Speaking at TEDx Klagenfurt in Austria initiated me into a world filled with people willing to give their time and energy to share ideas that can make the world a better place.
But not only that. These aren’t idealistic changes based upon hope, but concrete ideas, deliberate changes, pivotal shifts and personal paths examining the path to a better future. The theme — Deep Shift — provided an excellent backdrop for thought provoking discussions on how to harness the potential for the profound shifts happening all around us so that we can embrace the future without fear.
Chapeau to Eithne Knappitsch and all of the crew for creating a superb event. I was extremely impressed with the professionalism, the quality of the speakers, the entertainment (wow what music!) and the magnificence of Klagenfurt as a location. Imagine a cutting edge professional television studio housing over 500 smiling people, cossetting nature with mountains to climb, Wörthersee, an aqua lake with such clean water you can not only swim in it but drink the water, and a beautiful Austrian city to meander, and you start to get an idea of what it was like to be there. This isn’t promotion on my part. I ran a successful event company for 16 years, so I don’t give accolades lightly. So I know what I’m talking about when I say it was a 10 out of 10 event.
We are living in times of transition, and that requires transformation. Transformation is easy an easy word to say but a scary thing to do. Why? Because it asks us to delve into a deeper cut of ourselves and embrace the unknown. And that’s the challenge. You see, we humans love to feel like we are in control. We despise anything that might threaten this false understanding of reality. Therefore rather than challenging it, we resist the unknown. We do this in two ways. One is to trash everything in order to create a brave new world. But we can’t force our nature into a utopian ideological world that was created by an idea. That’s what communism tried to do, and we know how that ended.
On the hand, we can’t shut your eyes and try to pretend that all we need to do is return to how things were. There is a deep shift happening all around us. I don’t know about you, but I can all feel it in my bones. How we are living no longer works. Life is a battle where there are only winners and losers. We are in constant war: with ourselves, with each other, and with the planet—the very thing that nourishes and feeds us. Why is this? It is because we are living from an outdated perception based upon scarcity.
We are at the cusp of a new age. A new consciousness is all around us. One that is bringing solutions such as AI and technological advancements to give us answers to many of our problems. However in order to embrace this, we need to transform, too. In order to do so, we need to shift within. And that was exactly the basis for my talk.
Transformation is the ultimate democracy. No matter what age, culture, gender or country we come from, we can transform. But here’s the key. In order to truly transform, it can’t just happen in our head. It’s a full body process. In fact, it takes the body to do this. Because transformation happens only when we shift within.
I should know. Transformation has followed me most of my life. I’m from Kansas, better known as the land of the Wizard of Oz & tornados. At the age of fourteen, I was sent to live in Brazil. A few weeks later, a friend, after a night of dancing, took me to drink coconut water on Ipanema beach and watch the sunrise. There and then, I told myself I’m never going back to Kansas. It took me decades to follow the yellow brick road home—not to Kansas and the old me. But home, which is inside me. It makes a great story, but the best part is to come. You see, I created a roadmap along the way so that you can come home, too. All it take is a shift within.
I’m going to be sharing a lot more about this roadmap to shifting within, because I want each and every one of you to make this shift. Not only for a better world, but for a better you. It’s all part of making the world a better place. It’s a change that will happen one person at a time. And this person is you.
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And a profound thank you to TEDx Klagenfurt for providing the platform to help us share our wisdom so that we can all create a better world, together.