its own methodology it’s an approach
it’s a frame of reference for living a
brave life it’s a way for individuals to
be able to define themselves as living
brave by being able to say i am living
brave it’s a way for families and teams
and different cultures and businesses to
be able to say we are living brave it’s
a way of navigating the complexity that
we see in the world and it’s a little
bit grand to say it but it is a way I
believe of us being able to do our part
in saving the world because we are the
jigsaw pieces and we are the component
parts that are the experiences that we
have of each other and I believe if we
can frame the world through a lens of
living brave then the world becomes a
better place for it now does the world
need saving yes I think it pretty well
does and at the very least what it
requires from us is that help and that
guidance in doing so so what is the
world well the world is a beautiful
place it officers things such as babies
being born and puppies to fuss and
friends that tell us silly jokes and
even rude ones that we can’t then tell
anybody else and sunsets that we can see
and right now I’ve been watching a cat
that the owner has dressed up as a shark
that they have an electronic vacuum
cleaner going round a kitchen which
seems to serve no purpose whatsoever
it’s got 12 million hits I might be 2
million of them and every time I watch
it it just reminds me that the world is
a beautiful crazy place but the world is
also a complex place it’s a difficult
place it’s a dark place in many ways we
have illness and we have disease we have
bullying we have abuse we have wars we
have the things that say even though the
world is beautiful it is also at
sometimes quite beastly and as human
beings what we’re trying to do is to
find our path in the world what we’re
trying to do is navigate to who it is
that we’re trying to be and what it is
that we want to become and if that’s not
enough we have to do it while the world
presents us with the beautiful things
and the beastly things so how does the
world feel right now
well better than it’s ever been
historically and statistically the world
has never been so good we have life
expectancy longer than it’s ever been
before we have less deaths less Wars
less disease and with that comes a kind
of a question as to why we have a
situation where actually what it feels
like is that there’s more doubt there’s
more anxiety there’s more fear for a lot
of people in the world where does that
come from I’m a firm believer that it’s
the digital age that it’s the
Information Age that we’re living in
that is having that impact for me if you
can think back to when if the Vikings
invaded they would have come in they
would have destroyed a village burned it
to the ground stolen everything but
you’ve got to hear about that dependent
on your proximity to it it may very well
have been that it would have taken hours
days weeks months even years dependent
on where you were in relation to that to
find out but now of course what happens
is straight through to your smartphone
there is now no sacred space for you to
be safe so you can regenerate you’re in
your bed before you go to sleep you’re
having a moment on the loo and there it
is straight through onto your mobile
phone it used to be that when work
wanted to make contact with you they had
to wait for you to go back to work but
now of course you don’t get that it’s
straight through onto your smartphone
and not only is it about the proximity
it’s about the abundance it’s about the
amount it’s about the acceleration of it
from 1980 to 2008 there’s been a 350
percent increase in the amount of
information that we take onboard we now
each day take on board on average 34
gigabytes of data that’s the equivalent
of 22 feature films plus a hundred
thousand words as we come into contact
with other people and that has had in my
mind a huge impact on our relationship
with the world I liken it to cows
strangely enough which is that 10,000
years ago we demystified
the cat and we did that so we could have
milk now actually 75 percent of the
population in the world is lactose
so that stomach cramps bloating nausea
diarrhea all those lovely things that we
get with lactose intolerance so you
would have thought that what we would
have done is recalibrated our
relationship with milk and we’ve had
10,000 years to do it and we haven’t
done that now in terms of the digital
age and the Information Age we haven’t
had 10,000 years if you take that as a
metaphor for how we’ve domestic move
domestic we’ve only had about 30 years
the really since the 1990s when the
internet really came into full flow and
this has had a huge impact I believe on
politicians who speak to us in sound
bytes because they don’t believe that we
can take the long-form message we have
business leaders who are forcing a set
of actions and activities from the
workforce to move faster because of
their own fear of innovation and what
the next challenge to their business
model will be and that’s demoing a
direct impact on workforces and the
media is feeding us a 24-hour stream of
data it is predominantly in the negative
but it’s now more important to be first
than it is to be right and this is
impacting on us as humans and as a
society and the impact is quite obvious
we have 14 million days work days lost
to stress in the UK each year in the
u.s. we have 40% of the workforce not
taking their full holiday entitlement
because the fear of what will happen if
they’re away from the work space in
terms of fairness we have 50% of
household wealth sitting with 1% of the
population and in terms of trust the
Edelman Trust Barometer this year says
the trust is at an all-time low
globally against four major indicators
so that’s government that’s business
that’s not for profit and the media so
that means that the lowest amount of
trust in the recorded history of that
document is that we don’t trust our
politicians we don’t trust our leaders
we don’t trust our news and we don’t
even trust the charity
so what does that mean to us well the
story for me of living brave means that
living brave has to operate for us as
individuals for families for teams for
businesses in that platform it’s always
been complex but now it’s just such an
accelerated rate but if we don’t have a
way of directly pushing back on the
pressure of the world it starts to
dictate to us the way things are as
opposed to us dictating to the world now
my story for living brave started to be
with the catalyst for meters of speaking
to you now my father was married four
times and my mother was married three
times
my father’s fourth wife was the mistress
he had with his second wife so you can
see no trust issues or relationship
issues for me in any way I once came
home to find that out of a set of three
bedrooms my bedroom had being moved from
the end into the middle bedroom and my
father now was with his partner in the
one end room and my mother was in the
other bedroom with her new partner again
no damage done to me in any way at all
because of that I’m having a slight
flashback now just thinking about it
getting slightly warm one day I came
home from school and found unfortunately
I found that my mother had tried to kill
herself by taking an overdose and one
day my father took me into the garage
and with a rope with me now I share that
knowing that that was my catalyst for
trying to find what living brave might
mean to me I know that other people
would look at that and say guy you had
it really easy I wish I’d have had it
that easy other people may look at it
and go gosh that was horrific
everybody’s context everybody’s volume
control is on a spectrum and it’s all
set differently for the things and the
challenges that will occur to us for me
I was directly trying to understand what
was happening to me I felt weak I felt
that I was a coward I was challenging
myself to say where is your bravery why
aren’t you being brave why don’t you
live bright while in livin’ grave why
aren’t you living brave what would that
look like am i living brave so I found
that vocabulary that mindset that was
for me about wanting to be somebody that
would be living brave in life too
to hate myself for an emotionally
damaging situation and I was able to do
that but I didn’t have the parts of the
mechanic that meant I could go and help
others and it always stuck with me as
something I wanted to achieve I wanted
to be able to take to other people the
ability to be living brave because when
we had that anxiety that doubt that fear
that frustration when we feel pressure
or threatened in the world then to have
a direct way of approaching that I feel
can be very powerful we have maybe
friends that gossip or a boss who’s a
bully or maybe we have a sense of our
own doubt around whether or not we’re
attractive enough or intelligent enough
or capable enough to do a TED talk or
something along those lines or maybe the
world just feels a little bit heavy and
we feel it in ourselves or we see it in
others so the component parts for me was
what I was looking for so I would think
about people like Claudette Colvin who
as a black 15 year old girl on a bus in
Montgomery Alabama in 1955 the law was
that if a white person wanted the seat
that she had to give it up and 15 years
old she said no so I wanted to know
where that bravery came from I think
about Malala you survey at 2012 who was
shot in the head by the Taliban because
as a woman she wanted an education so I
wanted to understand where did that
bravery come from and it’s something I
couldn’t really I mean understand what
it was but I didn’t have the parts
behind it and then one day rather secure
Cicely I was in a car park and came
across a gentleman called James I didn’t
know his name at the time but we’d
arrived in the car park at the same time
I was going to visit an office and as I
was walking across the carpark and this
gentleman was walking beside me was a
young man smoking a cigarette back when
you could and he had the cigarette took
his last puff and he flicked it and it
went onto the floor and I remember to
this day James going excuse me fella
would you mind picking that cigarette
backed up and popping it in the bin and
this young guy looked at James and I
think he was making a judgment call as
to how senior he was in the business and
whether or not he should actually pick
it up and put it in the bin but he did
so made the decision that he was he
picked it up put it in the bin James
went thanks very much we went into
research
of these offices and I signed the
visitors book and I was expecting James
to show his passion you know be sent
through because he obviously worked for
the company and he didn’t and I was
really surprised he signed the visitors
book in fact I was more than surprised I
was absolutely shocked because this is
somebody that had just taken issue with
somebody in a car park in a business he
had no span of control in but he
obviously felt it was something that he
needed to do and it came to me about
where my personal bravery was because my
personal bravery had been linked back to
when I was trying to extricate myself
from a very personal situation which I
had been able to do but my bravery had
been very isolated to my personal need
so when I started to think about people
like Claudette Colvin and Malloy you
survey and and James I recognized that
they’re living brave actually sat
outside of their particular need I mean
they had a personal driver that drove
them but it was also about being brave
in the world which was something that I
recognized that mine was very kind of
local to me and I have been brave as
I’ve gone through life but quite
selfishly for my own need so I was able
to take some time to have a conversation
with James and he was able to point out
some of the component parts to me not
because he had the language I then kinda
had the language to ask the questions
and I was able to ask him questions that
were able to tell me what is it that
made up living brave and what became
apparent was first of all I have the
question I already had living brave and
wanting to live brave wanting to be
living brave as a mindset I already had
the question which was and it’s
something that we can use at any point
in our lives when you feel that anxiety
that pressure that threat that may be
upon you which is am i living brave and
in speaking to James what I realized was
he had a compass bearing he had an
absolutely vivid strong representation
of where he was trying to go and the
person he wanted to be in the world and
I recognized that I’d inadvertently done
the same thing I knew what bad was
because I was in bad what I wanted to do
was move to a strong representation of
something that was more
loitering to me emotionally wouldn’t
damage me so I was looking for that add
a strong compass bearing and of course
when I reflected on people like
Claudette Colvin you reflect on people
like the Marley you survey they had a
strong sense of wanting that personal
bravery so they could apply and move
towards a strong vision so having that
compass
what does good look like James also was
accountable that was absolutely clear in
conversation with him he put no
responsibility on to somebody else even
if the responsibility actually should be
with somebody else he recognized that he
had to be the person that did it and I
was able to make that link back to my
life and recognize that I’d been
accountable even though somebody else
maybe because of the age I was should
have been being responsible for me in
different ways I take him accountability
to extract myself from a situation so
it’s about having that compass bearing
it was about being accountable I also
could see that James was present he
didn’t defer to a later time he wasn’t
bewitched by an agenda of getting to a
meeting or going to meet somebody else
or whatever it is that he had he
recognized for him to be able to
defining himself as a living brave when
something happened in front of him that
he wanted to apply his thinking to and
his perspective to it had to be done in
the moment and of course that was
exactly the same for me he couldn’t wait
years he couldn’t wait months it had to
be something that happened in the
present or as near to it as was possible
and also James was fully willing to be
somebody who would contribute and that
was absolutely key he recognized that he
was the catalyst he was the action and
he would be the power behind it so he
had to be the one who was willing to
contribute and again I recognized within
myself that that was exactly the same
thing nobody would come and save me
there was no white knight to come and
take me away I had to be the
contributing force to make the changes
that I wanted to make so for me why now
had was a clear sense of what it is that
it might be for us as individuals as
families as
zaz work environments to be able to say
do we want to operate with a mindset
that he’s living brave if we are then
when things are not going in our way and
we find that we have those tensions that
we want to challenge ourselves again if
you want to be able to say am i living
brave and the answer to be yes you need
to have a clear compass bearing you need
to have absolutely the commitment to
being accountable you have to be
absolutely present with the moment that
you’re in and not defer it and be
willing to be the person that is
actually going to do the contribution if
you can say yes to those things even if
you’re not getting what you want you are
living brave because living brave isn’t
about it going your way
living brave is about defining yourself
as a living brave well what happens to
happens to you and that’s absolutely key
for you if you’re not doing any one of
those things then you need to make the
adjustment towards it to be able to
define yourself as being able to do that
and to maybe help or guide others to do
the same so for me what I hope is it’s
an offering for you to be able to take
on a way of thinking about living brave
to maybe ask yourself the questions am i
living brave and to be able to have
those component parts that or maybe work
for you in the future so on that note I
leave you with a question which I’m sure
you can guess which is am i living brave
[Applause] you