Uncommon Sense: Moving from a Problem-Focused to Solution-Focused Mindset | Mel Gill | TEDxVarna (1)
Translator: Nadine Hennig Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I didn't realize that we gave him the long version.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
That's what happens when you're not in control
of the materials that you give out to people.
The world is a very strange place.
More than 95% of this Earth's population
has a problem -
and we need to find a solution to it very quickly.
Psychotherapists, psychologists, mental health workers,
and psychiatrists understand
that more than 95% of this world's population
suffers from one kind of mental illness or another.
We call this loose class of mental illnesses schizophrenia.
There is mild schizophrenia and there is chronic schizophrenia.
Now, mild schizophrenia is very simple.
The loose definition of schizophrenia is this:
the inability to tell what is real from what is imagined,
what is fantasy from what is reality.
Now, imagine if we were talking and somebody else came into the room,
and all of a sudden we got distracted and we stopped talking.
Now, that person starts to think, "My God, they're talking about me."
Then, they leave the room, and then we continue talking
because the distraction is gone.
Now, they are certain that we are talking about them,
and they plan some kind of revenge.
That's heading towards mental illness.
You see, they say in Varna -
Varna is now one of my homes on the planet.
I don't know if you know this.
I live in Singapore, I live in Chicago,
but now, I'm going to be living in Varna a lot.
(Applause)
I suppose the clap means it's a good thing.
(Laughter)
I'm just kidding.
And so, they say that in Varna - especially in this room -
one in four people are mentally unsound.
I want you to form a picture of three of your best friends.
Form a mental picture.
If they are all okay, then you're the one.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So, you're in the right place.
You're in absolutely the right place.
Today, I'm going to talk to you about something
that's very close to my heart:
how to change people from a problem-focused mind
to a solution-focused mind.
You see, the thing is,
we are experiencing massive levels of depression all around the world -
massive rates of suicides, all going up all the time.
And that's because people are focused on the problems.
And that's why we have so many relationship breakups.
That's why we have people on the verge of suicide
even when they look successful on the outside.
They can be earning a lot of money, they can be famous beyond belief,
but somehow, something is missing on the inside.
And that's called positive thinking?
Not really.
That's called solution-based thinking.
They are always finding solutions to whatever situations come up.
My son, who is actually holding the camera right there -
and I'm now live on Facebook.
So, over the entire world that is my fan base
now knows exactly what I'm going to be talking about.
My son and I went on an Internet-marketing cruise
around Jamaica, Cozumel, Mexico, and so on and so forth.
We're trying to figure out this world of the Internet.
And one of those cruises had a tour.
And the tour was on a little island called Jamaica.
We wanted to go see Bob Marley's house.
Now, for me, I'm just curious about the music and the guy.
But my son, he was interested in other things.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
We were sitting on the bus,
and he was celebrating long before we made it to Bob Marley's house.
(Laughter)
But the tour guide in the bus said something very important,
and that's the shift I want to create in you today.
The tour guide said, "Welcome to Jamaica, man.
(Laughter)
In Jamaica, we have no problems, man."
And I said, "Yes, because of the ganja."
(Laughter)
She said, "No, man, it's not the ganja.
That's a plus.
(Laughter)
In Jamaica, we have no problems. We have situations.
We don't call them problems, we call them situations.
If your wife catches you with the neighbor's wife,
you don't have a problem, man, you have a situation!
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So, you see, if you have a problem, it's not solvable.
But if you have a situation, there's always a solution to it.
So, if you start to see the places where you are stuck in life -
you don't have enough money before the end of the month -
you have a situation, man.
If your girlfriend is seeing your best friend
and spending more time at his house than yours,
you have a situation, man.
You've got to solve this somehow, change your behavior,
change your thoughts, change your actions,
or change your girlfriend."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
The solutions are so simple,
but we don't want to do it - because we are so problem-focused.
I have a problem. I have a this, I have a that.
I don't know if you know it,
but my office here in Varna is actually at the Kostas.
It's free. Nobody charges me rent.
But the thing is, once in a while, people who recognize who I am
come by and stop and they sit down and they talk,
and they don't leave for an hour or two.
And they always have problems.
They talk about their husbands, their wives, their children.
They talk about their jobs. They talk about the future.
They talk about the lack of emotion inside of them.
And there, I turn them into situations.
What are you going to do about it? What can you do?
You see, if you do the same thing over and over and over again
and expect different results,
you're going to expect to wait for years before it changes.
You've got to change something.
And what is the thing you change?
I went into a mental hospital once,
and I wanted to release a whole bunch of people from there -
because I believe that mentally ill people
face better challenges outside than inside a mental institution.
Is there one here in Varna?
Are we in it?
(Laughter)
No. I'm just kidding.
Everybody goes, "Yeah, yeah. I think it's here."
(Laughter)
Now, one day,
I asked three people in the front row,
"I'm going to ask you a simple question.
If you can answer this, I will let you go."
I asked the first person, "What is 3 times 3?"
The fellow scratched his head and said, "164."
I said, "Go back to your room."
I asked the second person, "What is 3 times 3?"
The person scratched his head,
looked up and smiled and said, "Tuesday."
"Sorry. Wrong answer. Go back to your room."
I almost gave up until I went to the last man
and said, "If you can answer this question, I will let you go.
What is 3 times 3?"
He looked at the other two people, smiled at me and said,
"Doctor,
it's 9."
I said, "Great."
I gave him the release papers and said, "You can go."
He started running to the door.
But before he ran away, I said,
"Young man, I need you to tell me something.
Your two friends did not come up with the right answer.
How did you manage it?"
He said, "It's so simple.
I multiplied 164 by Tuesday, and I got 9."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So, you see, sometimes we come up to the right answers in life,
but the thinking is not quite correct.
But somehow we find the answers. We don't know how.
We find answers to any situations that we find ourselves in.
So, today, I want to give you
a precise way to find answers to your situations.
Would that be useful?
For two or three people, that would be.
(Laughter)
They told me that in Varna, people are very shy.
When you ask them questions,
they don't raise their hands or answer back.
But I don't believe you are shy.
I believe that in Varna, when you ask a question,
people don't realize it's a question.
(Laughter)
So, when I talk to you for the next ten minutes -
which I think that's all I've got -
I am going to say something, I'm going to ask,
and I'm going to say, "That's a question."
So your answer will help me.
Would that be useful? That's a question.
Yes. Great. Thank you so much.
My ability to think in terms of possibilities
started when I was 18 years old.
I was climbing a mountain in Malaysia,
and I lost my footing and fell down the slope.
I survived, but I had compound fractures -
mostly my left arm -
and it took about ten days to find a decent hospital.
Now, imagine me, a bodybuilder, losing his face
because he couldn't climb this mountain and just fell.
Well, anyway, in the ten days that it took to find the hospital,
infection had set in - gas-gangrene had set in.
I was supposed to die on the operating table.
And in fact, I was clinically dead on the operating table for 19 minutes.
I put that whole story in my book called, "The Meta Secret,"
or you know it as Meta Tайна.
(Laughter)
When I was in the process,
and as they were amputating my left arm just to save my life,
because they didn't know if I was going to live or die,
I stepped outside and saw the whole process.
I don't know what was happening.
I went through the tunnel of light, had a near-death experience,
and over there, there was a being who was dressed in blue with long hair.
At that time, I thought it was Jesus Christ.
And he said, "Son, it is not yet time.
You have to go back. There's a lot of work to do."
Now, people ask me, "Really? Was it Jesus?
You're sure it wasn't Buddha or somebody else?"
I said, "It could have been the lead singer from the band Kiss,
but I'm not sure."
(Laughter)
It doesn't matter who sent me back.
(Applause)
The point is I came back.
Now, as I came back, I realized that I was in a different situation.
Here was a young man, 18 years old and starting to do bodybuilding -
something my son is just taking up.
And everything about my body was everything about me as a person.
And how was I going to face this -
until that morning when I woke up from this coma,
and my mother walked in.
And I didn't know what to say to her.
Because here she was - and she looked very sad,
and this was my mom.
Everybody loves [their] mom, right?
How many people do love their mom?
Good.
If your mom is here, you should be putting your hand up -
otherwise the allowance stops.
You could see the helplessness in her eyes.
So, I decided at that moment -
and I don't know what made me decide -
I decided to create a joke.
So I said to her, "Mom, don't worry, this is part of the plan."
(Laughter)
She looked at me like I've suddenly gone insane.
She was going to call the doctor.
"I think too much medicine for him. Stop."
(Laughter)
"Morphine."
I said, "Mom, this is part of the plan.
I purposely decided to lose my arm in this accident."
She said, "Why? Why did you do that?"
"So that at the end of my life,
I can say that I did everything single-handedly."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
She couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes.
And then I did another joke with somebody else who was coming
because there's a whole row of people coming in to tell me how sorry they were,
and they said, "Oh, this is so bad. Tell me about the story."
I said, "Well, it all started one night.
I was playing poker and I had a bad hand."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
I started to go inside the people I was talking to.