Why our stories are going to kill us | Andrew Peek | TEDxToronto

Andrew Peek is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor.

Having served as a Partner / Co-Founder (Jet Cooper, Pilot) and Director (FreshBooks, Shopify) to some of Canada’s most successful start-ups. Andrew has been consistently relied upon to chart paths through uncertainty and make predictions on where technology will lead us in the future.

He is currently the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Vox Pop Labs – a data-driven approach to decision-making, the Co-Founder of Next to North – a film production studio operating in Toronto and Vancouver, and the Co-Chair of Camp Reset – a digital detox summer camp for adults.

On October 22, 2015, some of Toronto’s greatest thinkers and change-makers joined together onstage at TEDxToronto to deliver powerful talks and performances that embodied our theme, Thresholds.

To learn more, visit: tedxtoronto.com.
Follow TEDxToronto on Twitter (@TEDxToronto), Facebook (TEDxToronto), and Instagram (@TEDxToronto).

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I mean we've all got a story
we like to tell,

myself included, so here goes.

As a kid, I sang in a pretty decent choir.

We'd go around the world
performing for popes and presidents.

But upon turning teenager,

I decided I was going to trade that in
for a chance of being cool.

So, for me, this meant cigarettes,
skateboards, petty crime.

I'm sure you can fill in the rest.

I failed miserably
at this particular brand of cool

and then proceeded to become target 1A
for bullies for quite some time.

Until finally, I found a path to relevance

by stumbling into a role with nearly
universal high school importance:

selling drugs.

As I crossed into adulthood,
that decision and those that came with it

nearly cost me everything in my life,
everything I'd worked for.

But, as it happened,
I was given a second chance

by a woman I haven't seen in 14 years

but who is out there
in the audience today -

Justice Mavin Wong, thank you.

This is where my story begins.

I'm sure, no doubt,
you tell yours just as well.

We are unbelievably skilled
at telling our own story -

the progression, the adversity,

always managing to convey this sense
of triumph in the present moment.

And often, there's a hopefulness,

sometimes even a confidence
in what the future has in store for us.

We're like these master storytellers,

and we... we're our favourite story.

But our stories are going to kill us.

Already, I can tell you they limit us,

they hold us down and constrain us.

Sometimes they even suffocate us.

To their credit, though,
at least they're consistent.

They all follow the same
narrative pattern,

what we've come
to call the hero's journey.

It's just that the hero's journey
we see played out on the big screen

teaches us that change happens
inside the hero,

while the world around them
stays constant.

Everyone effectively waits
for the hero to be reborn.

And every time I see this,
I can't help but think to myself,

how beautiful would it be
if the world worked that way,

if it waited for us
to come around on our own time

to fully embrace our new selves,

and then step back into the picture

with both feet
firmly planted on the ground.

Wouldn't that be nice?

It's not at all how it happens.

Instead, while we're out legalising
same-sex marriage in one moment,

the very idea of a binary gender system
or a two-spouse limit

is being challenged in the next.

I can assure you, what we call
gay marriage today

is going to seem like a traditional idea
to us a couple of years from now.

That's the world we live in.

We don't get to experience change
as this beautiful arc

that moves at a pace
we're comfortable with.

Change comes quickly and without pause.

And yet, studies show that
our willingness to change

goes down as we age.

It's built right into our expectations
of people at different stages of life.

We expect our friends to understand
concepts like white privilege

but are satisfied if our parents
can simply avoid stereotypes.

And our grandparents, I mean,
we hope for the best.

(Laughter)

But sometimes we resign ourselves
to the fact 'old dogs, new tricks'.

It's just that that's a card we're not
going to get to play for much longer.

You see, unlike my dear grandmother,
who's managed to get through life

without ever pumping her own gas
or using a cell phone,

my soon-to-be 14-year-old goddaughter

will grow up with an incredible amount
of technological change

happening everywhere around her.

And unlike our willingness to change,
which decreases linearly,

technology's rate of change
is exponential.

In fact, The Law of Accelerating Returns,

that which governs
technology's rate of change,

is quick to point out
that the amount of progress we saw

in the whole of the 20th century
was effectively repeated

during the first 14 years
of Jessica's life.

And what just took us 14 years
will take us only seven more from today.

By 2040, when Jessica is 38 years old

and beginning to consider
children of her own,

a 20th century-worth of progress
will be happening multiple times a year.

Think about that.

What wisdom can we possibly impart
to a young person

about living in a world
we can't even fathom?

That's the nature
of an exponential curve -

it takes a long time to reveal itself,

but when it does,
almost nothing stays the same.

And though we prefer to talk about drones
and self-driving cars,

historians tell us that it's actually
technology's ability

to deliver us new ideas,
which in turn change our behaviour,

which we most often underestimate
and fail to predict.

We're not only slow to predict them,
we're slow to adapt

because our stories weigh a ton.

Let me give you an example.

How many of us recall being nudged

towards a good career
when we were young -

safe bets, like law
or medicine or accounting?

These were the careers
to aspire to, we were told.

They're also amongst the top
of the chopping block

when it comes to automation.

Turns out machines don't need
eight years of school

to memorise facts and patterns.

But will we seriously start teaching
today's middle schoolers

that they may want to avoid
these at-risk jobs?

Or are we wrapped
in the warmth of a story

that we've been writing for decades -

that degrees always mean better jobs?

Better jobs lead to better pay,
better pay to better possessions,

and better possessions
afford us greater security.

But how much security can there be

if we're already spending two-thirds
of our income on a single-family home

because that's our version
of a storybook ending?

The truth is that the further
we are into a story,

the less likely we are
to want to rewrite it.

So we stick to the script.

Now, at this point,
I think I need to go on the record

and tell you guys that I love stories.

Really, I do. I've got a company
in the business of telling stories even.

But as we start to peer over the horizon,
I think it's hard not to notice

that what's needed here
is something lighter,

something easier to move,

something malleable
that can keep up with the pace.

Like an idea.

What would that look like,
do you think? The 'idea of me'.

Now granted, as far as
psychological constructs go,

at first, the two seem strikingly similar.

The story of me, the idea of me.
Almost like semantics even.

I want to make sure you're with me here

before I go any further
down this rabbit hole.

When I talk about a story,
I'm talking about something we write once.

But 'the idea of me' is something
we rewrite every day.

It's untying ourselves
from these goals we have way out there

that assume the world out there
looks much the same as it does here today.

So letting go of what
should be for what is.

So with that all squared away,

I'd like to tell you the most recent time
I had to rewrite my own story.

It would have been
just over two years ago now.

After about a decade
in the industry, at least for me,

my partners and I achieved something

most entrepreneurs consider
to be a benchmark of success,

especially in tech:

we sold our company.

We didn't just sell it to anyone,
but to the next great chapter

in Canadian technology history,

a company whose IPO
you might have followed this year.

I got to tell you,
it's a pretty great story.

I don't think I could
have written a better script.

Sure enough, so the story goes,
roughly six months later, I was let go.

Who am I kidding?
We're all friends here.

Six months later, I was fired.

(Laughter)

After a decade of writing my story
as a tech entrepreneur,

I was fired by the top act
in town. It's a long fall.

While it wasn't immediately obvious
to me in the moment,

there was something beautiful about having
the rug pulled out from under me that day.

Like a lightness that came from realising
I didn't actually vanish

by virtue of losing my story.

That there, in the empty space,
was an idea of who I might be next.

At the same time,
it was deeply unsettling.

I found the switch from story to idea
really challenged my sovereignty.

You see, my story had one author
with veto power and final say

on the interpretation
of all the events in my life.

When it's a story,
that's kind of how it is.

We get to choose
how we perceive those events,

and we do so in a way that best suits us,

that leaves the story as much
intact as possible.

Got bullied as a kid? You pick the reason.

Got let go? Ultimately, you're going
to decide why that was.

Stories force us
into these either/or choices,

where either it fits the script
we have for ourselves or it doesn't.

But 'the idea of me',

I quickly realised 'the idea of me'
isn't built on an either/or at all.

It's built on 'and'.

Instead of getting caught up
with whether we're a success or a failure,

whether we're right or we're wrong,

'and' reminds us that both are true.

In fact, all things new are born this way
by standing at the intersection

and holding the tension
between two choices that already exist

so that a third can emerge.

And it isn't just true
for 'the idea of me',

this is true for all ideas.

When you start to tune into it,

you can start to see ideas
being added to everywhere.

Gender, privacy, mental health, democracy:

take any one of these
as ideas for a moment

and ask yourself whether you remember
a time when they were simpler.

I know I do.

When I was growing up,
gender used to mean boy or girl.

If you go back just a couple of years,

mental health used to only imply
there was something wrong with you.

But then these ideas got bigger.

We kept adding to them.

They expanded.

Maybe the most prescient example
from the past year is racism.

This is an idea
going through an expansion.

You see, racism started out
as a struggle for equal rights,

but the achievement of equal rights
didn't dispel the idea of racism,

it just expanded the conversation

to include all of racism's
less obvious expressions.

Today, when we talk about racism,

we talk about an idea
that's many layers deep.

We talk about that
which we can't always point to

or that's not necessarily propagated
by any one group or person.

But it's there.

It's there in privilege.

It's there in access.
It's there in protection.

We talk about racism as being systemic,
a system we're all a part of

but only a fraction of us benefit from.

This is how an idea gets bigger with time.

And if, in turn, you choose
to see yourself as an idea,

then hearing you might be the beneficiary
of a still racist system is not a threat -

it's a chance to expand your own idea,

to add in that new perspective.

But if we're a story, we're going
to find ourselves at an either/or impasse,

where either we protect the part
of the script that says we're not racist

or we'll have a lot of rewriting to do.

Stories are how we've come
to construct our identity.

And we're terrified
to lose track of who we are.

But I've got to tell you, I think this is
where we're getting it terribly wrong.

When you build your identity on a story,
it becomes a once and for all discovery.

We even talk about people before and after

this elusive moment
where they 'found themselves'.

But if you believe yourself to be an idea,
then identity becomes a moving target,

a never-ending discovery.

Not just because the idea of you
is always expanding,

but so too are the ideas all around you.

Every moment becomes this wonderful chance

to recalibrate, to revisit
your relationship to another idea.

It's an acknowledgement that
'I'm not racist' is a temporary state,

just like 'I'm a capitalist'
or 'I'm a feminist',

or frankly, 'I'm straight.'

This is the practice, this is growth,
this is what growth is.

And so rather than fearing
the fast-paced future

hiding in plain view,

why not choose to see it as the force
bringing us into alignment

with the rest of life?

Everywhere we look,
our systems are wired for growth.

From our words and concepts
to the neuroplasticity of our brain.

From the evolution of our species
to the universe at large.

When it's change out there,
we feel excitement,

we feel a hopefulness
about a tomorrow that is bigger

and more full and more inclusive.

We chase after it with our art
and our science and our debates.

When it's out there, we demand change,
we see the possibility for it everywhere -

everywhere except in the way
we talk about ourselves.

Only there do we write the story once
and expect the future to obey.

The good news for us
is that it never does.

Whether an arrest or getting fired,

divorce, disease,
the death of a loved one,

maybe a failure of some kind,

we've all seen our stories interrupted.

We don't write these tragic bits
into the original script,

they're wrenches that are thrown our way
that force us to rewrite again and again.

And I think that's what
'the idea of me' needs to be -

a commitment to that rewriting every day.

Not because we have to,
because we want to.

Because we love to create,
and it is infinitely easier to do so

without a story dragging along behind.

You know, Bob Dylan knew this
when he famously said, tongue in cheek,

'Do not create anything'
because 'it will not change' -

implying, of course, that the world
might love what you make,

but you'll be different
by the time they do.

As an artist, he refused to get married
to his own mythology,

the story of Dylan, the folk singer
or the voice of protest.

Steve Jobs knew this

when he continuously cannibalised
Apple's product lines.

He knew falling in love with the story

that Apple was the best at computers,
the best at phones, the best at tablets,

was a death sentence,

in that it meant the end
was just around the corner.

He knew creating was an act of letting go.

And now, after quite a few rewrites,

and though sometimes
kicking and screaming,

I'm beginning to see this for myself.

And I think it's something
we should all embrace.

Because creating isn't reserved
for artists and entrepreneurs,

it's the natural state in all of us.

All technology ever does is put that power
to create squarely in our hands

because it knows something about us

that we're still
not quite ready to admit -

that more than being our favourite story,
we'd rather be our greatest creation,

an idea waiting to happen.

Thank you.

(Applause)