How to shift your mindset and choose your future

I never thought that I would
be giving my TED Talk somewhere like this,

but, like half of humanity,

I've spent the last
four weeks under lockdown

due to the global pandemic
created by COVID-19.

I am extremely fortunate
that during this time

I've been able to come here to these woods
near my home in southern England.

These woods have always inspired me,

and as humanity now tries to think

about how we can find the inspiration

to retake control of our actions

so that terrible things
don't come down the road

without us taking action to avert them,

I thought this is a good place
for us to talk.

And I'd like to begin
that story six years ago

when I had first joined the United Nations.

Now, I firmly believe that the UN

is of unparalleled importance
in the world right now

to promote collaboration and cooperation.

But what they don't tell you when you join

is that this essential work is delivered

mainly in the form
of extremely boring meetings,

extremely long, boring meetings.

Now, you may feel that you have attended
some long, boring meetings in your life,

and I'm sure you have,

but these UN meetings are next level,

and everyone who works there
approaches them with a level of calm

normally only achieved by Zen masters.

But myself, I wasn't ready for that.

I joined expecting drama
and tension and breakthrough.

What I wasn't ready for was a process
that seemed to move

at the speed of a glacier,

at the speed that a glacier
used to move at.

Now, in the middle
of one of these long meetings

I was handed a note,

and it was handed to me
by my friend and colleague and coauthor

Christiana Figueres.

Christiana was the Executive Secretary

of the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change,

and as such had overall responsibility
for the UN reaching what would become

the Paris Agreement.

I was running political strategy for her.

So when she handed me this note,

I assumed that it would contain
detailed political instructions

about how we were going
to get out of this nightmare quagmire

that we seemed to be trapped in.

I took the note and looked at it.

It said, "Painful,
but let's approach with love!"