[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
imagine a world where nobody uses the
phrase I am strike it from the
vocabulary no longer do people say I am
blank how would we respond to really
simple questions like what do you do for
a living because the common answer is
you know I am a consultant I am a
teacher I am a politician you know
somebody if they ask me Adam what do you
do and I say oh I am a consultant I
haven’t even really answered the
question because they’ve said what do
you do if I would have said I consult
for health care organizations or I
operate a mental health support startup
totally different than saying I identify
with people who are consultants why
don’t you apply your definition of what
a consultant is to me because I fit
within that social construct I am a
consultant I mean maybe it matters
another area where this can be sort of
challenging is when dealing with
emotions so if somebody asks you how are
you feeling and I say I am okay I am
fine I am good to me that’s kind of a
statement that like all of the entirety
of Adam is encompassed in that I’m okay
you know and what happens when we’re not
though because there’s so much change in
life when we describe ourselves with
words that to me imply permanence like I
am can make us perhaps a little bit more
resistant to change a little bit more
rigid maybe even more walled off
and I started thinking about this
critically because when I was in my
early 20s I was feeling down I was
but whenever somebody said to me hey
Adam how are you doing I said I’m fine I
am okay I’m I’m good and every single
time I did that it was kind of like
laying a brick around myself as I walled
myself within this construct of what it
meant to be somebody who was okay
because really I wasn’t feeling okay but
I wanted people to think of me as
somebody who was okay
just like I wanted people to think of me
as somebody who was a consultant so
every day you know I kept on telling
people that I am okay even though I was
feeling differently and this disconnect
inside me grew over time and after a
month three months six months a year of
really not feeling good about what’s
going on but telling everybody that
everything is I am okay my mind was I
was in a lot of pain
and my mind started to say well have you
thought about suicide have you thought
about killing yourself because that
would be a solution to your problem
because you have this gap that’s
disconnecting yourself and we want to
stop that so boom that’s an impulse and
it’s a really scary place to be and 19%
of Minnesota high schoolers have
seriously considered suicide according
and so you know now the severity of kind
of my identity being built up around
being okay is is is inhibiting me from
the freedom and the flexibility that I
similarly to I think the way we use some
identities in our lives to build walls
around each other we look to empowering
language like I think I act I vote I do
this as opposed to getting our
identities involved in who we are
because really our identities are just
these sort of globs of things that make
up this entire amalgamation of who we
are
it’s just a shortcut to say I am a
consultant or whatever it may be
and yeah it might be a good shortcut
that we have at the moment but really
what would it be like if we tried to use
language that was more representative of
the authorship in the ownership of
ourselves in the moment of our ability
to move freely through the constant
change of life when in the way that we
think about ourselves because the way
that we think about ourselves becomes
our thoughts our words and our actions
and I imagine a world in which we use
more empowering language because however
in the world would there be one word
that could truly describe
all that encompasses the way you are or
Who I am
thank you
[Applause]
[Music] you
[Applause]
[Music]
imagine a world where nobody uses the
phrase I am strike it from the
vocabulary no longer do people say I am
blank how would we respond to really
simple questions like what do you do for
a living because the common answer is
you know I am a consultant I am a
teacher I am a politician you know
somebody if they ask me Adam what do you
do and I say oh I am a consultant I
haven’t even really answered the
question because they’ve said what do
you do if I would have said I consult
for health care organizations or I
operate a mental health support startup
totally different than saying I identify
with people who are consultants why
don’t you apply your definition of what
a consultant is to me because I fit
within that social construct I am a
consultant I mean maybe it matters
another area where this can be sort of
challenging is when dealing with
emotions so if somebody asks you how are
you feeling and I say I am okay I am
fine I am good to me that’s kind of a
statement that like all of the entirety
of Adam is encompassed in that I’m okay
you know and what happens when we’re not
though because there’s so much change in
life when we describe ourselves with
words that to me imply permanence like I
am can make us perhaps a little bit more
resistant to change a little bit more
rigid maybe even more walled off
and I started thinking about this
critically because when I was in my
early 20s I was feeling down I was
but whenever somebody said to me hey
Adam how are you doing I said I’m fine I
am okay I’m I’m good and every single
time I did that it was kind of like
laying a brick around myself as I walled
myself within this construct of what it
meant to be somebody who was okay
because really I wasn’t feeling okay but
I wanted people to think of me as
somebody who was okay
just like I wanted people to think of me
as somebody who was a consultant so
every day you know I kept on telling
people that I am okay even though I was
feeling differently and this disconnect
inside me grew over time and after a
month three months six months a year of
really not feeling good about what’s
going on but telling everybody that
everything is I am okay my mind was I
was in a lot of pain
and my mind started to say well have you
thought about suicide have you thought
about killing yourself because that
would be a solution to your problem
because you have this gap that’s
disconnecting yourself and we want to
stop that so boom that’s an impulse and
it’s a really scary place to be and 19%
of Minnesota high schoolers have
seriously considered suicide according
and so you know now the severity of kind
of my identity being built up around
being okay is is is inhibiting me from
the freedom and the flexibility that I
similarly to I think the way we use some
identities in our lives to build walls
around each other we look to empowering
language like I think I act I vote I do
this as opposed to getting our
identities involved in who we are
because really our identities are just
these sort of globs of things that make
up this entire amalgamation of who we
are
it’s just a shortcut to say I am a
consultant or whatever it may be
and yeah it might be a good shortcut
that we have at the moment but really
what would it be like if we tried to use
language that was more representative of
the authorship in the ownership of
ourselves in the moment of our ability
to move freely through the constant
change of life when in the way that we
think about ourselves because the way
that we think about ourselves becomes
our thoughts our words and our actions
and I imagine a world in which we use
more empowering language because however
in the world would there be one word
that could truly describe
all that encompasses the way you are or
Who I am
thank you
[Applause]
[Music] you
Please follow and like us: