How A Tedx Talk Almost Ate Me Alive

David doing his TEDx talkDoing a TEDx talk was one of those extreme experiences for me. I hadn’t talked about my work in public for a good ten years before this.

Preparation, they say, is everything.

I’ve read that those who are selected for a TED talk could be practicing their presentations for up to six months before the big day. For some, that adds up to reciting it as much as four-hundred times!

But I had no such opportunity. It wasn’t till sometime in November that I got my acceptance notification from the event organizers. My stage time was slated for after lunch on Saturday February 27th, 2016. That’s less than four months, which wouldn’t have been that bad, except that I had volunteered my time to build out and maintain the TEDxChilliwack.com website. Of course, I still had to write my script and prepare the visuals for the slides.

Friday night at 8:30PM, before the big day, I was on my way home from the dress rehearsal. I decided to park under a street light and edit down my script even more than it was. I had to win back as many seconds as I could. It was the third major edit but was still a bit too long for me to remember it all and besides, they allotted me less delivery time on stage than I’d asked for.

Oh oh.

Going overtime is a big nono at a TEDx event.

Of course, with all these changes the flow of how it was supposed to be recited changed. So, tired as I was, I had to try to practice it right there alone in my car under the glare of a street light. I took out my script and began. It was raining outside. I’m not sure how long i was there but, after a while, I drove home and quickly ate something. Then I went into my home office to practice some more.

There is always a trade off between exhaustion and being able to perform. That last edit raised another level of difficulty in the final presentation itself. On the day of I had hoped to practice backstage until I’d be called up to go out. I didn’t have to speak till 1:30 pm so I had some wriggle room.

So, I sat in a chair and open my script which I had printed out with thumbnails of all the slides that went with it. Then suddenly and with a degree of panic one of the organizers came and got me.

“We need you NOW!” he said. There was a problem and they needed access to the website’s back office. As the volunteer webmaster for TEDxChilliwack.com I should have had that info but this day was important to me as far as my presentation was concerned and all else was put aside.

The plan of the tech team was to live-stream the event on YouTube. It went quite well for a time and then… it didn’t! YouTube shut us down because, between each group of 4 speakers, they planned to play a pre-recorded TED talk taken from the main TED Talk channel. Apparently, that’s in stark contrast to the laws of the YouTube algorithms. So, it shut us down for  copyright infringement . The tech team scrambled to quickly set up another YouTube channel and then, once that was done, they wanted to switch out the embed code in the live feed page of the TEDxChilliwack.com site. That’s when they came to me to show them how to get into the site.

I tried to assist but my passwords are all kept in a password manager on my PC at my home office. Apparently, none of the organizers had theirs either. Finally Ray, the lead organizer, went home. as it was close by, and did it all from there. The feed was restored and from then on they turned it off during any of the other recorded TED talks. This prevented the banned notice that had popped up because YouYube had detected a violation of copyright. Everything seemed to work well after that.

But with all that running around I had burned up a my last chance to practice. Not long after I was called up. So, with my script still in hand, the audio guy fitted me with the cordless microphone. At the last second I dropped my script on the table, swallowed hard, and then went out on stage and stood in front of a hundred strangers. I was the only one of all nineteen speakers who’s presentation included both props and slides. My talk was about a mystery brain. A complicated subject no one had ever heard of before. So I wanted to make it as clear and simple as I possibly could. I’m a visual artist so I used lots of slides with images. Both actual physical models of both head and gut brains as well as images projected on the wall behind me.

But this setup raised the level of difficulty up a few more notches on top of the notches I had already collected. Having never done a complete dry run of my talk made it all the more difficult to manage in front of a live audience. That was probably my biggest shortfall.

In addition to that, I was a bit startled as I began to speak. I had never heard my voice amplified before. The big speakers were right behind me. One on the left and another off to my right.

I was taken aback enough that the very first few words out of my mouth were never a even part of my script. I don’t know where they came from but, once they were out, I couldn’t take them back.

Of course, all this was being recorded and then eventually uploaded to the TED Talk YouTube channel for all the world to see.

But, no pressure.

In the end I persisted to move a mountain that day… and I didn’t die doing it. When I finished it felt very relieving to say the least. It took me several days to recover from the output of the previous weeks of late nights and very early mornings.

The takeaway I got from all this is: In a live TEDx talk, as in life, you learn that you can’t wait for the storm to pass so you might as well dance in the rain.

More power to you my friend.

Mobiusman

My TEDx Talk: ‘The brain that saves you’ is happening soon

David Parsons talks at TEDx Chilliwack 2016 - "The Brain That Saves You"
David Parsons at TEDx Chilliwack Feb 27th 2016 Title: “The Brain That Saves You”

This just fell into my lap.

I had never anticipated that I’d ever do a TED talk about the gut brain. Now, don’t get me wrong, I not saying that I never wanted to – that would not be true.

I’ve been watching TED talks for years now and, admittedly, I have thought about how cool it would be to tell my story on a TEDx stage.

Then, through another volunteer organization that my wife Lorna and I are members of, we came to meet Rachel.

Turns out she and her partner Mike are two of the organizers for TEDx Chilliwack 2016. I was shocked to learn that a TEDx event was being planned for our little city.

It wasn’t long before I jumped at the chance they gave me. I learned that I was accepted sometime in November 2015. A red-letter day in my calendar.

It was a lot of work writing and editing and, since I’m a graphics guy who loves visuals I had to have a slide deck to go along with what I’m talking about.

So, now I have it all done. I’ve sent in my slides this morning. There’s no turning back now. No time for revisions. Hardly any time for committing to my foggy old memory what the heck I’m supposed to be saying.

It that’s not enough the whole thing will be livecast on the net and video recorded as well.

But enough is enough. With just four days left I’d better get to it.

It’s only going to be one of the most important days of my life, but… no pressure.

Wish me luck.

More power to me.

Mobiusman

Gut-Brain – New Research

neuron closeup and head brain illustration
The head-brain/gut-brain duo

Jim, an astute online friend of mine recently sent me this article. It’s about the work of Elaine Hsiao a scientist at Cal Tech. He saw the words “gut-brain” were in the title and he thought I might be interested in it.

He was right too.

First, some quick background.

In 1996 I became aware of a new article written by a New York Times science writer. It was about new research that had re-discovered a long forgotten second brain in humans.  This brain was not at all like the one we’re all familiar with. This brain was found in the linings of the digestive tract and it was such an important find that it sparked renewed interest in an obscure branch of scientific inquiry called ‘neurogastroenterology’. They also gave this brain a name: “The enteric nervous system”.

To me the real kicker was between the lines. This second brain is a doer not a thinker. It can act on it’s own and it feels… everything! Gut feelings are real things. This is contrasted by the brain in the head that thinks wonderfully but doesn’t feel much at all because there are no pain receptors in the   From that I could visualize an elegant reciprocal dual-brain system no one has ever thought of before. It takes the shape of a mobius. One brain that thinks but doesn’t feel, and another brain that feels but doesn’t think. The head brain is a conceptualizer the gut brain is an action taker.

Two acting as one — beautiful.

But here’s my main point. I’m kind of a self-help heretic. I’m working to help people who are in the ‘self-help’ category yet I’ve been a fierce critic of the main methods of the industry for a long time. What bothers me the most is it’s way too head-brain centric. Not surprisingly of course, there was only one brain to deal with.

I’ve read leading self-help practitioners say things sort of like this: “The brain thinks mostly negative stuff and that impacts a person’s success so, let’s teach them to switch-out negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.”

That’s been the cutting edge of most self-help for the last 80 years or so. But wait; hang on a second. We now know there is a second brain that’s been found. But have we seen any training developed for the gut brain? TM maybe?

Nope.

TM requires a deep concentration of thought. Strictly head-brained stuff since you need a thinking brain for that. I was frustrated by all that same old same old, so instead I made this tool.

(End of background.)

The first thing I noticed when I read the article is that the words ‘gut brain’ are never actually used in the text. I did a [control + F] but nothing came up. Ms. Hsiao did talk a lot about digestion though and in the text it did mention the word “brain” twice but it was always in reference to the one in the head. So, I’m not entirely sure that she’s recognizing the fact that there’s actually a second brain located in the gut or not. The word ‘gut’ is found fourteen times since intestinal microbes are what her work is focusing on.

While the initial research carried out by Dr. Michael Gershon and published back in 1996 did show that the brain in the gut operates the various aspects of the digestion function on its own. Ms. Hsiao’s research added a new twist to it. She looked deeper into the workings of the microbiology of the ‘bugs’ in the gut and found connections to some of the pathology of autism in children. She and her team from Cal Tech have gone ahead and actually sequenced the entire DNA of these microbes and are now saying that, in all humans, there is another non-human genome – the “microbiome”.

Personally, I love the duality reference in all of that. I’m glad science has found something new here that helps people – in this case kids with autism. It’s been almost twenty years since Dr. Gershon ‘rediscovered’ the gut brain and I was wondering when new research would produce some more interesting results. The fact that we now have a dual-genomeinality (if that’s a word) is of particular interest to me. I’m always looking to make more sense of the duality of, and in, humans. This new finding helps me to better make the case for my theory of dual immunity – one physical and one ethereal. One that looks after the body (physical) and one that looks after the thinking (ethereal).

It’s basically this: If you as an individual can have two separate sets of brains and two vastly different genomes, then why not two unseen yet potentially active immune systems?

As you can probably tell my particular interest in the gut brain is in an area where scientists can’t ever go. Hobbled by the requirements of hard data and physical evidence science needs to ‘see’ real things. If they can’t it’s either not science or they tend to call it dark like “dark energy” or “dark’ matter”. Although those two terms are more for physicists not physicians.

What all this means is that investigating the unseen invisible ethereal properties of the gut-brain – the areas where the most potential exists – won’t ever be discovered by the experts in white coats.

But I’m not a scientist. So I’m not bound by such constructs. But I don’t see myself as a philosopher either so I’m not going to offer up just some flowery interpretations of what others have found. I’m going to investigate what’s going on down inside those rabbit holes that have driven better men than me totally nuts.

I know from experience that my work does bring forward real usable results in people who have used my tools. Massive beneficial behavioral changes in those whom I have worked with have attested to it. Things like a greater self confidence, a truer sense of their own life purpose, and the ability to set aside fear and worry and to power ahead with a reasonable amount of renewed vigor that seems to never peter-out.

And the beautiful part? I can now prove it to anyone as long as it’s done one-on-one. (Ready to try it? Let’s talk.)

By the way. This is not your mother’s personal development we’re talking about here so don’t even go there. This is different. I like to call it “Human Potential 2.0” because it’s a resetting of the old head-based paradigm to something that includes, in a big way, the gut brain as well.

Of course, it is my sincere hope that Ms. Hsiao, and other scientists like her, continue to uncover more of the mystery of our brain in the gut but first I’d really like them to clearly acknowledge that the gut-brain, which I see as one of the greatest biological discoveries of the last quarter-century, truly does exist.

I know it does, but surprisingly most everyone else hasn’t even heard of it yet. I guess I have my work cut out for me.

More power to you.

David's signature in what looks-like handwriting. Sort of.

 

 

PS: I’m currently working on a new book “The Gut Brain Balm – How the strangest brain ever made saves us from death by stress”.  If you’d like to see a sample chapter or two just leave a comment below and I’ll whisk it off to you as soon as it’s ready.

PPS: Need something more? Leave a comment in the box below and we’ll soon be in touch.

Buffering extremes

The mobius is the most elegant example of equilibrium there is
The mobius is the most elegant example of equilibrium there is

The Equilibrium Equation

Capability   =   Challenge

Ability/Willingness  =  Danger/Opportunity

Positive Change  Capability   >  Challenge

Negative Change  Capability   <  Challenge

A friend of mine sent me an email  the other day with this equation in it and, since they know I’m into human development, asked me my opinion of it.

Here is how I replied:

On the surface this looks like a serious scientific question. But in reality it has already been answered. It was answered in the shape of the mobius.

But let’s break it down to its component parts. There are two main parts to this:

Part one is the equilibrium argument. The important part here is the equal sign. I’ll be referencing this a little more in a minute.

Part two is the change segment.  It is described by the (<) less than and the (>)  greater than signs.  This is about a movement from one condition to another. It’s about “change” and all change comes in two distinct polarities: Negative and Positive.

One type moves toward the challenge and the other shrinks from a challenge.

But let’s start with the “Equilibrium” argument first.

In the human body the immune system operates automatically to keep things close to a state of homeostasis.  If the body gets too hot for example it tries to bring the temperature down by activating the sweat glands.

On a graph the process looks like a curve. It rises steadily upwards and forward until the system starts to respond. Then the curve starts downward and forward to arrive at the point of the mean temperature. That’s the ideal at which the system can operate at efficiency.

But in this equation it’s referring to the intrinsic attributes of a system (Capability, Ability/Willingness) as being equal to certain extrinsic values (Challenge, Danger/Opportunity).

I like this because it speaks about the duality that we see in so many things in us and around us. Now let me just address the actual components.

On the one side of the equation we have “Capability, Ability/Willingness”. This includes all our internal resources including our internal motivation.

On the other side we have “Challenge, Danger/Opportunity”. This includes all the extringent factors that make up our outside experience. In this equation these are equal because in a human system that is enervated by an internal ethereal energy, like the kind that is switched on by this, it expands to meet the level of the ongoing challenge.

When that happens the duality is balanced like a financial statement or a weigh scale. In the mobius strip the balance was the shape of the system itself. It’s an elegant reciprocal and continuous feedback loop. It’s totally equal in every dimension. That’s because the mobius is perfectly balanced in elegant dual harmony. No conflicts exist here.

Now let’s look at the second part of the question. The key word here is “change”. Positive or negative.  This is the story of conflict and turmoil. Either one is not a secure state. It’s in flux. There are no guarantees. Not now, not ever.

Our best bet is to try to enervate the immune system that looks after the thinking (mindset immunity) because it’s usually far too slow acting in most people to do much good.

Once enervated from the gut drive, which by the way I believe is the same energy that’s behind the drive of persistence and determination, then it acts like a buffer against the extremes of over-hype on one side and depression on the other.

Hard to think straight when either one is taking over. Buffering of stress and worry, of the type that is offered via connection of the gut-brain with the head-brain, frees up energy resources and increases use of your natural capabilities and inherent talents.

More power to you.

David's signature in look-a-like handwriting

 

 

Getting through your “eventually”.

Success quote by Art Williams

It’s long been known that nothing that is worthwhile is easy to do or easy to get.

“There is no free lunch” is an old saying that’s been around since the 1920’s depression era.

Art Williams is a self-made millionaire who, having worked as a high school coach, went into selling insurance. He decided one day to start his own insurance company. In the early years it is said that he was so terrified of starting out each morning that he’d throw-up from the stress of it.

But he overcame all that and eventually built one of the most successful businesses in America.

Notice I said “eventually“. That word can describe some of the longest timelines one could ever imagine. You start out doing something worthwhile and soon the ‘eventually’ kicks in. From then on it’s work and toil without much gratification.

That’s the way it’s been for every accomplished person since the beginning. I know, believe me, I know.

If you’re setting out to do something new try not to think of how long a word “eventually” will be for you. Your true story of accomplishment will be written in your tears and your brave moments when something finally clicked.

“Easy” never could make much of a compelling narrative in comparison to “tough” anyway. That story of accomplishment, created through the act of endurance, is your story. It belongs to you, and what it presents to you is the hard evidence that builds a strong irrefutable belief in you that says “yes”, you are worthy. That alone makes the journey worth it.

More power to you.

Mobiusman
PS: Did you know that persistence is not something that the head brain can produce but that the gut brain is fully in tune with? Find out how to train your head brain to know what your gut brain is doing to help you get through your “eventually”. Leave your comment below and I’ll tell you all about it.