Mind Over Matters of Fact | John Perez | TEDxOhloneCollegeNewark
no doubt many of you have heard that the mind is a terrible thing to waste but what if you are your own enemy and you yourself waste your own mind that's what we talking about today so I mean very important and that is understanding how your mind controls your body and ultimately the decisions that you have to make 19% of Americans face anxiety according to the National Institute of Mental Health and that was reported last year in November most of us in here deal with anxiety at some level or another but do we really deal with that anxiety or we look at it and put it away if you vent ourselves you live in our lives and I think the latter is true that this anxiety can get the best of us for example most people avoid taking a public speaking class I mean most people say I want to go up and talk with it here we are today however the Washington Post released an article in 2014 and talked about some of the key phobias that people avoid number one was public speaking that list also included other phobias such as heights think we're okay and then also if you go down that list bugs spiders snakes so hopefully some of you are now squirming because some of these anxieties are things that you can relate to now how you address these anxieties and how you deal with them will either make you successful or not so successful and it may not just be public speaking if you go down that list to number eight we have ghosts zombies and even being alone that I think that's not a zombie but whatever your anxiety is is important to understand at least acknowledge that it's okay to have that talk I hadn't realized how important it was to acknowledge what anxiety is and how it can affect us until I myself was in a very grave situation at the age of 22 years old my most famous person and favorite person well my grandmother passed away it was the first death I had to deal with now most of you are thinking this sounds more like depression versus anxiety but it really is anxiety and understanding the difference between the two can help you understand yourself and how to overcome the barriers that come with that so for me I was a 22 year old college student living life to its fullest exploring the dynamics of degree in psychology and you think I understand anxiety versus depression in psych majors in here that's why I'm here all right thank you perfect no easy task and so when I was given the information that my grandmother had passed away I thought my world was over it wasn't that I was sad and lonely it was the ability to live my own life without her in my life and for me that was huge in fact it took ten years before you mentioned her name without crying because I loved that woman so much so standing here today is showing you all how you can overcome some of your greatest fears and anxieties and to do great things fast forward a few years after the notification of her passing I have made a career out of helping people understand their anxieties and getting over them and I am so grateful to be here today to share some of those experiences and stories with you one of the things I wanted to do as an adult was set some goals and I thought I lost my grandmother but she would not want me to stop living so I created a list of goals now the chief four goals and goal setting is to make sure that they are obtainable and they're realistic so I have four goals and you're gonna see them right horse play the piano travel now that's pretty broad I knew that for work all the time but what does travel mean does it mean walking outside by yourself finding someone to go with you traveling across the country the definition is pretty broad so it's easy for me to obtain and then finally help others and so this is what I decided to make the next ten years of my life by accomplishing these goals identify what it is make sure was possible and then doing and actually do it and so I have the pleasure and sometimes the pain of dealing with people who absolutely hate talking and for me I have to listen to them and say it's going to be all right you can say how you feel and then they usually give me a four-letter word I said that's great let's work with that but it's that fear or that phobia of saying I want to talk about this or I need to get over this that we don't want to have a discussion about when I was 22 years old no one wanted to address the fact that I lost my grandmother that was a problem for me because I did not know or have the skills to get over that issue or overcome it and if I'm not getting help and I'm not asking for help how could I possibly solve that problem and so some of you are nodding your heads here today because you have been in similar situations where something is unknown and you're afraid to ask for help because the stigma that's tied to that so it's really important to have that dialogue and have that conversation and I think we live in a world but for some of us it's incredibly challenging just to get up in the morning and let ourselves in the mirror and that's okay because the minute you acknowledge that you can obtain great things so for me I thought if you really great if I bought a piano and then it's not there because that's great it's gonna sit there I can't play it and I said okay fine put that on the side and then in 2008 I'm gonna buy a horse now you can't just leave a horse there they have demands they want to be fed and that's a lot of mess if you sleep there for awhile and so 2008 I learned how to ride I got lessons I got a trainer I got a bottle of whiskey and I thought no matter what happens good or bad land or fall I'm gonna do this and as you can see from the photo I did it quite well because I didn't get hurt that was my definition of well so goal was checked off goal accomplished in 2015 I had the horrible news as diagnosed with brain infection and I did not know what my outcome were partners this was going to be its 2018 so we're okay but at the time I didn't know and so one of the things I did I said that piano I'm gonna play on the learn how so for the powers of patience in YouTube I went ahead and got a baby grand piano from keyboard my decorated and I learned how to play that I constantly think my parents were having the patience to listen to anything to those porkies for the first two years but it was that fear of not knowing if I'd be alive tomorrow that pushed me to obtain the goal of learning how to ride and play the piano I thought to myself yeah this is pretty good but it's not enough so then I thought I need to check off goal number three and that is travel so for the last three years I set a goal I'm going to travel 1 million miles in four years I'm just under seven hundred and seventy two thousand miles now these are short trips they could be from here to San Diego or across country to Florida in fact using positive thinking to help overcome that fear of not knowing if he'll be here tomorrow I ended up in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 plane at MCO International Airport in August of 2017 they didn't let me fly it they sure did try and I'm also definitely afraid of heights so it was really important that I have that picture taken and in fact I was so bold to say I have this one opportunity to become successful and overcome this ability to get inside the cockpit but I said excuse me pilot would you mind stepping outside so I took picture the look on his face was priceless I said here not to be anxious I'm not gonna actually start it up that was a joke excite they trying to start it up and he said don't touch that button regardless of that I never thought you would have asked me in 2002 my grandpa died that I would be inside the cockpit of a Boeing 737 or that I'd have a horse they learn how to write what I learn how to play the piano on my own the power of YouTube it's not just for watching people fall and then this is my grandmother Jana JQ so I said that without any tears it took ten years of the making ticket to that point and the more of the story is if I were to sit back and let the phobia of the unknown get to me I wouldn't be accomplishing the goals that I'm doing now I have a wonderful career where I actually meet many different people I deal with their anxiety their phobias for public speaking most people are terrified and eighty percent of my job is helping them understand that you will be okay you will get through this and you'll actually have a somewhat tolerable time it's not going to be terrifying and that's what makes my job so much fun which leads me to goal number four helping others not only do I like to help people address their anxiety but I also like to volunteer help others give back to the community through volunteer programs food banks and other areas in all of my endeavors I like to talk I talk to different people and I mean tons of different people I hear their stories and as these stories that now motivate me to help plan for the next goals and move forward with the future now I always think back if I just back there and gave up in 2002 and said I'm done where would I be today it is the fact that we hear things and we believe them and that is how powerful our brain is in our mind is if we let ourselves talk ourselves out of doing something we're never going to do it if you look at something and say that will be uncomfortable but I can do it and I will do it you will have a far better time two minutes and you might actually enjoy it so for the next 10 years of my life I plan to do as much for others as people give to me and so I go out and find people when I talk to people this week alone I had seven individuals come to me telling me that they couldn't do various projects whether it be organizing the speech researching something or even having a conversation with an instructor who's giving them the battery not me somebody else is having that conversation that validates those concerns and also lets people know that you can about that it is okay but how we gonna move forward even though you identify the problem and don't have a solution and it's that thought process that plan that helped us overcome some of these terrifying events such as public speaking Heights snakes your honor leveling spiders ghosts and zombies alright and so no matter what your fear is it's when you get to the level where you worry so much that it becomes something that you avoid or ignore when you stop living life that's where the problem comes forward so many of us have experienced anxiety and in fact a third of us in our entire lives will have some sort of anxiety or issue with anxiety so while all you need to do is when you feel those issues with anxiety or you don't know if it's anxiety to talk to somebody one of the easiest things that we can do and all of us have the power to used is our voice and so I encourage you today to look at yourselves and think have I experienced anxiety has somebody else experienced anxiety and then address it one issue at a time day by day and you can get overcome it and I think teaching has given me the ability to understand my own internal anxieties as well as help others get over and overcome their anxieties thank you