How understanding the principles of thought can transform your life | David Key | TEDxInnsbruck

Wow. It was 1993. I'm just looking at the ages of you. I'm not sure there's many people that were alive in 1993 here today. Hands up if you're alive in 1993. Okay, so it was 1993, and I'd been dreaming about it as a child that I wanted to go on a road trip to the usa. I'd never been to the States before, and I'd read that Florida was quite a sunny place to go. So I decided to book up my vacation. I hired a car. I arrived at Miami International Airport. I was so excited, and I picked up this Mustang, a red Mustang. I took the roof down. It was a bad mistake because it was so hot. I had to put it back up again, put up the air conditioning, and I headed down south, all the way towards the Keys, the Florida Keys. I don't know if it's anything to do with my surname, but it appealed to me. And I headed south, all the way down, deep down into the Keys. And I saw. Halfway down in the Keys, I saw a big billboard on the side of the road and it said on it, relax. Really relax. Play golf in the Florida Keys. Well, I didn't have any golf clubs, so what was I going to do? I phoned the golf club and said, do you take strangers, people who aren't very good at golf, and can I hire some clubs? They said, yeah, sure, come on down. So I did. I dressed in my white polo shirt, put my blue shorts on, had my sneakers on with white socks. I headed down and I thought, I'll get some breakfast first. So I had some breakfast, and then I eventually arrived at the golf club and I picked up my clubs, got in the buggy, and I just headed out onto this beautiful course. And I bought 12 golf balls. You see, when I arrived at the golf club, there were signs saying, beware of the snakes in the rough and watch out for alligators. So I was like, okay, I'll get a dozen. Because I wasn't a very good golfer. I normally lose one or two, but I thought, you know, I'll be safe. If I lose one in the rough, I'll forget about it. After five holes, playing about an hour, I came to this tee, like this one here. I'm standing on the tee. This isn't the exact picture, but it was very similar to this. And I was looking, squinting, trying to see where the flag was. I couldn't see it. I think there's no way a mere mortal could hit a ball from where I was standing all the way across. But anyway, I thought I'd have a go. So I put the ball on the tee. I got the biggest club out the bag, and I hit it as hard as I could. And for a change, it went straight and didn't even make it halfway. So I thought, this is a challenge. So I took another ball. I had 12, and I hit that one. Didn't even make it halfway that time. I'm getting frustrated at this point. So I put another ball on, hit that. By the fourth ball, I thought, there's something wrong here. Maybe Tiger woods could do that. But me, a mere mortal like me, it's impossible. And I went to get. I thought, there's no one looking. I'll get one more ball and I'll have one more go. And then I noticed something. There was an arrow pointing me in the other direction. I was actually hitting the ball the wrong way. I just turned around and was like, oh, so there's the flag. I'll go that way. Which leads me to a question. And the question is, are human beings innocently looking in the wrong direction when it comes to the current mental health crisis? And if we are looking in the wrong direction, is there another answer? You see, for centuries, human beings have lived in myths, myth, understandings, as I call them. We thought the world was flat for years, didn't we? And this one here is relevant to people who are into nutrition. We've heard a few talks about that today. That's some limes. And there's the ships. And we had this illness back in the day. Scurvy. Hands up if you've heard of scurvy. Okay, so that's most of you. It was a terrible illness back in the day. But here's the thing. Ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks, they knew that if you consume certain types of foods, you wouldn't get this horrible illness. And yet it took the British Navy over 300 years before they caught onto the fact, through some research, that vitamin C, limes, or lemons would prevent you getting the disease. So we know, as a species that we have for centuries lived in this idea that something was right and we had the cure, but we were wrong. For example, sailors used to use urine as mouthwash. I'm totally sorry about mentioning that, but they thought that was the cure. Or they put acid on their wounds, thinking that was the cure. And yet the cure had been around for three, 300 years. So I want to share something with you. I have been working in the field of helping people for over 30 years when I was playing golf back in 1993, I actually got interested in hypnosis. I was fascinated with the unconscious mind. I saw my friend perform on stage, do some really bizarre post hypnotic phenomena. So I thought, I've got to learn this, this could be fascinating, interesting. So I went on that journey, left my career in the corporate world and ended up getting into helping people. Helping people transcend psychological suffering as best as I could, based on models, theories and techniques. Disciplines that I'd been studying for years and years, 20 years. And then 10 years ago, 10 years ago, I experienced some personal challenges that took me down. I was feeling low, I had anxiety, stress, I had anger issues. And I couldn't understand when this life experience happened to me. I could not understand how is it that I'm helping these people, and yet I couldn't help myself. And I stumbled across an understanding, an understanding that changed my world, an understanding that changed the worlds of the people that I work with. And I'm hoping in the time that we've got available someone here, maybe you will hear something that I'm pointing to. Because if we were looking in the wrong direction, what if we turn around and looked inside? You see, the work that I came across was from a guy who was a Scottish man. He was named Sidney Banks. And he was an ordinary man that had an extraordinary experience. He was a welder by profession, ninth grade education, wasn't a psychologist. And yet he saw something. In the 1970s, he had this experience, an enlightenment experience, and he realized that human beings were innocently looking in the wrong direction when it came to transcending their psychological suffering. So I watched some of his work and I watched some of the people that he'd worked with, some of the greatest psychologists that are alive. And I'm not a psychologist, I'm a behaviorist back in the day. But I'm watching this video, I'm listening to him and he's talking about how human beings just need love and they need understanding. And I'm like, well, I get the love bit, but what about understanding? What is it? You see, back in the day, those sailors, right, they had understanding. The ones that knew they had understanding. If you eat certain foods, you won't get scurvy. And Sid said all human beings need is love and understanding. But I didn't get it. See, I was using my intellectual mind to try and make sense of what he was saying, like you might be doing right now, trying to work out what he was saying. And it was a few months later, after I'd been reflecting on understanding, and he was talking about a principle. He said that there are three principles that are creating the human experience. And if human beings just understood how it worked, they would transcend their suffering. Problems would just fall away. I'm like, really? I was so much up in my head. And three months went by after watching that video. And I'm making a cup of tea in my kitchen. And I'm there, and the kettle's boiling, the steam's coming out. I'm in my little trance. You know, I'm feeling really relaxed. And I pick up the kettle. I've got my cup, and I'm pouring it on my tea bag. We drink a lot of tea in the uk and I'm pouring this on there. And then I had this feeling of rage, frustration, anger wash over me. I was furious because I'd had an argument with my wife, and I was furious, furious about it. It's okay. I asked her if I could mention that. She said, yeah, it's okay. I was furious. And then I had a little voice in my head going, david, she's not even in the house. She can't possibly be making you angry. It might sound simple. That was so profound that I hit the deck in the kitchen. I was laughing, belly laughing. My eyes were streaming. I was crying with laughter. I couldn't believe it. It was true. She couldn't possibly be crediting my experience because she wasn't there. She was out shopping with the children. So at that moment, I saw that 100% of all human experience was credited on the inside via the gift and the principle of thought. That has the power to change your world. It really does. And I took this understanding and started sharing it with my clients instead of intervening, trying to fix them. I remembered what Sid had said. He said, human beings are working perfectly. You don't need to fix anybody. You don't need to change anything. You don't need to intervene on thought. It's just energy. It flows in and flows out. You just have to understand. And then I had another realization. Oh, yeah, if I kick the wall without any shoes and socks on, it hurts. It doesn't mean that the wall created it. And it doesn't mean there's something wrong with my foot. It just feedback. It's my nerve endings letting me know you've been a bit of a fool. Stop it. Stop kicking the wall and you'll be just fine. So I thought I'd take this understanding out into the world. And I got invited by one of my students to partake in a program for the homeless. Like in the area that she lived in Hertfordshire in the uk, there were a lot of homeless people who are struggling with their mental health and well being, addictions, all sorts of other challenges. And you'd think it was because they were homeless, wouldn't you? You'd think, well, their circumstances are such that their feelings are justified. And I ended up in a small group program with nine individuals. And I had a lot of judgment and thinking about working with the homeless because I hadn't done that and that was coming from inside of me. And then we ended up at a community center, a small room run by the council. And these nine beautiful souls walked in and they walked in and Lisa appeared and I spoke to her and she was really anxious and oh, what's this all about? And eventually she just relaxed, she settled down and she had this profound insight. After speaking to her, she saw in the moment with all that medication that she was on that you can see up there, she had a fear of heights, she was alcoholic, she was smoking. She was on all that medication for all different ailments. And in a matter of 72 hours of having a realization like my one at the Kettle and seeing, oh yeah, everything that I think creates a feeling, I just need to stop doing that. I need to stop going down that rabbit hole and then I'll be better. And she was. And within a matter of a few conversations with her doctors, she came off on all medication. And I met her two weeks ago. She's doing really well. She actually told me she had suicidal ideation and she was going to end her life that week. And that's what's so beautiful about realization and understanding. You stop kicking the wall. You stop kicking the wall. And I want to finish on a story from my golf experience, okay? Because, you know, I said, I went to breakfast first in my beautiful white polo shirt. Well, I'm driving along, I think, where do I go for breakfast? And I saw this blue roof of a restaurant. It's just like a big blue tiled roof. And I thought, I'll go in there. And it had a sign saying ihop, which I didn't know what that meant, but it stands for International House of Pancakes. So I thought, I'll have some breakfast. So I sat myself down, the waitress came over with a menu and I went, well, I'm in ihop, so I'll have pancakes and some eggs and a little side of fruit. And she came over with the eggs and she put it down and she said, would you like tomato Ketchup with that? I said, yes, please. So I got this bottle, and it was the old fashioned one, the glass bottle with a little white cap. And I shook it as hard as I could, you know, because it's, like, thick, this ketchup. And the lid came off and ketchup went absolutely everywhere. It was dripping from the lights, and there was a poor soul in the corner and it was dripping in her new hairdo. And I didn't have the courage to say anything. I was a little bit embarrassed, as you would be. And I looked down at my nice golf shirt and thinking, oh, I was covered in ketchup. So I got up, walked into the bathroom, and there was a guy, and we'll call him Bob. I don't know what his name was. He was an elderly gentleman, and he had obviously been to the bathroom. He was washing his hands. He was looking in the mirror, preening himself. And he saw the reflection of me walking in. And he turned around. He freaked out. He was shaking. Oh, my God. Are you okay? I'm like, no. I'm a bit embarrassed, actually. I just covered myself in ketchup. But I'd never seen someone's physiology change so quickly. He went pale. Well, all the blood drained from his body. And then when I told him it was ketchup, everything came back. He looked okay again. And that, for me, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of thought. He went inside his mind unconsciously. He didn't do it on purpose. He's innocent of that. But he saw something else. He saw maybe there was an active shooter. Maybe I'd been stabbed, or he'd watched a movie from years ago, and that memory came in his mind and he projected that onto me. And he felt. He felt what he was thinking. And it had nothing to do with the tomato, ketchup and everything to do with where his mind went. So I want to leave you with this final question, because this is a question that I would ask somebody who maybe thinks that they're broken. And I believe that every human being on planet Earth is working perfectly. Okay, so here's the question for you to ponder. Who could you be? Who could you be without the thoughts that there's something wrong with you? And I would like to leave you with that thought. Thank you.