Transcriber: Alina Siluyanova Reviewer: Denise RQ
We speak ourselves into the world.
We speak ourselves into transformation, or not.
Into new possibilities and new results for ourselves, or not.
TED is about ideas worth spreading,
I believe it's also about ideas worth reminding ourselves of,
because what I want to share with you today,
I believe many of us know, or knew,
but somehow, somewhere along the way, we forgot.
And it's easy to forget this
because in some ways it's so close we don't see it,
it's so obvious we can miss it.
What I would love to do today
is to reintroduce you, to remind you of this idea
- which is really two sides of the same coin,
two aspects of the same powerful idea -
and do so in such a way that you can leave here today
more conscious and more aware
of how to purposely apply this in your life.
I ask a room full of people,
"What is language? What is language for?"
And what would the giant majority answer with?
A tool for communication, or some variation of this.
This is such a widely held idea,
or a way of understanding language,
that most people don't see it as an idea at all.
We see it as a definition. As a fact.
I offer this: if language is a tool, it's a tool we cannot put down.
When we look a little bit more closely,
we can see that we are doing a great deal more
than communicate and describe with our language.
So, point number one:
language creates and generates, it does not simply describe.
Some examples: think about every single time in your life
you've ever said the word "yes".
Every time.
Now consider: if all those times you had said no,
would your life be different?
You wouldn't be here.
The simple act of saying yes, you move in the world this way,
these doors open, these doors close, and vice versa.
We're not describing.
One of my favorite stories about how language creates
is a baseball story.
Two umpires sitting around talking, and the first one is saying,
"You know, Joe is a fabulous umpire:
there's balls in his strikes, he calls them like they are."
The second umpire said, "No no no, Joe is a great umpire.
There's balls in his strikes, but he calls them like he sees them."
Joe said, "Ya'll both wrong."
He says, "There's balls in my strikes, but they are nothing till I call them."
(Laughter)
When he says "Strike three", it is "Strike three".
This question is for everybody
who is married, or who has ever been married.
It's a simple question:
Is it different being married than not being married?
Yes.
It's different legally, socially, sexually, emotionally, financially.
It's different.
So the question:
how do we go from being not married to being married?
How'd that happen?
Somebody said something.
And in that moment it's different,
and it's not a little bit different, it's really different.
We speak ourselves into the world.
How was the United States of America created?
What is there, in the Archives, right next to the Constitution
in Washington D.C.?
The Declaration.
This country was declared into being.
Now, there was work to do after that, yes,
but without the Declaration does not happen.
How was Jim's Auto Body Shop down the street created?
And all organizations for that matter?
They were also declared into being,
and Jim and the rest of us can find the evidence in the file cabinet,
"We hereby shareholders declare part 100, a, b, c;
August, 1, the company doesn't exist, August, 2, it does."
Leaders get paid to have effective conversations.
Leaders create and continually sustain and cultivate
this non-physical but very real and very powerful thing
called corporate culture,
not with shovels and fertilizer, of course,
but with the conversations they have, the conversations they require,
and the conversations they prohibit in their organizations.
These conversations shape and impact that culture
every bit as much as the culture influences the workplace conversations.
Causality is two-way.
Now, let's get personal.
Think about somebody in your life
with whom you have a close, deep, excellent relationship.
Your conversations with that person
create the experience of intimacy,
generate the space of authenticity and vulnerability, not describe it.
You change those conversations,
and you change that relationship.
You end those conversations,
and you end the relationship.
Back to the wedding: Is there not a moment in most weddings
when the person doing the ceremony will say some version of this:
"Anybody here thinks that so and so and so and so should not be married?
Speak now, or forever hold your peace."
Here's my promise to you:
you stand up in that moment and you scream: "I object!",
you are not describing, you are creating. (Laughter)
Think about it.
You're creating chaos, a crisis,
you're also creating a brand new relationship with the groom.
Think about it.
And a brand, spanking new public identity for yourself.
(Laughter)
I am not saying we don't describe with language.
What I'm saying is that is not all that we do.
And it's this whole other "not all that we do"
that's worth looking at.
One more example.
In times of ongoing change, exactly like those we live in today,
our ability to continually learn is critically important.
And one of the most spectacularly powerful prerequisites for learning,
regardless of whether we're learning to ride a bike,
learning to rebuild a relationship, learning to lead a company,
that prerequisite is a language step,
and it's when the learner says, either internally or out loud,
"I don't know."
Declaring "I don't know" does not describe a state of affairs,
it produces something.
What it produces is called a context for learning;
not physical, very real.
We declare beginnerhood into being.
We speak it so.
Just like the umpire.
Everybody here knows this:
Who here in this room has ever tried to teach somebody something
when the learner thought they already knew it?
How much learning takes place?
Not much.
So point number one:
language creates and generates, it does not simply describe.
Point number two: we live in language.
We live in language.
Now, that expression, what does it mean?
I like to frame it this way.
Who here in this room has the little voice inside?
When it's saying, "What's he talking about?"
that's what I'm talking about.
Who has a debate team?
(Laughter)
One of my favorite quotes of all time is Mark Twain.
He said, "I'm always in a conversation.
And sometimes, other people are involved."
(Laughter)
It's not just Mark Twain, it's us.
It's all of us.
And because we live in language, this is what we do.
You, and I, and all of us, we are confronted with events.
Events at home, events at work, events with our kids,
events in college, events at the beach; events.
And what we do as a human beings, we make up stories about these events,
we hold these stories to be the truth,
and we forget that we made them up.
(Laughter)
Now, when I say "story", I don't mean fib, or fabrication,
it's not a purposeful manipulation, it's not a self-deception.
It's an interpretation.
An explanation.
A crucial distinction for us to possess
is event is not equal explanation.
Event is not equal explanation.
One example:
your child comes home from school,
looks up at you straight in the eye, and says, "I'm stupid."
"What are you talking about?" "I'm stupid."
"What are you talking about?"
"I got an F on my English test."
In this little example, what's the event?
The F on the test.
What's the explanation?
"I'm stupid."
Question: if that kid lives in that conversation long enough,
is that a descriptive thing or a creative thing?
That's a creative thing.
And let's back up from the F on the test and think more broadly.
Is it the events of your life or your explanations about those events
that are more influential
as to the actual actions you end up taking in the world?
It's the explanations.
And not only actual actions we take in the world,
we produce something called results in the world
in a wide variety of areas, do we not?
Yes.
And the explanation is the spring board, not the event.
Out of any given event,
how many possible explanations are there?
Infinite.
What if we can break a habit?
What if we can break the habit of throwing the right wrong scaffolding
on top of our and other people's explanations?
"My explanation is right, yours is wrong, this is right, this is wrong."
What if we can stop that,
and instead have something called 'powerful-unpowerful'.
It would look like this:
Is your explanation powerful or unpowerful,
given the results you say you want?
Does my explanation serve me or not serve me,
given what I say I want to be, do, or have in this situation,
in this relationship?
Always with the tagline "given the results we say we want"
never in a vacuum.
Never in a vacuum.
Because we're doing it already anyway.
That's not in doubt.
We are Mark Twain.
Have you ever known someone who didn't see themselves as doing this?
Because this is about self awareness.
It's not a problem that we do this.
The only problem is we don't see that we're doing it!
Here's what someone must look like who does not see himself as doing this.
It's wonderful to meet everyone today, and it's obvious to me how each of you
are necessarily influenced by your age, your race, your sex,
your degree of travel or non-travel when you were little,
and your cultural, educational, and work histories,
and all these necessarily service filters to which you perceive reality.
I, on the other hand, am somehow blessed with cosmic objectivity,
was somehow born unfettered in this regard,
and unburdened by all the cognitive,
emotional, and cultural filters that clog you up.
My eyes are more like clear panes of glass,
amazingly allowing me access to native reality
in such a way that it yields cosmically objective viewpoints.
How excellent for me
that I was somehow born and blessed with such a gift?
(Laughter) (Applause)
I get to this part in a workshop,
a guy stands up in the back of the room and says,
"My brother, my brother, finally! Someone who understands me!" (Laughter)
"I thought I was alone! The burden of this gift!
The only one with any objectivity!"
Everybody is interpreting, no matter what,
no exceptions, ever.
One of my teachers said this,
"Everything that is said, is said by someone."
(Laughter)
Think about it.
Somebody who was born somewhere,
in some culture, in some time period somewhere,
raised by individual human beings,
each of whom had standards, distinctions, values, practices,
experiences, moods, like each of us.
But folks, here is the consequence, and we know this:
if you do not see yourself as doing this now, making up explanations,
and you couple that with not producing
some important result that you say you want,
well, then the option for you of offering a more powerful interpretation,
it'll never occur to you.
It'll be off your radar screen,
because if you don't think you're doing it now,
there's nothing to update.
And what you have effectively done is take off the table
a spectacular leverage point.
For intervening at the level
you can make a real difference, which is you.
We live in language like a fish lives in water.
A fish is born in water, lives in water; water, water, water.
Question: when would a fish first know, he's born in water and lives in water?
When would he first know that?
When you take him out.
We are born in language, live in language, language all around, language everywhere.
Part of what I want to do today is create a space
where we can begin to look at language instead of living through it,
so we can be more aware of what we're up to in language
and more conscious and more purposeful
about how we wield this creative, generative energy we call language.
We are swimming, each of us, in an ocean of stories,
interpretations, explanations and beliefs,
all of which live in language
and a great majority of which we have long since forgotten that we authored.
Some of these stories, interpretations, explanations, and beliefs
absolutely do not take us today and will not take us tomorrow
where we say we want to go.
But because we have forgotten that we are the author,
we have also forgotten that we have the authority and the ability
to change them, update them, transcend them or let them go.
So number one: language creates and generates.
Plus, number two: we live in language equals,
we are always creating or generating something,
it just may or may not be what we say we want.
What do you most seek in to be, do, or have in your life?
Because regardless of how you answer that question, these questions,
I'm here today to remind you you speak yourself into the world.
We are not human beings, we are human becomings.
We are.
And in this neverending dance of learning, growing, evolving, and becoming,
this ideal, this way of understanding language,
this way of understanding ourselves,
is the key.
I invite you, I challenge you as you leave here today,
to be a more powerful observer of yourself and what you're up to in language
and live with ongoing awareness and acceptance of your role
as the author of your life.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)