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When Dorothy was a little girl,

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she was fascinated by her goldfish.

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Her father explained to her that fish swim
by quickly wagging their tails

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to propel themselves through the water.

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Without hesitation,
little Dorothy responded,

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"Yes, Daddy, and fish swim backwards
by wagging their heads."

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(Laughter)

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In her mind, it was a fact
as true as any other.

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Fish swim backwards
by wagging their heads.

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She believed it.

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Our lives are full
of fish swimming backwards.

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We make assumptions
and faulty leaps of logic.

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We harbor bias.

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We know that we are right
and they are wrong.

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We fear the worst.

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We strive for unattainable perfection.

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We tell ourselves
what we can and cannot do.

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In our minds, fish swim by in reverse
frantically wagging their heads

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and we don't even notice them.

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I'm going to tell you
five facts about myself.

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One fact is not true.

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One: I graduated from Harvard at 19
with an honors degree in Mathematics.

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Two: I currently run
a construction company in Orlando.

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Three: I starred on a television sitcom.

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Four: I lost my sight
to a rare genetic eye disease.

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Five: I served as a law clerk
to two US Supreme Court justices.

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Which fact is not true?

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Actually, they're all true.

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Yeah. They're all true.

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(Applause)

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At this point, most people really
only care about the television show.

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(Laughter)

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I know this from experience.

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OK, so the show was NBC's
"Saved By The Bell: The New Class."

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And I played Weasel Wyzell,

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who was the sort of dorky,
nerdy character on the show,

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which made it a very
major acting challenge

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for me as a 13-year-old boy.

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(Laughter)

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Now, did you struggle
with number four, my blindness?

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Why is that?

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We make assumptions
about so-called disabilities.

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As a blind man, I confront
others' incorrect assumptions

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about my abilities every day.

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My point today is not
about my blindness, however.

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It's about my vision.

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Going blind taught me
to live my life eyes wide open.

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It taught me to spot
those backwards-swimming fish

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that our minds create.

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Going blind cast them into focus.

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What does it feel like to see?

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It's immediate and passive.

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You open your eyes and there's the world.

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Seeing is believing. Sight is truth.

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Right?

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Well, that's what I thought.

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Then, from age 12 to 25,
my retinas progressively deteriorated.

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My sight became an increasingly bizarre

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carnival funhouse hall
of mirrors and illusions.

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The salesperson I was relieved
to spot in a store

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was really a mannequin.

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Reaching down to wash my hands,

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I suddenly saw it was
a urinal I was touching, not a sink,

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when my fingers felt its true shape.

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A friend described
the photograph in my hand,

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and only then I could see
the image depicted.

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Objects appeared, morphed
and disappeared in my reality.

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It was difficult and exhausting to see.

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I pieced together fragmented,
transitory images,

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consciously analyzed the clues,

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searched for some logic
in my crumbling kaleidoscope,

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until I saw nothing at all.

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I learned that what we see

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is not universal truth.

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It is not objective reality.

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What we see is a unique,
personal, virtual reality

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that is masterfully
constructed by our brain.

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Let me explain with a bit
of amateur neuroscience.

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Your visual cortex takes up
about 30 percent of your brain.

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That's compared to approximately
eight percent for touch

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and two to three percent for hearing.

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Every second, your eyes
can send your visual cortex

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as many as two billion
pieces of information.

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The rest of your body can send your brain
only an additional billion.

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So sight is one third
of your brain by volume,

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and can claim about two thirds
of your brain's processing resources.

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It's no surprise then

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that the illusion
of sight is so compelling.

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But make no mistake about it:
sight is an illusion.

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Here's where it gets interesting.

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To create the experience of sight,

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your brain references your conceptual
understanding of the world,

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other knowledge, your memories,
opinions, emotions, mental attention.

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All of these things and far more
are linked in your brain to your sight.

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These linkages work both ways,
and usually occur subconsciously,

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so for example,

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what you see impacts how you feel,

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and the way you feel
can literally change what you see.

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Numerous studies demonstrate this.

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If you are asked to estimate

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the walking speed of a man
in a video, for example,

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your answer will be different if you're
told to think about cheetahs or turtles.

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A hill appears steeper
if you've just exercised,

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and a landmark appears farther away

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if you're wearing a heavy backpack.

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We have arrived
at a fundamental contradiction.

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What you see is a complex
mental construction of your own making,

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but you experience it passively

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as a direct representation
of the world around you.

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You create your own reality
and you believe it.

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I believed mine until it broke apart.

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The deterioration of my eyes
shattered the illusion.

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You see, sight is just one way

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we shape our reality.

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We create our own realities
in many other ways.

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Let's take fear as just one example.

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Your fears distort your reality.

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Under the warped logic of fear,
anything is better than the uncertain.

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Fear fills the void at all costs,

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passing off what you dread
for what you know,

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offering up the worst
in place of the ambiguous,

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substituting assumption for reason.

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Psychologists have
a great term for it: awfulizing.

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(Laughter)

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Right?

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Fear replaces the unknown with the awful.

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Now, fear is self-realizing.

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When you face the greatest need

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to look outside yourself
and think critically,

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fear beats a retreat
deep inside your mind,

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shrinking and distorting your view,

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drowning your capacity
for critical thought

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with a flood of disruptive emotions.

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When you face a compelling
opportunity to take action,

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fear lulls you into inaction,

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enticing you to passively watch
its prophecies fulfill themselves.

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When I was diagnosed
with my blinding disease,

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I knew blindness would ruin my life.

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Blindness was a death sentence
for my independence.

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It was the end of achievement for me.

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Blindness meant I would live
an unremarkable life,

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small and sad,

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and likely alone.

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I knew it.

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This was a fiction born of my fears,
but I believed it.

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It was a lie, but it was my reality,

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just like those backwards-swimming fish
in little Dorothy's mind.

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If I had not confronted
the reality of my fear,

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I would have lived it.

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I am certain of that.

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So how do you live your life
eyes wide open?

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It is a learned discipline.

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It can be taught. It can be practiced.

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I will summarize very briefly.

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Hold yourself accountable

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for every moment, every thought,

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every detail.

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See beyond your fears.

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Recognize your assumptions.

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Harness your internal strength.

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Silence your internal critic.

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Correct your misconceptions
about luck and about success.

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Accept your strengths and your weaknesses,
and understand the difference.

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Open your hearts

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to your bountiful blessings.

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Your fears, your critics,

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your heroes, your villains --

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they are your excuses,

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rationalizations, shortcuts,

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justifications, your surrender.

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They are fictions you perceive as reality.

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Choose to see through them.

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Choose to let them go.

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You are the creator of your reality.

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With that empowerment
comes complete responsibility.

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I chose to step out of fear's tunnel
into terrain uncharted and undefined.

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I chose to build there a blessed life.

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Far from alone,

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I share my beautiful life with Dorothy,

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my beautiful wife,

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with our triplets,
whom we call the Tripsky's,

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and with the latest addition
to the family,

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sweet baby Clementine.

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What do you fear?

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What lies do you tell yourself?

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How do you embellish your truth
and write your own fictions?

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What reality are you
creating for yourself?

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In your career and personal life,
in your relationships,

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and in your heart and soul,

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your backwards-swimming fish
do you great harm.

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They exact a toll in missed opportunities
and unrealized potential,

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and they engender insecurity and distrust

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where you seek fulfillment and connection.

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I urge you to search them out.

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Helen Keller said that the only thing
worse than being blind

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is having sight but no vision.

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For me, going blind
was a profound blessing,

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because blindness gave me vision.

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I hope you can see what I see.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Bruno Giussani: Isaac, before you
leave the stage, just a question.

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This is an audience of entrepreneurs,
of doers, of innovators.

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You are a CEO of a company
down in Florida,

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and many are probably wondering,

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how is it to be a blind CEO?

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What kind of specific challenges
do you have and how do you overcome them?

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Isaac Lidsky: Well,
the biggest challenge became a blessing.

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I don't get visual feedback from people.

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(Laughter)

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BG: What's that noise there? IL: Yeah.

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So, for example,
in my leadership team meetings,

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I don't see facial
expressions or gestures.

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I've learned to solicit
a lot more verbal feedback.

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I basically force people
to tell me what they think.

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And in this respect,

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it's become, like I said, a real blessing
for me personally and for my company,

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because we communicate
at a far deeper level,

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we avoid ambiguities,

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and most important, my team knows
that what they think truly matters.

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BG: Isaac, thank you for coming to TED.
IL: Thank you, Bruno.

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(Applause)