TEDx Bellingham – Pamela Helberg

Last November, Bellingham hosted its very first TEDx event, Here by Choice. Many terrific speakers made this an unforgettable day and though I didn’t plan ahead well enough to attend in person, I did watch most of it via live stream on the Intertubes. I was inspired, moved, educated, motivated.

One talk still resonates with me these many months later: Galen Emanuele’s Improv to be a Better Human Being which you can watch here. I didn’t come away from watching Galen thinking I would make a great sidekick to Wayne Brady, Drew Carey, or Ryan Stiles. I came away with a newfound respect for the power of the word Yes.

Galen begins his talk by asking the audience a few simple questions: would you want to increase joy in your life if you could? Do you have someone in your life, who, when you tell them you are going on vacation, they say “aw man, you suck!” Is there someone else who shoots down every passionate idea you come up with?

Negativity, Galen tells us, sucks the energy right out of great ideas. Saying no halts progress and destroys an idea. According to Galen, the principles of improv offer a better approach. Improv depends on the principle of “yes, and” and operate on a handful of basic tenets:

Say yes

Make others look good

Be positive and optimistic

When I finished watching Galen’s presentation (back in November and just now, for a refresher), I determined that I would begin the New Year with a commitment to saying yes. I decided I would not let no be my default answer, the first response that crossed my mind and my lips.

Saying yes can be scary. The first thing I consciously said yes to was to The Haiku Room—Yes, I would accept the invitation offered and agree to write a haiku a day for the entirety of 2014. I’d never written a line of poetry in my life. I did not see myself as any kind of poet. What if I failed? What if the real poets laughed at me? I said yes anyway, in spite of my fears. Now, I cannot imagine these past four months without my haiku family, real and virtual. What a gift saying yes to haiku has been.

The next thing I consciously said yes to was an invitation from my friend Cami to run in a 10K race the first weekend of January. I hadn’t been running in four months as I was trying to recover from some heel injuries, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to jumpstart my way back into running with a 6 mile race. And Cami runs marathons—I’d never be able to keep up. She cajoled and then I remembered my commitment to say yes. I had a great race—I loved running with Cami, and that run launched me to another level of running. We finished that run in about an hour and 7 minutes.

My friend April is training for a half marathon next week and asked if I wanted to do her long training runs with her. I’d never run more than seven miles, but I said yes to a 9 mile run, and then I said yes to an 11 mile run. I just ran a 10K this weekend in 54 minutes because I said yes to running this year.

Not everything that I’ve said yes to has turned out to be amazing and awesome, but nothing has been awful either. I’ve had experiences I wouldn’t have otherwise had. I’ve stepped way, way, way outside of my comfort zone and discovered that, huh, nothing bad happened. I survived no worse for the wear and maybe even a little wiser.

I’ve made friends. I’ve written more than 50 blogs (because I said yes to two blog challenges) and more than a hundred haikus. I’ve discovered that I can run around Lake Padden twice and even three times and that really, it’s not a bad run from Squalicum Harbor to Fairhaven Park and back again. I’ve learned that I can be honest, tell my truth, stand my ground and that the world will not crumble. In fact, just the opposite happens—I find renewed strength and support.

So, give Yes a try—commit to saying yes, to being positive, to building others up. I highly recommend it. Take 12 minutes and watch Galen Emanuele’s TEDx Talk—say yes. You’ll be glad you did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhkcmN-CCYw

I’ve been doing this thing lately—trying to find a new way to work daily exercise into my routine. I’ve had to give up running, at least for the time being, due to some heel and nerve issues (not plantar fasciitis—why does everyone want to diagnose me with PF?). I’ve had to come up with an exercise routine that won’t aggravate my heels and also work in the exercises my physical therapist has been giving me. It’s a damn good thing I don’t work outside of the home these days because all of this physical activity takes some serious time. And now that there’s more darkness during the day than light, and more rain than dry, I’ve been doing all this exercise indoors.

So, I’ve been riding my bicycle. Last Christmas The Little Woman gave me a bicycle trainer—it was the only thing I had asked for. All last year I used it exactly once, though the bicycle sat on it for the better part of the year, all dusty and neglected in a corner of the West Wing (that’s what we call our family room here at Casa Durberg). I preferred to slip into my running shoes and strap on my headlamp and go outside, rain or shine, for a run around the ‘hood. I did not care for sitting stationary on that bicycle seat.

But, my runner’s wings have been clipped, and I’d rather pedal fast going nowhere than give up my unhealthy eating habits. Since I don’t have an income and am relying on the generosity of TLW for the time being, I can’t afford bigger pants. To keep striving toward that elusive girlish figure, I’ve been riding my bike every morning for the past couple of weeks (hey, I know, not exactly a trend but it’s a start).

Last winter when we set up the trainer, we also mounted a smallish television to the wall so I’d have something to look at while I pedaled. But the thought of watching the inane morning talk shows during my workout made my skin crawl. I am not a big tv fan (ok, Breaking Bad, Scandal, Orange is the New Black—I’ll cop to loving these shows, but I’m all caught up on them and the tv in the WW doesn’t have On Demand anyway—nor does it have a DVD player). And the thought of pedaling through countless advertisements seemed counter productive. Nothing makes time slow down more than a series of ads for drugs to take care of erectile dysfunction, GERD, or that new pharma darling, Low T.

I wanted my 45 minutes to fly by, ad-free. I wanted to be enraptured rather than disgusted by what I was watching. I wanted to be so carried away in my viewing that I would not even notice the clock or the miles, or how freaking boring it is to pedal in one place. (On the upside, I never have to turn around and ride back.)

I decided I’d watch TED Talks as I pedaled. I love TED Talks (yes, I know, I know, it’s recently become fashionable to dis them. Still.) I have been riveted by Brene Brown and Esther Perel in the past. It’s a win-win—I can exercise and learn something. I can sweat and be inspired.

My plan required a small reconfiguration of the WW—the purchase of a new media cabinet so I could bring together the TV, the PC, the speakers, and the receiver (and our Sirius Radio). And I’m very proud of myself for hooking it all up and making it all work together without having to spend more than $3.00 on any new technology.

So that’s what I’ve been doing–pulling on my padded bike shorts and riding gloves each morning, firing up a new TED Talk, and hopping on my bicycle trainer while being regaled with all sorts of fascinating information. I started with Elizabeth Gilbert and her talk on elusive genius. Then I watched Amy Tan on creativity. I’ve been riding my way through a TED playlist called Spoken Word Fireworks.

This morning I tuned in to catch up on the local Bellingham TEDx talks that I wasn’t able to see live streamed last Tuesday. I was floored by Naseem Rakha’s inspirational talk about living with our arms wide open and by Robbyn Peters Bennett’s impassioned discussion on ending childhood spanking (find the Bellingham TEDx talks here—Robynn begins around 3:20 and Naseem’s talk begins at about the 3:40 mark).

The single most amazing thing about TED talks is that no matter what I watch, I’m always inspired. I did not think I would love a talk about ending spanking, but I did. Who among us wasn’t spanked as a child? There is always something to learn—about our world, our lives, our dreams, our fears, our successes, and our failures.

Dear Reader, what TED talks should I watch next? Which ones will keep me riveted to my bicycle seat and make the minutes fly by? Which ones will make my jaw drop and teach me something new? What TED talks have changed your life or given you new perspective?