Transcriber: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Maki Sugimoto
OK.
I'm so excited to be in Taiwan. I've always wanted to come to Taiwan.
I would actually like to meet every single person here.
So, in case I don't get the time. I want to put my e-mail address up here.
So that everybody here can e-mail me and say hello.
Uh, the only thing is "I speak Chinese" So, please e-mail me in French.
OK, and next, I need the audience to do something for me.
I need everybody to sing a long-low note.
Hum.
Audience: Hum.
Derek Sivers: Little louder. Hum.
OK, thank you.
So, to do a great talk in Taiwan, to live up to my assignment to be here.
I'm going to talk about "the meaning of life."
Are you ready to learn "the meaning of life?"
I know the answer,are you ready?
OK, what word do you think goes there?
Life is what? Any ideas?
Share something?
Anybody?
OK, I'm going to propose a few ideas.
Let's say that life is choice.
Life is all about choice.
We make a hundred little choices everyday.
We make a hundred big choices in our life.
And these little choices and the big choices we make
change our entire life.
They are what our life is "our choices."
So if life is choice, how do you make good choices?
Here are some ideas.
First, learn to ignore logic and trust emotion.
And what this means is, you know we have different parts of our brain.
So, at the base of our brains,
at the top of our spines is the ancient brain
that we share in common ,with lizards and rabbits.
And it's called "amygdala".
So this emotional brain just stores instincts, fears, and gut feelings, right?
At the front of our brains,
we have the prefrontal cortex.
That is a relative new development that handles logic,
language and prediction.
What's interesting is that everything we learn gets process through here...
And it's process,
but it's permanently stored here as emotions.
So we often like to think ourselves as smart, rational beings,
and whenever we like to make an important choice,
we try to think it through very rationally.
But the truth is, this thing in the front is pretty new.
Which is why a 5-dollar calculator is still better than this at math.
The way you make better choices in life is to understand this about your brain
and understand that this gut-feeling is the combination of everything
you have ever learned in your life
is stored as an emotional gut reaction.
And it's been proven that people make better choices
when they trust their gut-feelings on something that is usually correct
than when they try to over-think it and use their 5-dollar calculator brains.
So next, how to make a choice is learn to see what is only good enough.
And what it means is in this modern world, we have more choices than ever.
But if you try, because all of these choices,
you try to make the best possible choice.
And you drive yourselves crazy trying to find the best option
to do the best thing with your life to choose the best career,
the best school, the best partner,
then you're going to make yourself miserable.
If you learn to understand this feeling and saying
this is good enough and I'm happy with this.
You actually make better choices and you feel better about it.
Next, learn to embrace limits.
What this means is that
every choice you have to make in life causes a little bit of pain.
It's a little tough when you make a choice.
So what's true is we all need some choices in life,
this doesn't mean that more choice is better.
So we find that we are actually happier
when we let other people make some choices for us.
This is why when you go to the doctor,
say if you are very sick and you go to the doctor,
you don't want the doctor just say, "I don't know, what do you want to do?"
(Laughter)
You say "no, tell me what to do!"
And this is also part of appeal of religion.
Religion says "follow these rules."
And it's been proven over history that people like having rules
and to been told what to do.
It relieves some of that for us.
So lastly, learn to choose what's important not urgent.
That means that what is urgent are the SMS messages,
the phone calls, the texts, the e-mails.
These things are urgent.
But what is important is perhaps spending
1,000 dollars learning a new skill
that will really help your career or your life.
Or what's important is giving your full attention to your child,
your partner or even a potential new business relationship.
And what is important is taking time to get outside
and slowly eat a meal of real food.
But none of these things will ever be urgent but these are important.
That's how to make better choices.
So, let's say life is choice.
What do you think? Pretty good argument?
OK, everybody, I need you to sing the note again. Hummm.
OK, next idea.
What if life is time?
We can say life is all about time. The meaning of life is time.
Because life is defined by the time between when you born and when you die.
That's what we call life.
So, the meaning of life is time.
If true, how can you use time wisely?
First is to remember that it's limited.
So imagine if you only have 1 hour with an old friend
you haven't seen in a long time.
You'll make a very good use of that 1 hour.
Or imagine that if you find out tonight that you've only got 1 year left to live.
You'll make the most of the last year you have,
more than you think if your life is infinite.
So you can use time more wisely if you always remember that it's limited.
Next it is important to be mostly future focused
what future focused means the people that are always working toward future.
They floss their teeth, practice hard, exercise, study...
they are putting more importance on the future than the present moment.
The problem is the people who do this are usually more successful in life
and even happier except it often comes at expense of things
required a present focus such as family and relationships.
The classic case of it is a CEO who's been married 6 times.
Very successful but doesn't get any attention to the present moment.
So, it's important to be somewhat present focused.
That means giving your full attention to what you are doing right now.
And not always have your head in the future.
But if you do this too much than those people that are notoriously
like they forget to brush their teeth,
they are not healthy, their bank account are empty.
Because they're never thinking about their future.
So, it's important to only be somewhat present-focused.
And it's important to be somewhat past-focused.
Meaning to remember your past is to live twice.
And if you keep your life in the contest of your past.
It means you remember where you are in life.
And also you realize being able to re-interpret
the past event that happened to you is a very powerful thing.
Because it teaches you that you can rewrite your up coming future as well.
Lastly, the zone is what we call that state
where you are completely lost in what you are doing.
They fund that people at the end of their life
that with the happiest are the one that's been spent
the most time in the state of flow in the zone, loving their work.
So, that's how to use time wisely. What do you think?
Pretty good argument that the meaning of life is time?
Audience: Yeah.
OK, back to the note everybody! Humm.
Now sing the major third! Hum.
OK, next one. What if we said life is memory?
Life has to be about memory because if you don't remember your life,
it's like it never happened.
Think of that horrible feeling when somebody says,
"What did you do last weekend?"
And you say, "I don't know. I don't remember."
And think of that horrible feeling when somebody says,
"Wow! I haven't seen you in years! What did you do last summer?"
And you say, "I don't know."
Now imagine how terrible that would feel that the end of your life
if you can't clearly remember what you did for 20 years?
Maybe you just went to the same job
every single day for 20 years.
You can't even remember it.
That's like it is if you technically live a long life,
but you only experience a short life.
Because you can't remember it.
So I'd said, the meaning of life is memory.
If that's true, how do you make more memories?
That's important to always choose the changing option,
to not get stuck in the routine too much
to do what's novel to do the risky thing.
Move to a new country and learn a new language
Get up on stage and do ridiculous things like standing on chairs. (Laughter)
So, back to the note everybody. The first note. Humm.
The second note. Humm.
Next one. Humm.
OK. What if we said, life is communication?
Life is all about how we communicate with each other.
We are all here together.
A life sentence solitude never communicating is
not a life actually live.
So if this is true, how do you communicate well?
Think of the fable we know through history.
The stories that last for thousands of years.
They often have a moral at the end. They have a point.
But think that if it's just a point, the point would never travel
through history but has a story that attached to it.
And also you have to learn about the culture translations.
A French friend of mine who's been living in Asia for 20 years,
lived in Korea, Japan, China.
I asked him about what he learned in this process.
And he said "Do you know the English word 'quality'"?
I said. "Yes".
He said, "You are from America." I said, "Yes."
He said if I say "quality", you think that mean "it works" right?
I said "Yeah, to me as my American opinion,
when I hear the word "quality", I think "it works."
And he said "Guess what, in Korea,
when you say the word "quality" it's the same English word.
But in Korea when you say "quality", what you mean is "it's brand new".
In Korea that's what it means. Quality means "brand new."
And he said in Japan, when you say "quality" that means it's perfect.
It has no mistake, not a tiniest scratch.
That's what "quality" means in Japan.
He said that in China, when you say "quality", you mean it gives you status.
So he said that you've got to understand the culture context,
even if we all learn English as a common language.
There's still this culture translation that changes the meaning of everything.
So, oh! Let's sing! OK, First note - Humm.
Third - humm.
Humm.
Flat 7 - humm.
What if life is happiness? How can you be happy?
First, you have to approach it side ways.
If you always ask yourself too much "How can I be happy?"
you're going to be miserable.
What if life is learning? We are all here at TED.
We love to learn. How can you best learn?
You have to learn the difference between the idea of the "fixed mindset"
and the "growth mindset".
The "fixed mindset" is when you think "I am good at something"
or "I am bad at something."
This often comes from when you were children
and your parents told you "Oh! You are so good at math!"
You started to think, "I'm good at math". And you think it's fixed.
But as soon as you do poorly on one test.
You think, "I'm not good at math. They were wrong."
But if you understand the "growth mindset".
The growth mindset says that you can do anything with practice.
What's fascinating about this is they give a test to a bunch of children
with the test was intentionally easy at the beginning
and then got impossibly hard.
So it was designed so that they started it out full of confidence
and then every child intentionally fail the test.
What's interesting is they told half of the children this 6 words.
They said "You must be good at this."
They told the other half of the children. "You must have worked really hard."
What's fascinating is that next time they took the test
the 50% that were told "You must be good at this"
they did 30% worse the next time.
And because they fail the second half.
The children that were told "You must have worked very hard"
next time they took the test they did 20% better.
So a 50% difference performance, because of 6 little words they were told.
This is the difference between "fixed mindset" and the "growth mindset."
So, last time. Humm.
Next one. Humm.
What if the Buddhist say life is suffering?
What if said life is love?
What if you said life is nothing but replicating DNA?
(Laughter)
OK, so let's take a break for a minute.
So few years ago, I started learning some Chinese.
I learned the simplified Chinese.
I'm just fascinating with the writing.
And what I love the most about it is that I'm trying to memorize
how to write these characters.
Oh well! That's no... wait hold on. It was translated. That's funny!
It's somewhere between my computer and their computer...
the simplified got turning into that.
Anyway. So, every time I was learning a character,
I would try to think of the pieces that make the character.
And say what does that mean?
Why is that the character for "thanks" for "Xie" is "word", "body" and "inch".
Does that mean to say "thanks" is the word you speak
then give your body a inch of respectable space?
I don't know. That was the meaning I put into it right?
They help me remember it.
So, character for "you" is a "person" "bow" and "small."
So I think, OK, "you" is a person you give a small "bow" to.
That's how I remember it. That's kind of meaning I put into it.
I love this one, the character for "Ming", for "name."
"Evening" and "mouth." I thought it was romantic.
I thought your name is the word that the other mouths
speaks only in the evening. (Laughter)
That's the only person that knows my real name. That's sexy.
And I thought this one was weird "appearance" is "tree" and "sheep."
So I thought about a sheep hiding behind the tree,
then "ta da!" making its appearance.
But it made me wonder that what's the historical meaning behind this?
Sorry, I'm gonna go about one minute over. Changing a subject.
There's a band in the 80s called "Talking Heads."
And they had these really interesting lyrics. I love their lyrics.
I read once in an interview with them.
The way that they wrote their lyrics is they would write evocative phrases
on the little piece of paper.
And they would cut them up and they would throw them into a bowl
and they stir them around.
And they pull out little pieces of paper one of the time.
And they would put them into order then they put them out,
then put them into the song in order.
And the reason for doing this is
they say that we wanted to have listener to create the meaning to the song.
We only just assume that if somebody's on stage
singing something into a loud microphone, it must have meaning to them.
And there's the artist statement that says,
"No, the audience choose the meaning for themselves."
So, I went back to my Chinese.
I found this dictionary called "Wan Lin Chinese Dictionary".
They told the etymological history behind every character.
And all these character that I thought "the sheep", "tree". "ta-da"...
It turned out that because that I was learning the simplified Chinese.
All of these character have been replaced with just phonetic sound likes.
And all these meaning that I put into it wasn't there.
So, getting to the point. All of this had no meaning!
I had projected all of the meaning into it.
All of these things about the "tree" an,d the "sheep" and "Ta-da".
the "evening" and "mouth" and the sexy thing...
None of that meaning was there.
I had projected all of that meaning into it.
So it made me thinking life about what else has no meaning!
So what does it mean that all of your previous attempts
at somethings have failed?
And what does it mean that you went to a very prestigious well-known school?
Or what does it mean you're minority in your own country?
Or anything else has no meaning at all!
You projected all of that meaning into it. It has no inherit meaning.
So, back to the note. Hummm.
Wait. Hold that note little longer.
What if we said that life is choice?
Next note. Humm.
What if we said life is time?
Next note. Humm. Memory!
What if life is communication?
I said the answer is... Are you ready?
The meaning of life...
Life is just life. It has no inherit meaning at all.
You just project with every meaning suits you.
But the most important thing and really the punch line
in this whole talk is remembering to remove
whatever meaning is holding you back.
Because they say that humans are 75% of water,
but I think that humans are also 99% unused potential.
And most of us, the thing holding you back from where you are to where you want to be
is always in your head.
And it's usual because you put meaning on something that isn't there.
If you learned that life has no meaning, then you can do whatever you want.
Thank you.
(Applause)