#77 - Could life be Easier?
A little guide to miracles
Before you dive in:
So I did a TED talk and I want to share it with you. But please read this first.
Creating it has been a wonderful journey of over a year, from first setting the intention to be a TED speaker, to jumping on the opportunity when the invitation magically arrived, to working on the message and the speech all over summer and fall, and letting my commitment stand also in the face of a few unplanned complications along the way.
It means a lot to me, and it is somewhat sacred. Not only because it is the direct fruit of the love of at least 7 people, but because the message it carries has the potential to change lives. It changed mine. And it changed the lives of many people I worked with, right before my eyes.
You’re standing before a sacred video, and I ask you to respect that.
How? By please not clicking play, unless:
You’re planning to actually listen to it deeply (no multitasking or half-listening). Twice.
You’re willing to be impacted by it. In fact, I urge you to go out of your way to be impacted by it.
You’ll watch it for you. Not for me. Not for the “TED factor”. Not for curiosity. Not for anyone but you. Make this talk a gift you are giving yourself, and receive it accordingly.
Please know that I’m not demanding anything of you. It’s perfectly OK if you’re not willing to answer with a resounding YES to all of the above. Just don’t watch the talk in that case, it would be a waste of time.
But if you did reply with a resounding YES to the three points above, please be ready for miracles to occur in your life as you explore in the next few weeks what the deepest part of you already knew for a long time.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I love you,
Nico
PS. If the talk did impact you, please share it with someone else. We have no idea of the difference it can make.
The talk:
The transcript:
What if we’re trying too hard?
what if I told you that it could all be Easier? That you could reach your goals and face your challenges while being at your best and without effort?
This idea may sound simplistic, or even upsetting. But please give it a chance. What if hard wasn’t our best bet? What if it is by struggling less that we could achieve more?
I’ve always been fascinated by apparently impossible results. Moments of extraordinary performance. You know those times when someone ends up way further than anyone could have ever imagined? Yes?
I remember having a first little taste of this over 12 years ago. When a friend of mine and I decided to open a restaurant slash cultural space in Amsterdam even if we only had 9€ in our pockets and no savings to our name. To give you a sense of our delusion, the rent alone was €4000 a month.
And yet, through a series of bold moves, coincidences, and unexpected help, what seemed impossible actually happened. And the experience of it… oh It was like the wind was filling our sails, it was like being carried by an invisible wave.
You must know exactly what I’m talking about, right? Every single one of us has experiences of this kind, big or small. Moments when we’re at our best, and perform way above what we think is possible, and everything we do works and feels easy. And this is because beyond the noise of our thinking, beyond our personal stories, we are one and the same.
Yet we spend most of our life looking at differences, worrying about what we think is wrong with us, and we miss the fact that we share the same infinite potential.
And how cool is that! I mean, think of some of the greatest people in the history of the world, I’m telling you that you and I can drink from the same well as them! Right?
Now,here’s where this is going:
Look at these little big miracles in your life, and you'll find that even though you obviously put in time and care, you certainly didn’t have the feeling of “trying really hard”. No scrunchy face. No overthinking. In fact, quite the opposite!
Athletes call it being “in the zone”.
In our best performances our experience is one of lightness, not struggle. When we are at our best, our best feels easy. Right? This is a huge thing to notice. I mean, really. Because too often we accept hard as inevitable, instead of taking it as a hint that we’re getting further and further away from our best.
But we are living in unprecedented times. You may understandably argue that there’s nothing easy in facing climate change, preserving the ocean or ensuring your projects and relationships thrive even in an unpredictable world.
So what do we do?
Enter the insight.
An insight is a new thought. Something that wasn’t there before, and then it is. An insight is exactly the key that converts an impossible challenge into a no-brainer. It shifts our perspective and our feelings. You know how a moment something is all-consuming and hopeless, and the next it somehow looks different and we feel differently too?
Victories, careers, works of art, businesses… Everything begins in someone’s mind, with a shift in their thinking. Big or small. Groundbreaking or simple.
And it turns out we’re insight-machines. And we can leverage this to create a life where exponential, almost magical results are the norm, not the exception. Including when it comes to global challenges on a massive scale.
Ok, so this is an event about the Ocean so I did some research about sailing, given that I know absolutely nothing about it, and it shows!
Contrary to what I naively thought, it turns out a sailboat can actually go in any direction regardless of where the wind is blowing from. Even upwind, with a zig zag movement (which, I’m pretty sure is not the technical term for it) that leverages the laws of physics to carry the boat forward.
In life, we’re surrounded by people telling us that it’s all up to us, our willpower and our strength against the world. No surprise that life feels like a series of battles and we end up feeling exhausted most of the time. (raise your hand if you ever felt that way)
Yeah, me too. I spent many years running around with that sense of heaviness I thought was inevitable when it comes to being successful, when somehow everything seems to be a matter of life or death.
But the idea of making things happen relying exclusively on willpower and effort, is like being a sailor choosing to drop the sails and row like a madman, instead of leveraging the wind.
And the good news is that there are reliable principles that regulate our potential just like there are laws that regulate the physical world. In other words, our best is way less mysterious than we think.
But as long as we are not aware of how it works, it will all seems complicated, random and uncontrollable. That’s why, If we’re honest, most of the times we don’t quite know why sometimes we do so well, and other times we struggle.
The football or soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo once said that scoring goals is like getting tomato ketchup out of a bottle. Sometimes nothing comes, but eventually it all flows out at once.
In a way our potential is like ketchup too. When we feel stuck, or we’re underperforming, if we give it a second a new insight will pop up, our thinking and feelings will shift and our best will flow again. But because nobody told us, we get in the way. We start believing the stories in our head, and try to fix what isn’t broken, and by doing this we inadvertently remove ourselves from the game. We’re so sure there’s no ketchup left, that we eat our fries plain. We settle for linear and predictable, because nobody told us we're actually built for the impossible.
But imagine you knew for sure that your best always comes through if you let it. That if you don’t get stuck in your thoughts, you will always rise to the occasion. You wouldn’t need to rush into emergency mode and row as hard as you can against the wind. You’d let your mind clear up instead, knowing that 100 hours of pushing won’t ever do for any of us what an insight can do in a moment.
If we see that, just like the ketchup bottle isn’t broken, there's nothing wrong with us either, we can stop using our energies trying to fix or improve ourselves and we can pour that power into what we actually want.
What would be possible if we could spend most of our time in that space of aliveness, confidence and excitement? Can you imagine a world where every single human being was aware they held enormous power within them, instead of starting with the assumption that without a lifetime of work on ourselves we wouldn’t amount to much?
Our potential always comes through if we get out of the way and give it space.
Guys, I wish I could put in words the sense of possibility, and the hope I felt when I first realised that no matter how desperate I might feel, or how dire a situation may look, my perspective will inevitably change as soon as my mind clears up. Before I know it I will be at my best again, and I will know what to do. Provided I don’t keep spinning and spinning those old thoughts around.
In my work with top performers, from pro athletes, to global leaders I get the chance to see again and again how as soon as people get a glimpse of how this works, their experience begins to change. They find themselves in flow most of the time, no effort required. They stop rowing and open up their sails instead, just like anyone else would once they become aware of the wind.
This is true for all of us. Regardless of our personal stories, with no exceptions. Again, we’re one and the same with 24/7 access to the same infinite potential.
Just look around. We have tons of books with countless strategies and theories on how to be at our best, and yet none of them works every single time. Isn’t it true?
One day we think found the ultimate secret, the next we’re stuck because the trick somehow doesn’t work anymore. Something just doesn't add up in the way we’re looking at this.
But as soon as we stop looking at our best as an additive game (where we believe we need to do something to get there), and we approach it as a subtractive one (when we see that all it takes is to get out of our own way) suddenly everything seems to make sense and explains both our best and worst moments.
Think of the last time you were in flow and felt great.
Isn’t it true that you were so engaged with what you were doing that you forgot to pay much attention to the thoughts in your head?
When we feel stressed, anxious or upset, all that’s happening is that our thoughts are clogging up the bottle of our potential. Not a problem, nothing is broken! negative feelings are there to warn us that we are paying too much attention to our thoughts and too little to the world outside our head. As soon as we stop doing that, our best will naturally emerge again.
We don't do this on purpose, of course. It's just an innocent misunderstanding, we got lost in translation: we’ve been taught that the pressure, the insecurity and the sense of urgency we experience when we struggle are telling us that we’re not doing enough, that we need to push harder, when they are actually telling us we’re stuck in our head, they are an invitation to take a step back, and let go of whatever train of thoughts we boarded without noticing.
What I learned is that if things feel hard, I’m not as focused on my game as I think I am, I’m actually playing in my head. It only feels like we are pouring our energy and attention on the pitch, the meeting room, or the living room, but we’re actually bottling that energy up within our mind.
Struggling is not a sign that we’re giving it our all, it’s what keeps us stuck in first gear. But as soon as we ease our hold on the transmission lever, the system is designed to automatically shift us back to flow.
It’s a sense of ease that leads us to extraordinary results beyond our imagination. Easier is our default, not something to be earned. It’s not a feeling we get after our best achievements, it's how we get there!
A disclaimer, before I end. In my experience the biggest obstacle here is that what I’m pointing to sounds too simple. We’re so used to respect hard over easy that we may dismiss too quickly the possibility that our very best might indeed be much closer than we ever thought.
So here’s my invitation to you: give it a try. A real shot. Take an hour, or two or even a full day to experiment. And during that time, don’t try harder, but welcome Easier.
If you feel lost, or tense try resisting the urge to “fix it”. Put your thoughts down for a minute and engage with what’s around you instead. Do what feels obvious. If nothing does, do nothing. Don’t make stuff up for the sake of feeling busy. Give yourself a chance to be surprised by your innate resourcefulness.
And maybe, even the massive challenges we’re facing will look a little different, a little simpler. The world we desire is only one insight away. All it takes is the courage to look towards simplicity, take a step back and allow our perspective to shift. A new idea to arise. Our very best to take over.
Nobody knows what any of us will think in a minute from now, and I can’t imagine better news than this. So brace yourself, because anything is possible.
Thank you.
A word before you go…
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