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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-08
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUw8z7laPuI
you know there's a story here my legs used to be like most of yours standing here on this prosthetic leg miracle of design and engineering though it may be and this other reconstructed leg which is a surgical miracle all its own I won't tell you that I never miss the originals but I've gotten so much better at focusing on what's now and what's ahead that wishing
things were the way they use to be happens less and less and I'm here to say you don't have to get run over by a boat dance with a propeller wind up with three severely injured limbs including one that had to be amputated and years of recovery and adaptation ahead to gain a perspective you can have it for free and between those two options it's also
my recommendations you know this gap between what we want and what we get overall we use to have and we have now come the vast and we filled a gap with the yearning for what was or what could have been you know I compare this to a phantom limb sensation the feeling of actually believing you still have a one that's no longer part of you you
know I distinctly remember days after my accident fueling the strings stuck between my toes the sensation was so real even though those toes were no longer part of me and it was completely mad name twenty change something I couldn't no that's natural desire we all had to change something we can't that yearning for the unfulfilled wishes the thing we lost I can creep into our lives
we can provide our entire experience of being alive our sense of self our capacity to be here now I'm calling it phantom life that nagging dissonance between what was or should be and what is you know nothing in my first thirty six years of life ever really confronted me with the reality all that demanding I've always been generally happy but like most people I think reason
at times and idly wish life were different easier better tight focus on little things that don't really matter or compare the real to the ideal or the perceived ideal you know it's a habit of mine I think shared by most of us to reflexively compare our situation to a seemingly better one but then when we can four years ago everything changed that boat ran over me
and I almost died a freak accident sent me on a one way journey to find a cure for phantom life it was a demand to give up attachment not only to limb but two fixed way of thinking about loss and change about the way things should be another perspective I learned on that journey was essential was also exhilarating I want to share a few lessons four
to be exact that I learned from that unexpected journey so the first one has centered all around the brain you know the brain is magnificent in their things we all know about the brain such as its high level plasticity from the ability for our brains to learn and re learn over time you know what's most interesting to me that was our brains react to positive and
negative events did you know our brains actually have a negativity bias it's physiologically easier to be negative and when something does happen that creates negativity perceived or real it's like a reinforcing of this natural wiring but here's what I learned we can actually get better at this we can practice this it's not just something that you have to say well why is that other person so
much better at dealing with whatever life hands them but like all brain changes frequent and repetitive actions are key to molding and reinforcing neural connections so said simply thinking more positive thoughts is like daily exercise for your brain just like other exercise strengthens your body you know this next lesson centers around this idea of an anchor no anchor means a few things to me first of
all there is literally involves an anchor with my boating accident that day an anchor is also a grounds us and for me that's always been my friends and my family my roots but the answer I want to talk about tonight is what we anchor our perspectives to you know we respond differently to other people's struggles than we did our own for ourselves we replay we wallow
we ruminate we wish things were different we scratched the phantom life but we often use the dire circumstances of other people to diminish our own problems you know common responses things in perspective it's like a pop of light where the issue of the day seems meaningless in the wake of someone else's horrific problem then what do we do ten minutes later we move on to worry
about you know whether we have something planned for Jenner or who just text of us the public puts things in perspective moment it's like the original Snapchat for our brains see it and it's gone no recovery from any trauma illness death divorce job loss whatever it is we're not prepared to handle it's hard and I venture to say most of us don't wanna stay depressed or
angry or bitter I know I didn't so I found I had to seek out the Snapchat moments and make them last I have to start looking for perspective in a sustainable way it wasn't enough to wait for those behalf that puts things in perspective trains to arrive at the station they didn't come often enough and they never took me to a whole new place but I
did find that I actually could make perspective last just by simply focusing on it to do this I ask myself frequently excessively a series of questions things like hugging the situation of been worse you know that boat could have hit my head on my vital organs it's amazing that it didn't my kids could have been there to witness it thankfully they weren't he only say could
be so much worse we usually say that about someone else's problem but what I found is when you're struggling when you're really struggling kind of the end of that proverbial rope ask yourself what are five ways it could be worse commit to it say it out loud write it down on whatever you'll be amazed at how can change your anchor point I also ask myself what's
the hidden advantage in the seemingly terrible situation and many days I honestly couldn't find an answer to this I was the mother of a two year old and a four year olds crawling up stairs stuck in a wheelchair my career was on hold my husband was insecure giver I couldn't do one single thing alone but some days I'd find an answer I could make myself believe
maybe I'll write a book and go on tour and inspire millions of work one day a month enough some freedoms and maybe my kids will be more accepting your empathetic I remember during this era my son would tell me that you know mama many come live with you in your resting your legs and you tell me he'd bring me one of the stuffed animals this is
usually how that would end course I didn't have a leg on a and then I would also notice his high empathy as he would care for one of our special friends Mr caterpillar who also happen to lose a leg I remember my two year old daughter at this phase coming down rain the single leg warmer and I asked her what is that she said what's my
prosthetic leg mama solidarity at two but what I really learned was that it didn't matter if I found the hidden advantage just the practice of regularly asking the question changed my perspective no another tactic I would use was to think outside of myself a broader lands a third person point of view I would use this broader lands to reset my anchor to the past for instance
I would make myself compare day seventy two of my recovery today seven of my recovery versus comparing day seventy two to my pre accident life you know bearing weight on a new prosthetic leg in taking those first steps learning to walk again sift pretty miraculous compared to you know not being able to roll over in bed or putting your own ponytail we need to choose our
mental competition wisely we get to choose any point you want so I learned that the power of perspective and it is so powerful as we all know but it short term unless you find ways to make it last you know this next lesson centers around the idea of attachment okay so first of all eastern philosophy offers us a lot of wisdom about this idea of non
attachment basically the idea is known desire suffering attachment is the root of that desire and thus the root of all of our problems this resonates with my idea phantom life what we want versus what we get but you know I'm western through and through I'm a small town girl from Clyde Kansas in a row no matter how many links people sent me on check out this
idea of non attachment I don't know what to do with it it just wasn't a useful for me but I did find something useful on my journey in this idea of reattachment okay so my right leg was severely injured it was nearly amputated I have lost about eight inches of my fibula which is your outside lower leg bomb as well as key tendons and muscles attending
loss was the most debilitating because I couldn't walk without this huge clunky uncomfortable ugly brace so I decided to have a tendon transfer surgery my surgeon reattached that inner tendonitis still had to the center top of my foot you know this was extremely successful but not immediately you know after that surgery I really learned about this idea of reattachment for over three decades my brain had
believed that inner tendon was used to move my foot in a word and downward but now it had to compensate it had to do more it had to make up for what I was missing suppose surgery for instance if I wanted to move my foot up I had to concentrate into my brain move foot and in overtime lots a move that movement my brain learn this
new pathway but what I really started to learn was maybe there's something bigger here maybe there's a bigger metaphor that it's not just all about tendons and muscles and surgeries neither something about our lives so I started to think maybe we can actually detach from our old life the one that we thought had to turn out a certain way in re attached to a new one
and maybe one that's full of no more possibility that we could ever imagine so my last lesson is all about a swimsuit you know about a year after my accident we took a family vacation to the beach there are lots of other families therein I'm guessing you know some of the moms might've been thinking things that I might ordinarily been thinking like systems is terrible why
do we have to wear these things could I be any fatter paste your are my kids safe no in all these feelings well the morning of my accident near supermodel friend took this photo of my husband and me I distinctly remember thinking OK let's not document those please do not put those on social media but you know if I'd only known that was the most perfect
my body would ever be for the rest in my life so here I was on the beach here later and I'll tell you my concerns are very different I was mainly just thinking about this waterproof foot I was carrying in my beach bag well first of well Maya normal prosthetic for it is pretty cool I mean you can do things like since terrain so from going
uphill or downhill like mimics unnatural angles movement you know all that requires electronics so I plug it in like a cellphone every night so I need to separate water proof of for water activities and sitting there that day on the beach I took foot be out of my beach bag and replaced with a with an Allen wrench and and as I sat there during the transfer
of the women were having this really weird thought as I looked at my feet I thought actually do have two left feet and I took this photo and I posted it you know so excited to be on the beach and some people actually commented about my toenail Polish and I thought you know that was a hidden advantage I haven't I hadn't thought of yet that I
did have to go and you know get a fancy pedicure because before I put my beach bag descended on the tables at the perfect angle to paint your toenails it worked out great so I noted that in my hidden advantage journal that day but the biggest thing I learned through this whole era was that you really have to think about prospective as I sat there on
the beach thinking about it it lasted for awhile but honestly that day negativity started to take over how waterproof it was really just a piece of wood carved to look like a foot tricky enough to walk on alone let of loan you know traverse a football field full of sand or play with my kids so we got back to the hotel I hobbled into the room
in pain and honestly I just wanted to ball my eyes out I couldn't stop thinking of what that trip would have been like without this problem I couldn't stop thinking about the other people at the beach they're working legs and feet for another why me moment had arrived so I locked myself in the bathroom to shower and standing there I willed myself into a new perspective
I literally said out loud things like I'm lucky to even be here so many people can't travel for so many different reasons if anyone had told me six months ago I'd walk on a beach today I would have been elated standing here on this waterproof for least I'm standing up in the shower which I haven't done in a year it feels pretty fantastic no this isn't
just Pollyanna stuff forcing myself just for a few minutes to flip my thinking I could feel my energy it was flowing down a different road what did it take didn't cost me any money I didn't have to visit a doctor by a book I created my own little chemical reaction in my brain by leveraging the free an abundant resource of perspective catalyzed by a new set
of comparisons now when something important that day but actively forcing a new perspective on yourself is the cheapest and easiest way to change how you feel about your situation so here's where I tell you you can start rewiring your brain with this kind of perspective training right now not so simple if you don't have to most people probably won't even bother to try it but if
you knew the practicing perspective training could better prepare you to handle any kind of challenge or struggle would you do if would you give yourself the equivalent of a dopamine shot every day but one that's free painless organic non you're on time you spend just a few minutes reframing your daily problems to wire those pathways for the bigger problems to come you know perspective is essential
we all know it's part of the human condition to face changed and struggle in challenge you know I always say you never meet anybody who turns ninety and says nothing ever happen in my life and we need to think about perspective for what it is free abundant it does not discriminate it's like air it's all around us its life giving we don't notice it when it's
good but when it's bad or when you're in out of it we can notice nothing else and what we do in its water instead of air even as we're losing consciousness close to death we struggled a surface to breathe to save ourselves you know my crazy life experience along with that of other trauma survivors forces this kind of brain training it's do or die time literally