Dr. Seuss' guide to contentment | Neil Ihde | TEDxFondduLac

A Seussian-style adventure through a life being content with what you have. While still in college, Neil’s fiancée (now wife of 23 years) asked him what he wanted to be. “I think I want to be a professional speaker.” It took him a few years to figure out how one does that and what exactly he was going to talk about, but in 2006 he formed his speaking company called Life IQ, where he helps groups and individuals work, play, relate, and live intelligently. Fast forward 12 years and he has worked with 25 Fortune 500 companies including GE, Merrill Lynch, PepsiCo, and AT&T among others. Neil has also consulted internationally with clients from a dozen countries. After turning 45 last year, his five-year goal is to speak in all 50 states by the time he is 50. 50 by 50! He is thrilled to be a part of TEDxFondduLac!

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

"No latitude, your attitude
must be one of gratitude."

Dr. Seuss' Guide to Contentment.

Well, like millions of others,
I am a big fan of Dr. Seuss.

And we all have our favorite books:

"Green Eggs and Ham,"
"The Cat in the Hat,"

"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

But I'm going to be talking about
one of his lesser known books today.

A book entitled:

"Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?"

It's a story about a young lad
who meets a guru in the desert,

who extols lessons
on gratitude and contentment

whilst sitting atop a prickly cactus.

It provides wisdom

about how not to feel sorry for oneself,

how to look on the bright side of things,
even in the midst of crumminess,

and how to be content.

And that's where I want to start today.

I want to start
with this idea of contentment,

but I wanted to do it
in kind of a fun, creative way.

And I was unable to resist the temptation

to provide for you
a Seussian introduction.

So I wrote an original poem
in the style of Seuss.

So without any further ado, here is:

"Enough! Enough! Enough!
Enough! Enough ..."

We use it when we're gruff,

"Enough!"

We use it to rebuff,

"That's enough out of you."

We use it when we're in a huff,

"Enough!"

Or when we're acting tough,

"You had enough?"

But there is another nuance,
another meaning of "enough" to discover -

a positive, pleasant variant to uncover.

"Enough" can describe
when we're gratified,

happy, peaceful, content and satisfied.

We humans are interesting creatures,

and we have a handful
of less than stellar features.

One of these blemishes we cannot ignore

is our infinite, insatiable
desire for more.

Our pursuit of more often leads to lament,
thus it's critical to learn to be content.

Who should we study?

Aristotle? Socrates? Zeus?

Too lofty, no pictures,
I prefer Dr. Seuss.

Perhaps it takes someone
truly plucky to point out

that we're really quite lucky.

I bet he would say in some zany way

to avoid resentment
and attain contentment:

"No latitude, your attitude
must be one of gratitude."

My attempt at a Seussian introduction.

(Applause) (Cheering)

Now surprisingly, Dr. Seuss
was a bit of a recluse.

He had a couple of annoyances

when interacting
with his fellow Homo sapiens.

One of the questions
he got asked all the time is,

"Where do you get your ideas from?"

And finally, he came up with a response,

and he delivered it
with deadpan sincerity.

He said, "I get my ideas from a small
Swiss hamlet called Uber Gletch,

where I go each summer to get
my cuckoo clock fixed."

It also annoyed him when journalists
would call his books whimsical.

He said, "Whimsical means
that the books mean nothing.

If you look it up in the dictionary,
it means capricious, without reason."

Okay, so strictly speaking
Dr. Seuss' books are not whimsical,

but he had an ingenious ability
to be silly and profound at the same time.

"Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?"
is no exception to that.

And I would be remiss
if I talked about the book,

but I didn't provide
just a few samples from its pages.

The book begins:

"When I was quite young
and quite small for my size,

I met an old man in the Desert of Drize.

He sat in a terribly prickly place.

But he sang with a sunny,
sweet smile on his face.

He said, 'When you feel bad,
when you feel sour and blue,

when you start to get mad ...
just do as I do!

Just tell yourself, Duckie,
you're really quite lucky!

Some people are much more ...
oh, ever so much more ...

so muchly much-much more
unlucky than you!'"

And he goes on to give
various hilarious examples.

There's Ali Sard, who mows
"his uncle's back yard

and it's quick-growing grass
and it grows as he mows.

The faster he mows, the faster it grows."

And there's Mr. Potter,
"T-crosser, I-dotter.

He crosses t's and dots i's
in an I-and-T factory out in Van Nuys."

(Laughter)

But in this last example,

Dr. Seuss proves to be a virtuoso
in an absolutely brilliant passage

as the old man explains to the young lad

that he's fortunate that he's not
a Hawtch-Hawtcher bee watcher ...

watcher.

Hold on, this is going to go fast:

"Out west, near Hawtch-Hawtch,
there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher bee watcher.

His job is to watch.

Is to keep both his eyes
on that lazy town bee.

For a bee that is watched
will work harder, you see.

Well, he watched and he watched,
but in spite of that watch,

the bee didn't work any harder.

Not mawtch.

So then somebody said,

'Our old bee-watching man
just isn't bee watching as hard as he can.

He ought to be watched
by another Hawtch-Hawtcher.

The thing we need
is a bee-watcher-watcher!'

Well, the bee-watcher-watcher
watched the bee-watcher.

But he didn't watch well,

so another Hawtch-Hawtcher had to come in
as a watch-watcher-watcher.

Today all the Hawtchers
who live in Hawtch-Hawtch

are watching on watch watcher
watchering watch,

watch watching the watcher
who's watching that bee.

You're not a Hawtch-Watcher.
You're lucky, you see!"

(Laughter) (Applause) (Cheering)

So, isn't that fun?

So what is Dr. Seuss' profound message
in the midst of all of this silliness?

Well, just as the old man describes

those less fortunate
than he and the narrator,

we too fall victim to a never-ending
game of comparisons

that take our focus off of what we have,
instead we bemoan what we have not.

Contentment doesn't get
its due in our country.

We are living better than 99.9999%
of people in the history of mankind.

And yet we seem to be
grumbling about the fact

that we're fueled by this discontent,

envy and fear of insecurity,

and that we don't have enough stuff.

There is a great economist, Tim Jackson,
who spoke at TEDGlobal 2010.

He uttered this great statement, he said:

"We spend money we don't have
on things we don't need

to create impressions that won't last
on people we don't care about."

(Laughter)

Doesn't that sound
like the antithesis of contentment?

Absolutely!

J. R. R. Tolkien said it
like this, he said:

"If more of us valued food and cheer
and song above hoarded gold,

it would be a merrier world."

I just like that sentiment.

And often it is just
the little things in life,

it's the simple things
that bring us pleasure,

and we could be grateful for those things.

And gratitude and contentment
have a lot in common,

and they go hand in hand.

And those with a gift
of the gratitude attitude

have a unique ability to see
the bright side of things,

even in the midst
of the most dire of circumstances.

I grew up in a small town in Iowa.

My graduating class was 32,

and that included
two foreign exchange students,

so you get an idea of how small it is.

But Parkersburg, Iowa,
gained some national recognition

for a couple reasons.

First of all, we produced four players
from our high school

that went on to play in the NFL.

Now, this next slide
has five pictures on it.

I want to see if you can tell

which one didn't make it
to the big leagues.

Yes, that would probably ...
You got it? You figured it out?

I know you were wondering.

(Laughter)

But secondly, we made
national headlines more tragically

when an EF5 tornado came through
and decimated a third of the town,

and there was a handful
of casualties that went with it.

It was a Sunday of Memorial Day weekend,

and my parents had just gotten
back from a vacation,

90 minutes before the tornado hit.

And when they heard
the tornado siren going off,

they did what all good Midwesterners do,

they went outside, right?

(Laughter)

So they went outside,

and they saw a neighbor up the street
in a dead sprint into their house.

And they looked up to the sky
and they saw why.

The tornado was half a mile
wide at that point.

And there was no question
that it was going to hit,

so they dashed into the house,
went down the basement,

bathtub, blankets, and began praying.

And the tornado hit the house
and then kept going.

And when they went upstairs
to open the basement door,

they looked up and they saw sky.

That's the house I grew up in
on the left there.

But literally, before the dust
had a chance to settle,

my parents were already
counting their blessings.

First and foremost, they were alive,
they were uninjured,

they had a place to stay that night.

My dad's keys, wallet, glasses and phone

that he had put on the kitchen counter
and forgotten about,

miraculously hadn't moved an inch

in the middle of 250 mph wind speeds.

Now, their bedroom furniture,
that was in a different county.

I don't know ... (Laughter)

But they were thankful,
very thankful for those things.

They had great insurance; they were able
to find a temporary place to stay.

My dad had a portable office,

because his business
was destroyed as well.

And the list went on and on.

Not just my parents
but everybody in town.

It was fortunate
that the tornado hit on a Sunday

because otherwise the kids
would have been in school,

and at the time when it hit,

they would have been in the designated
tornado shelter within the school.

And as you can see here,
the high school was badly damaged,

and the place that they would have been
was completely destroyed.

And there could have been more
casualties and injuries.

The town rallied around the football team.

They said, "We're still going to play
our first game 3 months later,

at the end of August."

And with the help of many people
in the communities around them,

counties, even states, many, many people,
they were able to pull that off.

And 15 months later,
they built a brand new high school.

And disaster experts were wondering,

"How in the world did this small town
recover so quickly?"

But if you ask the people
of the community,

they would say they made
a conscious effort

to concentrate on the good things,
on the positive things,

and then they got busy rebuilding
their homes and rebuilding their lives.

There's tangible benefits,

there's some tangible
health benefits as well

to expressing gratitude.

People who express gratitude
get better sleep,

they have lower blood pressure,
they have stronger immune systems,

they're more likely
to experience positive emotions,

such as hope and optimism and happiness.

They're giving, they're compassionate,

they're less likely
to be lonely and isolated.

And gratitude promotes
forgiveness and resiliency.

The American Psychological Association

published a study showing evidence
that expressing gratitude

resulted in greater mental and ultimately
physical health in patients

with asymptomatic heart failure.

In a very literal sense,
a grateful heart is a healthy heart.

So you're sitting here going,
"Okay, that's nice Neil,

but I'm a bit of a curmudgeon,
I'm a bit of a pessimist.

(Laughter)

I can't be accused of spreading
any joy around.

(Laughter)

How do I grow my gratitude?"

Well, I'm so glad you asked.
That's very nice of you.

(Laughter)

It's actually very easy,
and like most things in life,

it just takes a little practice
and discipline until it becomes a habit.

But it's something
that you can begin today.

So one of the first things you do

is simply list three things
you're grateful for,

three positive things in your life.

If you want to expand on that,
you can go and write a gratitude journal.

You can write letters of gratitude

for those in your circle
that you are thankful for.

And then there's this mental exercise
which is kind of cool.

It's called the mental subtraction
of positive events or positive things.

We learn to appreciate what we have

by imagining our life
without those things.

I think the 1980s hair band
Cinderella had a hit song:

(Laughter)

"You don't know
what you've got till it's gone."

I appreciate some of you recognizing that.
(Laughter)

That would be along the same vein there.

And it applies to relationships as well.

When you think about those people
that are important to you,

if you imagine your life without them,
would you miss them?

Absolutely.

So make sure you take some time
to let them know that.

A couple of years ago, I was having dinner
with one of my mentors,

and I hadn't seen him for 20 years,

and I was trying to explain to him
how much I appreciated him,

but he is a master of deflection.

He was swatting away compliments.

So I had to get
a little aggressive with him.

"Enough!" I gruffly rebuffed, in a huff,
acting a little tough.

(Laughter)

"Enough," I said,

"Gary, you need to listen to me
and I need to be heard.

You had a significant impact
on who I am today,

and some of the lessons you taught me
at a formative time in my career,

I haven't forgotten to this day.

So for that, I want to thank you."

And as I wrap things up, I want to revisit
this idea of contentment and gratitude.

And while they have a lot in common,

there's one subtle but important
difference between the two.

An author and blogger Natasha Crain
put it quite eloquently.

She said this:

"While gratitude is a measure

of our perspective
of the things we already have,

contentment is a measure of perspective

of the things we don't have."

And I want to end with a beautiful
example of this sentiment

in a letter written to Dr. Seuss by a girl
who found strength in his book,

"Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?"

Each year the letters
about literature writing contests

ask grade school, middle school
and high school students

to pick out a favorite
piece of literature,

connect with it, reflect on it,
and report on it,

and the result is a letter
written to the author,

describing his or her impact
on that student's life.

In 2012, 11th grader Victoria Gray
from Germantown, Tennessee,

submitted a piece to that contest.

She won third prize
and received 25 dollars.

In her letter, she brings us back
to her sixth grade graduation,

and the fact that she couldn't engage
in any of the joy in celebration.

The announcement that her parents
were getting a divorce

was both shocking
and not shocking at the same time.

It was a culmination
of a crescendo of arguments

that had been going on for months,

and it left Victoria feeling
very self-conscious, unsure of herself

and totally overwhelmed
with her new reality.

And I'll let Victoria's words
to Dr. Seuss pick it up

as she comes back from the ceremony
still wiping tears from her eyes,

and she sees her mom
sitting in her bedroom.

"I walked into my room

and I immediately noticed the yellow book
sitting in my mother's lap.

The cover read,

"Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?"

In an attempt to raise my spirits,

my mother began singing
the words to the song

the old man in the Desert
of Drize sang to Duckie.

And as she went through
some of those first pages,

I was convinced you knew me,

and knew everything
about my family situation.

And as the old man described
the various characters and situations,

I too began making comparisons.

I immediately thought of the family
whose home had burnt down

just around the corner from my house.

And I suddenly felt guilty for confusing
my challenges with that calamity.

Your book helped remind me

that even though my family
was in a difficult spot,

we still were blessed with life
and with each other.

And before my mom had finished
the last sentence,

I realized that growing up
in a single-parent household

did not mean that my life was over.

The next few years were spent adjusting
to an absent parent.

But even when I couldn't help but crying,

the optimism of your book reminded me

that my dad was just
a phone call or a visit away.

And when I wanted to throw a pity party,

Duckie and the old man
would show up to crash it,

even before it had a chance to begin.

Years later, my mom began packing up
some of her old things

and putting them away
in boxes to be sold,

but I refused to part with your book.

It was a gift that has continued to give,

and for that, the only appropriate
response is thank you."

Victoria expressed gratitude to one
who taught the importance of gratitude.

Did I ever tell you how lucky you are?

Have you told yourself how lucky you are?

Did you need reminding today
of how lucky you are?

"So Duckie! Don't grumble! Don't stew!
Some critters are much more,

oh, ever so much more,

so muchly much-much more
unlucky than you!"

Thank you for your attention
and not being rude.

For that, you have my undying gratitude.

(Laughter) (Applause) (Cheering)