What would you talk about at a Ted Talk?

"What would you talk about at a Ted Talk?"

My friend Charu recently spoke at TedEx. She and I met last summer, but both of us had also traveled on Semester at Sea in the past. Her speech was on taking risks, and that’s part of what I love so much about her. She asked me what I would talk about in a Ted Talk, had I been invited, and I sifted through my brain for all of my travels, and passion for dance, and people I met. But perhaps beyond the point, I wanted to speak about changing regret to knowledge, because that’s one of the biggest obstacles I’m working with right now.

I’m a dweller. Although I seem happy and friendly most of the time on the surface, I spend huge amounts of time dwelling in the past. I remember that one time I didn’t get to go to the fourth grade sleepover and went to Chinese class instead (everyone else’s parents let their kids skip class). When I didn’t save that kitten from the landslide earlier when I was eight years old, and it had died of the cold. And that I quit karate because I didn’t finish my homework in time one night.

Needless to say, my parents and my ex probably had the hardest time with all of this. Every little thing reminded me of something I could have, should have, but didn’t do differently in the past. You could imagine the arguments my ex and I had. “Remember that ONE TIME three years ago…how can I trust you now?”

I am the worst “what if” person I know. I was the day-dreamer in lower school, you know, the creative one who was able to write all these stories about why zebras have stripes. But I also created alternative scenarios and dreamed of a time machine.

After all of these years, I knew my regrets were causing more harm than good. I remembered a lot of things in which other people wronged me. I would go back, rewind, replay, and try to come up with alternative scenarios.

One time (a few years ago) someone very, very close to me asked me how school was going. I, of course, complained about the things I should have done. “Oh, well, Econ was awful, the instructor I got was lazy, and I didn’t learn a thing…I don’t know why I didn’t take these classes in high school or chose a different major..”

He listened patiently, and then softly cut me off. “Why don’t you stop looking into the past and start looking into the future?” He said.

I froze.

Suddenly all the hairs on my body stood up. Only a year before that he had almost died in an accident that left his right wrist and hand crushed, front teeth chipped, and one of his legs permanently damaged and shortened. He was talking to me from a wheelchair, and he needed assistance to go to the bathroom. And he was right! He was never going to run or play tennis or the violin again. And here he was, looking into the future whereas I was still trying to justify my past. I was ashamed and thought about what he said for years to come.

My girlfriends often call me up when they need someone to give them encouragement, or support, or to kick their asses. I’m kind of their Crisis Speed-dial Psychologist, and I always did it happily. Whenever they told me about a bad situation, I always tried to flip it around to see the other side of it. It was difficult to do so when angry, but if you make an effort, it’s actually possible. I realized that the first thing I did was call my girlfriends back; when something was upsetting me. But I can’t possibly be able to call someone ALL the time for every little thing.

So I’m starting to experiment with myself. Whenever I was upset, I’d think: why am I upset?

I asked Charu’s question to *Chad. “What would you talk about in a TedTalk?” He didn’t have to think very hard. He’s pretty much the opposite of me; by the age of five he knew he wanted to be a cancer biologist. That was the year he lost his dad to cancer. He began acing every test from the first grade onward. He got rejected from his Dream School. Twice. And he got in. Twice. He’s building and testing a molecule, that someday probably will cure cancer, and he already has a patent under his belt.

It made me think: *Chads, or the natural non-mopers, are extremely rare in this world. My end of the extreme (natural dweller) is much more common in comparison. Most people are somewhere in between. And since changing what thoughts pop into my mind is impossible (I’ve tried for years, it’s who I am), I can at least try to change HOW I’m thinking about it. So let’s go back to that Tradecraft moment. I’d isolated what had happened, but now my next job is to extract value out of it. What did I gain, and how am I going to use that knowledge?

Think things through before blurting.
Pay attention, pay attention, and double check.

I don’t want to be a person full of regrets. I want to be a person full of knowledge.

*name changed