Seize the moments that matter: Adie Shariff at TEDxRussellSquare

Thank you. My talk is about a really simple choice. And actually that choice has been mentioned in almost every talk today. And it's a simple choice and it goes like this. Under pressure, we can become victims of our anxiety and. And play it safe, or we seize the moment and boom, put ourselves into the world with a bit of courage. Simple in theory, because it's not like that in reality. And as a psychologist, I have been fascinated by that question. What does it take to do the boom? It's intrigued me for over 20 years and what I want to share with you are some of the lessons I've learned from many people I've worked with on the boom. And I want the talk to be practical. So I really hope that the lessons I share provoke your thinking about how you dare yourself with a little bit more skill. My first tip is to see courage as a choice. And for me, this is where it all starts. A great example of this is somebody who I have a huge amount of admiration for and his name is Milo. Milo was somebody I met when he was 20 and I met him when he had a decision on his plate. He'd worked in a warehouse for a year and they offered him a position as a team leader, which was great news. But for Milo, it came with a problem. And he put it to me like this. I can't lead nothing. That's as simple as he put it to me. Now, Milo had what a psychologist might term as the heebie jeebies. He had a confidence problem, but actually what he asked for was courage. And the thing is, with courage, you can't pack it up and give it to somebody. People have to create it for themselves. So lectures in courage don't help, questions do. So the question I asked Milo was this. Milo, when in your life have you had to face fear and create courage? And his story, I mean, his story blew me away, but I can only give you a shortened version of it. His story related to a time when he'd been in care, and Milo had been in care till he was 16. And in one particular care home, he broke out no less than six times. And a breakout involves something like climbing out of a window at night, down a drainpipe and out into the streets of London. And those breakouts got Milo into a lot of trouble. But for him, it was a price worth paying, because what he was up to, he was going to check and see if his sister was safe. She's four years younger and she's in a separate care home. What Milo came to realise as we were Talking was that his courage at that time had come from choice. He so could have played it safe and stayed well out of trouble, but he chose to risk himself and protect his sister. The bigger dawning, though, in my life was that choice was bad. With this job offer, he could play it safe and hold on to the label that he'd given himself, that of being a nothing, a nobody. I can't lead. Nothing. His label, safe, no change. The other choice was to boom. To seize the moment and go and chase a new label, and maybe one with the word leader written on it. And that's what Milo did three years on. He's gone on to bigger things, but his starting point, his breakthrough, was to see courage as a choice. And when you see courage as a choice, it becomes accessible to you despite your social class, your genetics, your color, your creed. It becomes an attitude. And it becomes an attitude that you own. For Milo, that was really powerful. But choice comes with questions. Why should I show courage? When have I shown courage? How the hell am I going to show courage now? Only Milo could answer those questions. Nobody was coming to save him, and. And he had to find answers. But it gave him ownership of his courage. And ownership gave him a sense of empowerment and it gave him a sense of endurance. Because the job he took on wasn't easy for Milo. But as the challenges reigned in on him, he took the step back, took a deep breath, and stayed aware of his choices. And more often than not, he found his boon. And that worked for Milo. So see courage as a choice. That's my first tip. Now, for us, we're a bunch of intellectuals, aren't we? I've met some really clever people today. And when I say, see courage as a choice, people's heads nod profoundly. We all get that. We can also intellectually describe the benefits of courage. And most of us, if I asked you, the question, could define a moment we should seize. Yep, that's the boom I need to do. But we don't bend and we don't act. And here's a really good reason why. When a control freak loses control, all you have left is the freak. When we're under pressure, it is so normal for the inner freak to come out and have a play. For us to have fear, to have anxiety, to have concerns. And it's so normal that my second tip is embrace the freak. Give it a cuddle. I'm standing here right now and I'm having to handle quite a few freaks in my head. They're all whizzing away. There I've got a freak alarm going because I desperately want this talk to be perfect as I did it to my pillows in my bedroom. But you know what? Here, it's different. There's that spotlight, there's faces. Some are grimacing, some are smiling, some. I'm looking for people looking on their blackberries. That's not happening. But there's a freak alarm going off in my head. I've missed messages already. I've mixed up messages already. I can feel stutters coming on. You're not in my bedroom and you're not a bunch of pillows. This is different. I have to accept that. I have to accept that not everyone's going to agree with what I have to say. I have to accept that I may well be the biggest Internet flop in TED history. It's a possibility. But by acknowledging the freak improvising with it, what I'm doing is I take oxygen away from that fear and I give myself permission to come out and play. And the critical word is to acknowledge. Because the freak isn't going away, you can't get rid of it, no matter what a positive psychologist tells you, it's there. So to acknowledge it is to hear it. It's to say, what have you got to tell me? If it's useful, use it and focus back on performance. The other word is to act on your freak, and that's to act on your fears and that's to play it safe. That's different. If you're going to boom. It's about acknowledge. The most wonderful way I've heard embrace the freak put to me is by Benjamin Zander. Inspiring Ted Speaker. If you've not heard him, go Google him. And he has a really simple suggestion. When the freak comes out of play, which is constantly, no matter who you are. I work from generals to Olympic athletes to youth offenders. My wife always said, I had a present. It's the Old Spice. Do you mind me carrying on? Yeah, let's carry on. Where the hell was I? Remind me. Improvising. Benjamin Sander. Thank you. Thank you, Benjamin Sander. His suggestion is really simple, which is when the freak comes out to play, learn how to say, how fascinating. Be intrigued by the freak. Acknowledge the freak and then move on. Focus on what you control. Learn how to say how fascinating. See it and move. And that takes me to my very last tip, which is do control. And hopefully there's an evolving storyline. When I said, see courage as a choice, see it as an attitude that helps you seize the moment. Once you seize the moment, the freak is going to come in and attack you. That's really normal. And you know what? And I say this to you with my hands together as a psychologist, having a freak is not evidence of your inadequacy. It's a really normal part of taking a challenge on. So acknowledge it. And then once you acknowledge the freak, the mental discipline is to constantly focus on what you control. And that mental discipline can make you fly. And a really inspiring story of that is Marion. Marion was somebody that I met when she was six months into a promotion. Problem was, her boss had come to the view that that promotion was disastrous. Marion hadn't performed Marion from her perspective. She was devastated. I mean, she was a really committed performer and had never had that kind of feedback in her career. And from her perspective, she was dealing with insurmountable problems, and her boss lacked empathy. So you had the situation of these two warring factions, and there was me in the middle thinking, how much am I getting paid for this? The good news was, though, and the inspiring thing of Marion is she turned that situation around and she won the confidence of her boss. And the first of many breakthroughs to Marion. It wasn't an easy journey, but was quite a radical shift. It came from an exercise really early on. What she did is she listed in one column of the table all her fears, her concerns, her worries, her anxieties, her difficulties, her problems. She literally shook the freak from her head. She then went through that list and in the second column of the table listed all the things that was in her controlling influence and her realization. Her realization was her problem wasn't that she had problems. Her problem was that she'd wallowed in problems. She'd got stuck in the first column. She'd become an expert in problems. What was broken, why it was broken, who was to blame, what wouldn't work. It was only when she looked at the second column and worked it, and it takes hard thinking, what do I control in influence? Did she start to become a connoisseur of possibilities. And that difference between think problems and think possibilities was an awakening moment for Marion, and it helped to create many breakthroughs. And here's another thing. As a psychologist, everyone's an elite performer, but it takes some really hard thinking to do it. So that control and influence column wasn't easy for Marion. And it takes time to develop it, but it was worthwhile time. What possibilities gave her was a sense of energy, but it gave her clarity. And she knew exactly what was the thing, moment that she needed to grab hold of, and boom. And that was an honest conversation with a team about sharing responsibility. What she had done up till then, marrying the committed performer, had held on to responsibility so tightly, she'd not shared it. It was time to share and time to learn to share. And that Monday morning meeting that she did that, it wasn't perfect. And the freak came in and attacked her. And she had to learn how to say, how fascinating. And she had to learn to look for the next possibility, the next possibility, the next boom, and the next boom. She found her boom as Marlowe found his boom. And this talk has been about the boom. To bring things to a close, folks, the boom is about a moment in time that really matters. And when you seize that moment, and only you can seize that moment, you create an opportunity for personal growth. And it's only when you dare yourself and you risk yourself, do you become yourself with a little bit more skill. So, to come back to where I started, whether you agree or disagree with some of the things I've said, I really hope I provoked your thinking on how you might dare yourself just with a little bit more skill. Thank you.