WEBVTT

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Imagine it's one year from today,

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and we all agree that we're going
to come back for a reunion.

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Not maybe, absolutely;

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we'll all come back,
exactly the same group of us,

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and we're to come back for a reunion.

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Only we're going to share the things
that have happened in our life

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during the last 12 months of our life.

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We're going to share
what it is that we dreamed up

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when we were here
at TEDx in October of 2016,

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and what's happening
in our lives now,

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365 days later.

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What would you love
to be saying about your life?

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What would you love to say
in the four areas

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where humans actually do create results?

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We live in a spiral universe.


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In a spiral,

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there's an ever upward pull
of becomingness.

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A little blade of grass feels it
as it presses through cement

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to become more of itself
today than yesterday.

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A tree presses to the edges of itself

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to become more of itself
today than yesterday.

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And humans feel the same thing; 
we just feel it a little differently.

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We feel it through longing,
and we feel it through discontent.

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We feel a longing for greater freedom,

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we feel a discontent with
certain circumstances and situations.

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And if we just keep breathing
another 365 days,

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we will create results,

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because that's what humans do.

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Now, we create results in four areas.

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We create results
in health and well-being.

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You could look at your own results
right now in health and well-being,

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but what'll you love a year from now?

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Because if you keep breathing,
you'll have results in that area.

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Humans create results in relationships.

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Some of them are wonderful,

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some of them are deep,

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some of them are supportive,
some of them are not.

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What would you love 
in the area of your relationships?

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To bring someone special in your life?

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Would you love to transform
a relationship you're in?

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Maybe a relationship is on auto-pilot,
and you'd love to have it go deeper.

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Humans create results in vocation.

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What we do with our time and talent,

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whether we earn income doing it or not,

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because just by our beingness,

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we're doing something
with our time and talent.

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Even if we think,
"I've made so many mistakes,

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I'm going to crawl in bed
and put the covers over my head."

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What I create that day
is "covers-over-my-head day in bed."

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I don't get to not create
out of my experience.

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And humans create results -

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here we go - humans create results -

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humans create results

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in time and money, freedom or constraint.

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So if you think about next year
when we come to the reunion,

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what would you love to be saying?

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You know, on my calendar
the last 12 months,

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here's what were the evidences
of more freedom for me, and time.

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More freedom for me
in the economic freedom

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where I could go where I wanted to go,
do what I wanted to do,

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but maybe even more importantly,
and I believe it is,

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actually give to the things
that matter to you.

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Provide some of the things
for those that matter to you as well.

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Now, about 40 years ago,

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I got very, very interested
in transformation.

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I was getting my undergraduate degree,

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and I cared deeply about kids.

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I longed for quite a while
to become a schoolteacher.

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While I was getting
my undergraduate degree

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I wanted to study everything I could
in the field of transformation.

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And the purpose was to help
children discover a kind of self-esteem

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so no matter what their circumstances
or their situations,

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they could actually believe

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that they could become
the person they wanted to be,

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and achieve the things
they wanted to achieve.

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I went on a got a graduate degree
in counseling psychology;

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I earned an honorary doctorate;

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my first book, "Building Your Field
of Dreams," became a PBS special;

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I had the privilege of working
with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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over the course of seven years,

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creating week-long conversations.

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I could just sit right next to him
for a week at a time over seven years,

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three different times.

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Conversations with world leaders about
how to transform our world's results.

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I got very interested
in how results happened,

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and how to transform results.

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I had the privilege of speaking
at the United Nations

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with the Martin Luther King kids
and Ghandi's grandkids

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and creating a 64-day season
for nonviolence,

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particularly teaching junior high kids

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about how to solve problems
through acts of nonviolence and caring.

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And I spoke at the UN
three different times,

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one of them with Rosa Parks.

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I was building my dreams;
they mattered to me.

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I had the privilege of working
and flying to Cape Town, South Africa,

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and meeting with Nelson Mandela.

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I had a deep dream
to ask him the question,

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"How did you transform your results?

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How did you be a man
who gets sentenced to life in prison -

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you served 27 years in hard prison -

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and then not only do you get
out of prison before you die,

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but you actually then become

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president of the country
that sentences you to life.

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Who on our planet does this?

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How did you do that?

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What was going on inside of you?"

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And that has been my quest
and my interest and my deep longing

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so that I could transfer that

NOTE Paragraph

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and offer that to the people
that I had the privilege of working with,

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working with tens of thousands
of people around the world

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around changing their results.

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Does it mean that because
every time I've studied this

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and worked with my own life and others,

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that every time for me
my dreams came true?

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No. Does it mean
everything I did worked out? No.

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My first business 
that I spent 23 years building -

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I took my eye off the ball,

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I hired somebody to run the finances,
it was totally mismanaged.

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I lost everything I had built.

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It was heartbreaking to me.

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But there are three steps

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that dream builders use
either consciously or unconsciously

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to transform their results

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so that the dream wins over conditions;

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so that the dream wins over time;

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so that the dream wins over
all kinds of circumstances, situations,

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and even our history,
no matter how long it's been there,

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and sometimes
it's been there for decades.

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About 150 years ago, a man decided
to do an experiment with his life.

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That's what we're invited to do
over the next 12 months.

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Keep breathing and do
an experiment with life.

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He went to the woods, Henry David Thoreau,

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and he said, prior to his - this quote
that's up here, he said,

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"I wanted to learn to suck
the marrow out of aliveness.

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I wanted to live a life
I loved living while I was living it.

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I went to the woods

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because I wished to deliberately front
the only essential facts of life

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and see if life could not teach me
what it had to teach,

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and not when I came to die

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discover that I had not
even really lived."

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Now, Henry did this two-year,
two-month, two-day experiment,

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and then he wrote an essay about it.

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In the conclusion of that essay,

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he writes a quote that is worldwide known:

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"If one advances confidently
in the direction of their dream

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and endeavors to live
the life they've imagined,"

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he said, "I learned this
at least by my experiment,

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if one advances confidently
in the direction of their dream."

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Well, you can't advance in a direction
you don't already have an idea of.

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And the first thing dream builders
or people who evolve their results do

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is they have an idea of what they
would really love their life to be like.

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If I say to you "your front door";

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if I say to you "the kitchen sink
where you live";

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if I say to you "the bed
you sleep in most often";

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you did not see the letters
B E D or S I N K or D O O R,

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you saw pictures.

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You saw a picture of a door,
a picture of a sink, a picture of a bed.

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This is important for us to know
as building a dream,

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because most of us dream dreams,
and we're vague.

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We don't really see a dream.

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We say, "I want it to be better,
I want it to be easier.

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I'd love to travel,"

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and there's no picture
for where we would travel.

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The more specific you are
and the more specific you are right now,

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this talk will mean way more to you
over the course of this next year.

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What would you really love?

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Most of us ask this question:

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What do I think I can do?

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What does the economy say I can do?

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What do you think I can do?
What does my mother think I can do?

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What would you love?
is the right question.

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You'll have different thoughts
on the frequency of that question

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than you will have
on the "What do I think?" question.

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What would you really love?

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Because you're going to have results
in those four areas anyway.

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Now, I knew nothing about this in 1966.

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In 1966, I had grown up
in a very, very happy family.

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My mom and dad,
my sister, eight years older.

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This was 1966.

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I was a junior in high school,

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I was homecoming princess,

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had a lead in the junior play.

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I was my class vice president,

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had three best friends
from the time I was 10 years old,

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and we'd hung out together,
and done many, many things together.

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In spring break of 1966,

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my high school sweetheart
had gone off to college,

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came home on spring break,

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and I got pregnant.

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May 1, I tell my mom and dad
I'm now pregnant.

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My mother wept for me as if I had died.

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We had a very hasty
10-person wedding middle of May.

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The high school principal
calls me in, says,

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"Are these rumors true?"

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I said, "If the rumors are I'm pregnant,
married, in that order, then yes."

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He just put his head
in his hands and said,

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"Mary, you will not allowed
to return here for your senior year.

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It would be totally inappropriate

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for a pregnant girl to get mixed in
with the normal girls,

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but we have a place for people like you.

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It's a high school
not held during daylight.

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It's across the river -
in a part of Portland

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I hadn't been allowed
to drive in after dark -

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and it's where the pregnant girls
and delinquent boys go to high school."

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So that's where I began my senior year,

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and my first son was born
in December of 1966.

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Only now, the mothers
of my best girlfriends

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would no longer let them see me
because I was married, I was pregnant.

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It was as if what I had was contagious.

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I graduated from Washington
Evening High School in May of 1967,

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and in July of 1967,
I was in a Portland hospital,

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having been diagnosed
with fatal kidney disease.

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One kidney was totally
destroyed with nephritis,

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the other kidney was 50% destroyed
in active nephritis.

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And in 1967, this is a death sentence.

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We don't have dialysis,
we don't have transplants,

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and every medical physician,
doctor, specialist, surgeon

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all said the same thing:

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"The best we can do
is maybe give you six months

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if we can get the blood toxin level
in your body reduced enough

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to remove that surgery,

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then maybe you'll have six months."

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And I was terrified.

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And my belief system at that time
was this was happening to me.

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I was being punished for being a bad girl,
and I was being punished.

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Well, the night before the surgery,

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a woman walked in my room at 10 pm

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who identified herself
as a chaplain offering prayer

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for people who'll have surgeries
the next day - did I want prayer?

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And I'm thinking, you know,
well, the God of my upbringing

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probably needed to have
some anger management classes.

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(Laughter)

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It's the only God I knew at the time,
and I said, "Well, maybe."

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She didn't do anything
that looked like prayer.

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She talked to me,
and she asked me to tell her

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what had been going on in my life
the last year or two, which I did,

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and when I was finished, she said,
"Mary, everything's created twice."

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"What do you mean?"

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She said, "You know this.
In fact, everybody knows it.

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Almost nobody knows
the power of knowing this.

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The bed you're on, your nightgown,
the sheet covering you,

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the walls, ceiling, floor,
all the machinery you're hooked up to

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first had to be a thought
before it could be a thing.

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You know this."

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Then she said, "I hear
how much you love your little boy,

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but I also hear how much
you've been hating yourself.

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You feel like you shamed yourself,
you shamed your school, your family.

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And now that you're thinking
how everything's created twice,

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could you consider
that there could be a correlation

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because, notice this Mary,

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if you think embarrassing thoughts,
your cheeks get red;

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if you think scary enough thoughts,
your heart beats faster.

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It doesn't mean
anything scary is going on;

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it doesn't even mean anything
embarrassing is going on;

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it means you think those thoughts,
and your body responds.

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Could it be that if you think
enough toxic thoughts about yourself,

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there could be a correlative, a toxicity,
that goes on in your body

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that actually could threaten your life?"

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Well, this was so beyond

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anything that I had
any framework for at that point.

NOTE Paragraph

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"Could you believe it's possible
that we could do a prayer or say words

00:11:53.539 --> 00:11:55.842
and this could completely
be eliminated from you,

00:11:55.842 --> 00:11:57.791
and when they come
to get you for surgery,

00:11:57.791 --> 00:11:59.740
they say, 'Get up, go home. You're fine.'

00:11:59.740 --> 00:12:00.904
Could you believe that?"

00:12:00.904 --> 00:12:02.517
And I told her the truth: "No."

00:12:02.517 --> 00:12:04.862
I didn't believe that
was going to happen for me.

00:12:04.862 --> 00:12:06.875
There was not one part
of me that believed.

00:12:06.875 --> 00:12:09.365
I was way more belief
in my pain at that point.

00:12:09.365 --> 00:12:11.513
She said: "Alright,
if you can't believe this,

00:12:11.513 --> 00:12:14.155
remember there's an infinite
number of possibilities.

00:12:14.155 --> 00:12:16.831
There has to be one
where instead of - we do this prayer,

00:12:16.831 --> 00:12:22.240
we pull all the genesis of this dis-ease
that's going on in you

00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:24.691
and put it in the kidney
that's going to be removed.

00:12:24.691 --> 00:12:26.545
And when it's removed, you get better.

00:12:26.545 --> 00:12:28.707
Could you believe that's possible?"

00:12:28.707 --> 00:12:30.318
I didn't know if it was possible,

00:12:30.318 --> 00:12:32.602
but I could tell
she believed it was possible,

00:12:32.602 --> 00:12:34.311
and I believe it was the first time

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:34.311 --> 00:12:37.405
I ever chose to believe on the frequency
of someone else's belief,

00:12:37.405 --> 00:12:39.164
who was operating at a higher domain.

00:12:39.164 --> 00:12:40.604
I said, "Maybe it's possible."

00:12:40.604 --> 00:12:44.231
Remember, this is before Sheldrake
and David Bohm, and quantum field science,

00:12:44.231 --> 00:12:46.465
and all the things -

00:12:46.723 --> 00:12:49.336
at this point, there was
no mind-body clinic at Harvard.

00:12:49.336 --> 00:12:52.855
I mean, in the last 40 years,
so much has happened.

00:12:52.855 --> 00:12:55.072
So she said, "Alright,
let's work with that.

00:12:55.072 --> 00:12:56.071
One idea," she says,

00:12:56.071 --> 00:12:59.393
"one part of you open to the idea;
let's work with that."

00:12:59.393 --> 00:13:01.063
She said some words.

00:13:01.063 --> 00:13:05.329
She gave me a prescriptive for how to use
my thinking and my emotion,

00:13:05.329 --> 00:13:06.949
and then she left,

00:13:07.013 --> 00:13:08.988
and they did the surgery,

00:13:08.988 --> 00:13:10.983
and about a week or two later,

00:13:10.983 --> 00:13:13.776
my numbers were stable -
enough that they said,

00:13:13.776 --> 00:13:16.123
"You might have a bit more time.
You can go home."

00:13:16.123 --> 00:13:18.225
I went to my parents' house
in an ambulance,

00:13:18.225 --> 00:13:20.196
where my son and husband were staying.

00:13:20.196 --> 00:13:22.205
I could hardly get my head off the pillow.

00:13:22.205 --> 00:13:25.692
But subtly - I was in many times a week
at first, and over time, less time

00:13:25.692 --> 00:13:27.823
as being checked,
having my numbers checked.

00:13:27.823 --> 00:13:31.745
And subtly over time, my numbers
not only stabilized, but improved.

00:13:31.745 --> 00:13:34.711
And four or five months later,
I'm sitting in a doctor's office

00:13:34.711 --> 00:13:37.440
with a surgeon and a specialist
and my regular GP,

00:13:37.440 --> 00:13:39.441
and they're scratching
their heads, saying,

00:13:39.441 --> 00:13:42.146
"We have no science
for why your one kidney

00:13:42.146 --> 00:13:43.479
is not only getting [better]

00:13:43.479 --> 00:13:46.858
it seems to be functioning
as a perfectly whole fine kidney.

00:13:46.858 --> 00:13:49.507
We don't have any science for this.

00:13:49.507 --> 00:13:51.491
We'll put medical anomaly on your chart.

00:13:51.491 --> 00:13:53.502
Whatever you've been doing,
keep doing it."

00:13:53.502 --> 00:13:54.979
(Laughter)

00:13:54.979 --> 00:13:58.375
That's when I began to do the things
that I've told you about.

00:13:58.375 --> 00:14:01.198
I got into undergraduate school,
I got into graduate school,

00:14:01.198 --> 00:14:03.794
and over time as I reflected
about what happened,

00:14:03.794 --> 00:14:06.777
and I studied people
who transform their results -

00:14:07.329 --> 00:14:09.405
people who transform their results,

00:14:09.405 --> 00:14:13.414
not just wish for a better result,
but actually transform their results -

00:14:13.414 --> 00:14:15.963
there are three things they do,
every one of them,

00:14:15.963 --> 00:14:18.589
whether they do it
consciously or unconsciously.

00:14:18.589 --> 00:14:22.156
When I transformed my health result,
I was totally an unconscious competent.

00:14:22.156 --> 00:14:23.789
I just did what she told me to do.

00:14:23.789 --> 00:14:25.767
She said: "Here's what's going to happen.

00:14:25.767 --> 00:14:29.511
When you have that surgery, yet your mind
is very much like a rubber band,

00:14:29.511 --> 00:14:31.186
you thought those thoughts so much,

00:14:31.186 --> 00:14:33.856
your mind is going to want
to think those toxic thoughts.

00:14:33.856 --> 00:14:35.801
They're going to remove that one kidney.

00:14:35.801 --> 00:14:38.966
Every time you notice yourself
starting to think of toxic thoughts,

00:14:38.966 --> 00:14:40.763
say, "No, that left with the kidney,"

00:14:40.763 --> 00:14:43.539
and then immediately imagine yourself -

00:14:43.539 --> 00:14:46.077
like you're walking in
and getting into your own bed -

00:14:46.077 --> 00:14:46.947
imagine yourself."

00:14:46.947 --> 00:14:49.033
I wanted my two big dreams:

00:14:49.033 --> 00:14:51.557
I want to be a teacher,
and I want to raise my son.

00:14:51.557 --> 00:14:55.111
"Imagine you're walking into a school
with a five-year-old's hand in yours.

00:14:55.111 --> 00:14:57.015
Feel the warmth of his hand in yours.

00:14:57.015 --> 00:14:59.098
He goes into his kindergarten class.

00:14:59.098 --> 00:15:00.961
You hear the click-click of your heels.

00:15:00.961 --> 00:15:03.005
Around the corner, there's your classroom,

00:15:03.005 --> 00:15:04.723
and you're a teacher, and he's five.

00:15:04.723 --> 00:15:05.810
Imagine yourself.

00:15:05.810 --> 00:15:08.778
Then fast forward: imagine
you're sitting in a big auditorium.

00:15:08.778 --> 00:15:10.431
There's caps and gowns down there.

00:15:10.431 --> 00:15:14.089
Your son's 18; he's graduating
from high school, and you're there,

00:15:14.089 --> 00:15:15.816
and your teaching career is growing.

00:15:15.816 --> 00:15:19.237
Then fast forward and imagine
you're in the front row of a wedding.

00:15:19.237 --> 00:15:20.754
You're the mother of the groom.

00:15:20.754 --> 00:15:22.732
Your son's marrying the love of his life.

00:15:22.732 --> 00:15:24.633
And your teaching career is flourishing.

00:15:24.633 --> 00:15:26.168
Keep repeating that."

00:15:26.448 --> 00:15:27.893
I had done that unconsciously.

00:15:27.893 --> 00:15:30.137
Every time I would start
to think, "Oh my gosh!"

00:15:30.137 --> 00:15:33.385
and start to generate
that wavelength of self-loathing,

00:15:33.567 --> 00:15:35.482
I said: "No, that left with the kidney."

00:15:35.482 --> 00:15:36.486
Then I saw myself,

00:15:36.486 --> 00:15:39.401
and I imagined being the person
taking him into kindergarten,

00:15:39.401 --> 00:15:41.576
being the person seeing him graduate,

00:15:41.576 --> 00:15:44.639
being the person sitting
in the front row of his wedding.

00:15:44.639 --> 00:15:46.485
I had no idea the power of that.

00:15:46.805 --> 00:15:50.606
But after 45 years of studying
and tens of thousands of people,

00:15:50.799 --> 00:15:52.921
what I know are these three things.

00:15:53.197 --> 00:15:56.829
That if when we get together
next year for our reunion,

00:15:56.829 --> 00:16:00.437
and if you would love
to be able to share results,

00:16:00.437 --> 00:16:02.598
in particularly
one or two areas of your life

00:16:02.598 --> 00:16:06.035
where you feel the greatest longing
and the most discontent,

00:16:06.275 --> 00:16:08.562
then these three things will help you.

00:16:08.722 --> 00:16:13.778
Number one, you want to create
with clarity a specific dream.

00:16:13.778 --> 00:16:17.936
Imagine yourself: health,
what would you love? relationships.

00:16:18.064 --> 00:16:21.074
As clear the dream you can design,

00:16:21.074 --> 00:16:23.531
the more your brain
can work on that frequency.

00:16:23.531 --> 00:16:26.122
You know if you want to change
your television channel,

00:16:26.122 --> 00:16:27.776
you have to change the frequency.

00:16:27.776 --> 00:16:30.076
You know if you want
to change the radio station,

00:16:30.076 --> 00:16:31.913
you've got to change the frequency.

00:16:31.913 --> 00:16:33.998
We're not really different.

00:16:34.208 --> 00:16:36.234
We think on frequencies.

00:16:36.421 --> 00:16:39.087
Our ability to see
and not see opportunities

00:16:39.087 --> 00:16:41.483
are on the frequencies we think from.

00:16:41.483 --> 00:16:43.308
Create a specific dream.

00:16:43.308 --> 00:16:44.911
See yourself in it.

00:16:45.220 --> 00:16:47.166
Refuse to stay discouraged.

00:16:47.166 --> 00:16:50.689
I didn't say refuse to get discouraged;
we're all going to get discouraged.

00:16:50.689 --> 00:16:52.843
Not everything we try
is going to work out.

00:16:52.843 --> 00:16:57.124
We learned to walk by falling down;
we just didn't stay down.

00:16:57.124 --> 00:16:58.532
We were little kids.

00:16:58.532 --> 00:17:01.174
It was normal to explore, experiment.

00:17:01.174 --> 00:17:02.169
We got older,

00:17:02.169 --> 00:17:04.780
and we thought every step
we take has got to work out.

00:17:04.780 --> 00:17:06.919
So decline to stay discouraged.

00:17:06.919 --> 00:17:08.593
Okay, that was feedback.

00:17:08.593 --> 00:17:12.656
When Edison was asked
"How did you survive 10,000 failures?"

00:17:12.884 --> 00:17:16.133
He said: "I never had a failure;
it was all feedback."

00:17:16.347 --> 00:17:18.496
You'll have some feedback this year.

00:17:18.496 --> 00:17:20.689
Decline to stay discouraged,

00:17:20.887 --> 00:17:24.435
and then be more interested
in the growth that will happen for you

00:17:24.435 --> 00:17:26.150
by means of having a dream.

00:17:26.537 --> 00:17:30.945
Yes, many, many wonderful things
will happen if you become a dream builder,

00:17:30.945 --> 00:17:32.888
not a dreamer, a dream builder,

00:17:32.888 --> 00:17:35.118
because you're going
to create results anyway.

00:17:35.328 --> 00:17:37.287
But to stay in the comfort zone

00:17:37.287 --> 00:17:39.687
means you're going
to keep having what you've had -

00:17:39.687 --> 00:17:41.225
that's where you're comfortable.

00:17:41.225 --> 00:17:44.612
If you want something you've never had,
do something you've never done -

00:17:44.612 --> 00:17:45.605
that's growth.

00:17:45.605 --> 00:17:48.087
We'll get a little unstable
in that part of our life.

00:17:48.087 --> 00:17:52.709
So if you're more interested
in growth than comfort,

00:17:52.709 --> 00:17:56.114
you're willing to be interested
a little bit in growth

00:17:56.114 --> 00:17:59.227
because it's more for you
than what's been,

00:17:59.227 --> 00:18:01.379
and do that in service of your dream.

00:18:01.989 --> 00:18:03.192
So those three things:

00:18:03.192 --> 00:18:04.637
be specific about your dream;

00:18:04.637 --> 00:18:06.329
decline to stay discouraged;

00:18:06.329 --> 00:18:09.154
be in service of your dream
through the growth that happens,

00:18:09.154 --> 00:18:13.489
and you can have that every single day
during this 365-day experiment

00:18:13.489 --> 00:18:16.570
before we have our reunion next year.

00:18:16.900 --> 00:18:20.453
Now, not one of us can go back
and change what's back there,

00:18:20.453 --> 00:18:24.814
but every single one of us can decide
what's going to be out there.

00:18:24.814 --> 00:18:26.154
Thank you.

00:18:26.154 --> 00:18:27.778
(Applause)