WEBVTT

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When I was 20, I was on top of the world.

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I was an East Asian studies major,

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and I had just won

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a prestigious fellowship
from the Japanese government.

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I would spend a year in Tokyo,

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studying language and culture,

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all expenses paid.

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For a financially strapped kid like me,
that was like winning the lottery.

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One day on campus,
there was a health fair,

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and just for the heck of it,
I got my blood pressure checked.

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And to my surprise,
it was startlingly high.

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So the nurse sent me off
to the school clinic for more tests,

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and they found protein in my urine.

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This was not a good sign,

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and so I rushed off to see a specialist,

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and within a few weeks,

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I found myself diagnosed

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with an incurable autoimmune disease
that was attacking my kidneys.

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And the doctor’s best guess
was that I had five years left.

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In an instant,

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it felt like my life
was tumbling into darkness.

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And I realized what was worse
was that I had to give back the fellowship

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(Laughter)

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to stay in Ohio, where I live,
for medical treatment.

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After the initial shock passed,

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I looked around at my classmates.

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They were throwing frisbees,

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partying,

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getting drunk,

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and I got pissed

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because I was 20 years old

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and I was dying.

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Intellectually,

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I knew that anger and resentment
were not a way forward.

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But the bigger question was,
How was I going to deal with it?

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And my mind kept coming back
to a favorite documentary

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on the journey of the hero.

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And this is a kind of universal theme

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that revolves around a central character
who is thrown out of his comfortable world

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by a call to undertake a perilous quest.

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And if that quest was successful,

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it results in growth, transformation,

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and renewed life.

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And I thought to myself,

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"Could kidney disease be that call?"

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I began to realize

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that I could approach this illness
as an inner spiritual challenge

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in addition to a medical one.

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But again, how?

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It wasn’t like I could call my doctor
and get a prescription.

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However,

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as if on cue,

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my religion professor
introduces me to a classic book

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on how to practice Zen meditation.

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In Japan, historically,
Zen was the practice of warriors,

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and they would use its intense focus

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to transform fear and other emotions
that came from facing mortality.

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I was intuitively attracted to the idea
that I could be a warrior

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and face this illness
with Zen as my weapon.

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So, night after night,

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in my sweltering attic apartment,

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I would sit cross-legged
with my eyes closed

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and do battle, Zen-style,

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with the darkest parts of my life.

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And one by one,

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I would face inner demons,

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and as I observed and accepted them,

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little by little,

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they began to shrink,

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and little by little,

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in their place grew

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very slowly

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a sense of calm.

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The focus of Zen

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gave me something to do with my mind

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because at that point in my life,
it was the only thing I could manage.

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A year went by,

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then two, then four,

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and I got on with the business of living.

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But I made a deal with myself

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that I would only do
what I was passionate about.

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And my passions led me to graduate school,

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where I found a lab that was run
by an eminent psychologist

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who studied flow experiences.

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And flow experiences 
are those moments of intense focus

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where we feel vital and alive.

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And he found that people 
who could manage their minds into flow

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were connected to themselves and others,

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to a sense of meaning
and purpose and to life.

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Flow showed me, through science,
what I had only begun to learn in Zen.

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We eventually moved the lab

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from a department of psychology
to a school of management.

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And there I had the opportunity
to study successful professionals

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who were long-term practitioners 
of something called mindfulness.

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Mindfulness, like Zen,
was a way of training the mind,

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and one thing that mindfulness does

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is return you from being stuck in the past

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or fixated on the future

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to what’s going on right here, right now.

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These professionals
had all kinds of backgrounds.

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They were Fortune 500 CEOs,

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world famous architects, filmmakers, 
artists, musicians, writers,

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and I would ask them,

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"So, you know, what do you think
your life would be like

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if you didn't have this practice?"

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And they'd say,

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"My life is so complex.

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I’m being pulled
in so many directions at once

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that if I didn’t have this to keep me
centered, grounded, and sane,

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I think I’d be dead."

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And then it hit me:

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there was something missing
from management,

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that management education

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had focused almost entirely
on what happens outside you

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and there was precious
little, if anything,

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that spoke about leadership
from the inside.

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And I sensed that was an opportunity.

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So with my school’s blessing,

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I created a course that put executives
through a series of grueling challenges.

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They would have to learn
how to focus their mind

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in a world of distraction.

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They would have to rigorously observe
their emotional reactions.

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And they'd have to face unflinchingly

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their own ego.

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This was not for the faint of heart,

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and to my surprise,

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people signed up!

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And one CEO drove three hours
to take the class.

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My coworker warned me
that he was a "very difficult man."

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And my colleagues were intimidated
by his hard glare and short fuse.

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And they smugly wished me,

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the youngest guy
on the faculty at that time,

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"Good luck."

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I felt like I was
being thrown to the lions.

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The CEO sat right up front,

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and for a while he was quiet.

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But as time passed, he began to open up.

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And he confessed that
he was completely overwhelmed

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by endless email and customers' demands
for instant responses.

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Constant multitasking
made his life frenetic,

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and pressures to increase the bottom line
escalated his stress.

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But as he began to awaken,

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he admitted to me

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that perversely,

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he enjoyed playing the role of victim.

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Now, that might not sound like much,

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but for a CEO to admit that,

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that turned into a turning point for him.

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As time went by,

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he started to see how hardened
and indifferent he had become to others,

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how his management style
was to fly off the handle

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and lose control and get caught up
in a swell of his own emotions.

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He wrote to me saying,

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"I’m beginning to see
my own obsession with me,

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and my own pride, vanity, and greed."

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And what was surprising to him

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was that when he was open, 
unguarded, and vulnerable,

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he felt stronger and free.

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"Maybe," he says,

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"Maybe I’m beginning to know
what compassion means."

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At the end of the class,
his eyes smiled more.

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And I asked him how had the class
affected his personal life.

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And he says, "You know,

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I realized that I haven't had
a personal life in 35 years.

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But back then
my hair was a lot longer,

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and I was interested
in consciousness and spirituality.

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But then we got married,

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and then we had kids,

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and then I realized
I had to support this family.

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And I went to work,

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and I never stopped.

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And all of those longings
quietly faded away."

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And with tears streaming down his face,

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"My wife says to me the other day,

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'I don’t know what’s happened to you,

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but you’ve turned back
into the man I married.'"

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That moment, for me,
was like being hit by lightning,

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and to see such a profound shift
in this "difficult man"

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showed me the path
that I had to take for my life.

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So I quit a promising
research career to do this work,

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which I felt like is what I needed to do.

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He, In a decade of teaching,

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he became the first
of a long line of "difficult people"

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who were fundamentally
existentially frustrated.

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They had used all their talent,
skill, and intelligence

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for external achievement,

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and they enjoyed it.

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But in the end,
they found it unsatisfying.

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But they didn’t know what to do.

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And that’s why they were frustrated.

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We are told

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that the unexamined life
isn't worth living,

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but we’re never told how to examine it.

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And I think the secret
is cultivating mindful attention

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because that creates self-awareness.

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And the self-awareness creates
the opportunity for change.

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And that can lead to self-transformation.

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As a society, we don't pay
enough attention to "attention."

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We don’t take care of it,
preserve it, grow it.

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We need to take care of attention!

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So when are we going to realize

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that a meeting where everyone
is staring at their laptop

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isn’t really a meeting.

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And shouldn’t memories
of Grandma and her blackberry

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be about a pie,

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and not a phone?

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(Laughter)

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Quality of attention is quality of life.

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It’s quality of relationship,

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quality of work!

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Attention is the secret ingredient
that connects us to ourselves and others.

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And mindfulness and Zen
are ways of enhancing attention

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so we can live with more flow.

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I'd like to think

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that my practices helped me live
beyond the five-year diagnosis.

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But after years of teaching,

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fatigue, gout, and undeniable lab results

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all pointed to the fact I was dying.

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But since 16 years had passed
since the original diagnosis,

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my doctor believed that
a kidney transplant could save my life,

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and this presented another problem.

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I would have to ask for help.

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And the idea was like
throwing a birthday party

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with a secret fear
that no one was going to show up.

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So, like the CEO,

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I had to look at my own fear,
pride, and vulnerability

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to live.

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And so when 25 people
came forward as organ donors

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and 13 of whom were my former students,

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I got more help than
I could have ever imagined.

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And luckily,

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one was a positive match.

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And here I am.

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It’s not done.

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(Applause)

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I used to think that pain was a negative,

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but I learned, with the right tool
it could become fuel for growth.

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And it led me down a path
of strength, courage, and love.

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I believe that we all have
the capacity within us

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to make our minds beautiful.

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So my wish is that we become
warriors of our own journey.

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Because when we do,

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we change our heart,

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our mind,

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and our future.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)