because of all my failures
I was destined to be that person buried under all that weight.
And what I learned when I decided to do life differently,
is there are four areas in my mindset that I was going to have to retrain,
because there's a gap that exists
between wanting to change, and doing what it takes to sustain that change.
And it is your mindset.
And these are the four areas I want to talk to you about today.
The first one is success:
you need to retrain your mind on how you think about success.
For me, it was the scale.
Every morning I got up and whatever that number said,
determined how I felt about myself that day.
Whether I was a good person, or a bad person.
Whether I had value, or if I had no value.
It was all about the number.
I started to work with a personal trainer
and it was the first thing he picked up in me,
and in week two of our training we made a radical decision:
stop weighing.
Stop weighing, are you kidding?
So for 8 months, I had no idea what I weighed.
I changed my eating.
I changed my exercise habits, and I had no idea what I weighed.
We had to change my definition of success,
from what the number on the scale said, to was I making healthier choices?
Was I eating healthier food? Was I feeling better?
Was I feeling stronger?
And I have to tell you, I started looking for other ways to feel successful.
I don't know what the scale represents for you,
but let me tell you something I found first time I got on an airplane:
instead of having to ask for a seat belt extender,
I shimmied into that seat, I cranked that seatbelt up, zip,
and I had a moment.
I took my camera out.
I took a picture of my belt and I sent it to the trainer.
I was so excited.
I looked to my right
and the guy next to me was not experiencing the same moment.
He looked at me like I was out of my mind.
And I said, "Dude, you would never get it,
but let me just tell you, you area going to have a much sweeter flight
riding by with me today, then you would have ten months ago."
So again, I don't know what the scale is for you,
but think about retraining your mind to define success in another way.
The next area I had to retrain my mindset in, from fixed to growth,
was my belief in my ability to change.
See, I had failed so many times,
I just had come to the point where I didn't believe I could change.
And the trainer looked me in the eye, you know what he said?
"I understand that you don't believe that you can change, but I do.
I know that you can, and I'm going to carry that belief for you,
and then I'm going to carry that belief with you,
until you are strong enough to carry that by yourself."
See, I couldn't do it alone. We need other people.
So you have to find who can believe in you
until you are strong enough to carry it on your own.
I used my faith, my friends, my family. That's what you want to engage in.
The other area was my view of failure.
Sometimes we think that failure is fatal.
That's the end of the line, and that's where I had convinced myself.
But failure is nothing more than a setback.
It's just an opportunity for you to regroup, rethink, and figure out
another way that you can do this better.
Failure only becomes failure when you let a setback bully you into quitting.
The fourth area, was effort.
Don't underestimate how much effort it is going to take.
See, in a fixed mindset,
you think that if you have to work hard that just confirms that you don't get it.
I thought, "I'm always the slow kid,
I'm the one who doesn't understand what I should be doing,"
but effort just means that you are just about to get there.
Don't underestimate how much work it is going to take
because the temptation to quit will be the strongest
right before your breakthrough.
So if you want to sustain change,
these are the four areas you need to go after.
Redefine how you measure success, retrain your mindset and your ability to change,
take a look at how you view failure,
and know that it's going to take a lot of hard work,
but if someone like me can make this kind of change,
you can retrain your mindset, and have the change you want in anything.
(Applause)