So, trying to find out who I am ...
Trying to find out who I am:
this was the most important question in my life,
but of course, not at the age of three.
Here you can see me as a child. You can see my eyes were shining.
I was super exited about reality, super happy just by being,
not by doing, just by being.
But as we all grew up, as we're all getting older,
this question of "Who I am" is getting much more important.
In psychological statistics,
most of us will have much trouble with this question
at least once in a life time.
So, this was for me, at the age of 18.
I was very depressed. I was very down.
Others came to me and said, "Sebastian, just believe in yourself."
But how can I believe in myself if I even don't know who I am?
What I found out at this time is that this question "Who am I?"
is, from a psychological point of view, sometimes misleading,
because when you're asking yourself "Who am I?",
there's maybe the assumption behind
that this self or the "I" is a static thing.
It's a static thing,
and when you are thinking about yourself in terms of fixation,
there's not much space for growing, not much space for self-development.
By the way, if you are thinking about if I was working at NASA at this time,
the answer is ''no'', this is just a tee shirt.
But there is an interesting connection between exploring the outer space
and exploring the inner space.
So in order to reach out to another planet,
you have to understand some basic rules of nature very deeply;
otherwise, there's no chance to build a space rocket.
It is the same thing with the inner space, with self-development.
There are some psychological principles,
there are some psychological rules
you have to know in order to really go further,
to really go beyond your imagination.
And I want to talk today about two of them.
The first is self-experience, and the second is self-reflection.
So what do I mean by this?
Self-experience - I mean experiencing yourself differently or on a deeper level.
When you are like most of us,
those experiences where you experience yourself deeper or very differently
are not that often.
But in this moment when you widen your horizon,
where you experience yourself differently,
there lies the highest potential for self-development.
But in order to get there, you do have to have another thing,
and this is self-reflection.
You have to reflect on those self-experiences
in a very specific way in order to go deeper.
So here are two examples.
The first one: self-development through Naikan.
Naikan is a practice from Japan.
It is the Japanese word for "introspection."
And Naikan is all about reflecting the relationship
to the most important persons of your life.
And this reflection is happening in one of those cabins,
completely isolated from others:
no handy,
nothing else but just reflecting seven days, 16 hours a day.
So when you're sitting in there, you do have a very strict method to follow,
and this method is three questions.
First question: What have I received from person X?
Second question: What have I given to person X?
Third question: What troubles have I cost to person X?
You know, when you're asking these questions very strictly,
and you are diving into, for example, the relationship with your mom,
the interesting thing about it
is that you're getting so much deeper into your memories,
and by getting so much deeper into your memories,
your relationship will change
because relationship, by definition,
is always influenced by our own memories.
So in Naikan practice, you'll sit there in the cabin, and you'll ask yourself,
"What I have received from my mom, at the age from 5 to 10?"
"What I have given to my mom at the age from 5 to 10?"
"What troubles have I cost to my mom at the age from 5 to 10?"
And the Naikan guide always reminds you on those questions.
So, it was for me, very special
when I did my first Naikan experience many, many years ago
because on the first two of the seven days,
I was proving the relationship with my mom and my dad -
first day my mom, second day my dad -
and to be honest, I was a little bit frustrated
because I found out
that I was thinking more about what I've received than what I've given.
After the first two days, the Naikan guide came to me and said -
he was sitting down, looking straight into my eyes -
"Sebastian, now you're ready.
Please begin the Naikan practice.
Prove yourself the relationship with your mom from the age from 5 to 10."
So it was going another round.
And this second round on the third day about proving the relationship with my mom
was getting even deeper than the first one, proving myself.
What I want to tell with this is that self-experiencing is endless.
You have so much more potential for self-experience than you can imagine.
The clue about this, to really dive deep into those kind of experiences,
is through those really focused reflection methods.
So, that one was the first one: Naikan.
Second one: Self-development through reflecting about mortality,
our mortality.
We know from science that when people are confronted with death,
they have a better chance to change important things in their life.
That is proven.
And the reason why it is so is a very simple argumentation:
it's because when you're confronted with death,
you're confronted with some kind of limitation.
When you're confronted with this limitation,
it's much easier to differentiate
between things which are important and things which are not.
So when you have this differentiation in your mind,
it is easier to behave in another way, to change yourself, to develop yourself.
You can find this practice in almost every religion,
for example, as you can see here, in Buddhism.
But there are also ways to do it by yourself
in a very subtle or easy way,
and I will do it now with you.
So, the first self-reflecting question is
"If you had one more year to live, what would you do?"
Just ask yourself this [for] a few seconds.
So keep in mind what you have, what [rose] up in your mind.
And let's go to the second question, the second exercise.
So now, imagine yourself 10 years ahead.
Because of illness - just in your imagination -
your life expectancy at this point is only one month or less.
Imagine this.
And now ask yourself what do you wish you had spent more time on
in the last 10 years?
What do you wish you had spent more time on in the last 10 years?
So when you're like most of us, the second kind of self-reflection
leads us even deeper into reflecting about values,
about our aims,
about what to do,
about things that we want to accomplish.
And this is really the power of self-development.
When it's possible to combine those two things,
to combine self-experience and self-reflection,
it is much more easy to really go further in your self-development.
That's what we can see in Naikan, in reflecting about mortality
and any other supportive self-development practice.
All practices have to respect
those two principles of self-experience and self-reflection
in order to work effectively.
So, when we look into the future,
I have chosen one quote which is very important to me.
And the quote is
"The information age is over; welcome to the experience age!"
In other words, the accessibility of information is given,
what is rising up
is the accessibility of experiencing.
What I want to say with that is that in regard to self-development,
in regard to self-reflection and self-experiencing,
new technologies, new immersive technologies
do have a much greater impact on those kinds of self-development
than any other medium before.
On the one hand, immersive technologies
always have the risk that you'll get lost in some virtual worlds,
but on the other hand,
they do have the power to support you in those two basic principles,
to support you to get deeper inside yourself
to support you to really get those kinds of self-experience and self-reflection
you need in order to go further.
And when this is the case, then I think the question "Who am I?"
is not [so] challenging anymore
because there's another question that could be much more helpful.
The question is: "Who can I become?"
"Who can I become?"
I think this is because you not only have the potential for change,
in my point of view,
you are at your deepest self-potentiality for changing.
You know, this potentiality is your true nature.
So believe in your ability for self-development.
Believe in your ability for self-reflection.
Believe in your ability for self-experience.
Believe in a greater vision of yourself.
Thank you.
(Applause)