Following is the full transcript of Founder and Vice Chairman of ALPHAEON Corporation, Robert Grant’s TEDx Talk: Beautiful Minds are Free from fear at TEDxOrangeCoast conference.
TRANSCRIPT:
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “If there were any one period in time one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of revolution, when old and new stand side-by-side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are surged by fear and by hope; and when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of a new era?”
This time, like all times, is a very good one if we know what to do with it. If we know what to do with it. Which reminds me of a story that happened 17 and a half years ago for me.
I lived in Sydney, Australia and I had just started a new job. I was asked to go to a national sales meeting because I was the general manager of the operation and I learned that the national sales meeting was actually on the date that my wife was due to have our child.
So I was very concerned, I went home and told her about it, I said “Look, first children are never born on their due date. So I’m going to be gone just one night and I’m going to Cairns, Australia and I’m going to be there for one night for this meeting. I gotta give a speech and I’m going come back and everything is going to be fine and very likely the doctor told us anyway that you’re not going to have the baby for about two more weeks.”
I went up there and I was still negotiating the bonus plan for the year.
She said, “I just had my water break.”
And I thought, “Oh no.” I’m in Cairns. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to get back down to Sydney in that amount of time because the doctors always say it’s about 4 hours to make it from the time the water breaks until the baby comes.
I went to my boss. I knew he had a plane, and I said “Is there some way that you can fly me down to Sydney tonight? My wife had just gone into labor.” and he said, while smoking his cigarette, “Give me 10 minutes. I’ll prepare a flight plan and we’ll go.”
So I run back to my room, I take everything off of my bed. I threw it in a suitcase. I remember I still have the remote control that actually went flying into my suitcase. I ran downstairs. I’m standing by the elevator waiting for him, and about twenty minutes later, he finally leisurely walks out of the elevator and he looks at me and says, “Can you believe I lost the key to my airplane?”
So we run, literally run. We get in a taxi, we got to the airport. I learn then that the airport lights, this is in Port Douglas, turn on when you actually have a little radio button inside the plane. So you hit the button, and all the lights turn on, and he says, “Okay, I need you to check the wing, I need you to check the oil, I need you to check the condensation..” and I’m like “I don’t know anything about this stuff, are you kidding me?”
So I was really afraid. The people that work with me know that when I get afraid or stressed, my heart rate really drops and my blood pressure drops. I kind of have an opposite effect. In all my companies, my management teams know this. So when things get really rough and tough, they usually buy me a pillow because I fall asleep. So we get in the plane, we take off, and I’m thinking, “I’ve got to make it to the birth, I’ve got to make it to the birth, I’ve got to make it to the birth,” and I completely fall asleep.
And I’m in the cockpit, I’m the co-pilot. So we’re up in the sky, and all of a sudden we’re bouncing around. I wake up, and I look at the dashboard where everything had been well lit before, and now it’s completely black. And he says to me, “Robert, can you see the coastline?”
I said, “No, there’s too many clouds.”And he says… He’s talking really loud, its a prop plane it’s piper-chipped and he says, “Are you sure you cannot see the coastline?”
And I said, “Yeah.”
He says, “To add to the drama of the situation, all of our navigation and instrumentation is inoperative. Can you see the coastline?”
So, they actually have to close down Sydney International Airport to find us. We had flown off-course towards New Zealand, and that was why he was asking about the coastline. We only had enough fuel to make it to Sydney and I was really “I’ve got to make it to my daughter’s birth, I’ve got to make it to my daughter’s birth now. I’m just thinking, now I’ve just got to make it.
So finally, we come into Sydney, and we land the plane. I rush to the hospital. We land at 3:07, and it takes thirty minutes to get to Baulkham Hills Hospital, and I’m going as fast as I can. I make it there. I rush through the labor ward doors. Just as I run into the room where my wife was having our daughter, the doctor and nurses say “He made it!” And I see my daughter’s head just barely crowning. One minute later, she was born.
Now, of course I got to hold her. At that moment, the most awe-inspiring moment of my entire life, I remember thinking, “This time is a very good one.” But my thoughts are surged by fear and by hope. “Will I be a great father?” Those of us who have had children know this feeling. “Will I be able to take on this responsibility?” “Will she be the daughter I aspire her to be?” “Will I be that father to her as well?” Very often, we all get caught in moments of fear.
Alexander the Great once said, “Man’s immortality is not living forever. Every moment free from fear makes man immortal. Man’s immortality is not living forever because that desire is born of fear!” Every moment free from fear makes man immortal. When you break yourself of fear, your thoughts go on forever.
But how do you do it? Because all of us start to think in terms of scarcity. Some of us actually make it to terms of abundance. Harvard Business School asked their students when they were graduating, “What would you rather have when you graduate for a salary?” Scenario A, and all dollars are constant, is you make $160,000 upon graduation, and the rest of the students in the cohort on average get $150,000. Scenario B is you make $200,000, and the rest of the students on average get $220,000. What do you think they chose? 87% chose A.
Now you would think these are some of the smartest kids in the world. Right? You would think that they’re brilliant. They’re going to Harvard Business School, they’ve learned about money, and yet they chose the lesser economics. It’s because they’re more focused on ‘having’ than ‘having not.’ They’re more focused, in terms of, “Your win is my loss,” and vise versa. When actually, abundance changes everything.
Abundance comes from a place of confidence. Scarcity comes from a place of fear. Breaking yourself of that type of thinking will change your life and change your world. In life, we don’t get what we deserve, all of the time. We get what we expect.
Researchers went to a first-grade class and they tested all the students in an IQ test. In that IQ test, they told the teacher, “You’re not allowed to talk to the students about this. You’re not allowed to tell the parents. We’re going to observe you for a full year, and you have to sign a contract of confidentiality on who gets the highest scores.” Of the 30 students tested, five got genius level, more than 140 IQ scores. Five students.
So, for the course of the next year, they monitored the class. They monitored the teacher. At the end of the year, they came back and tested all the students to see if there were any variations or differences in the outcomes. Who do you think got the five highest scores? The five genius students! No great surprise. Except that that wasn’t the true nature and subject of the research. The true subject of the research was that they lied to the teacher. None of the students, the year before, had been tested as gifted. Her expectation that those five students, at a subconscious level, and she really did follow the rules, led those five students to get the highest scores.
Two ways to overcome fear: These are from my personal experiences in life, so this is not anything more than just philosophy of Robert. One is gratitude. I found it impossible to be fearful and grateful at the same time. If I let my mind stop for a moment and feel gratitude, even in moments of despair and difficulty, it makes all the difference in my life.
The next way to overcome fear, that I found personally, is to be intentional in my decisions. Everything that happens to you in your life can either be the best thing that ever happened to you or the worst. It’s about your perception of that.
About 18 months ago, I had a terrible, humiliating experience in my life. I had left a wonderful job two years before because I was recruited by Warburg Pincus, a very large private equity fund, to become CEO of Bausch + Lomb Surgical. The intent was to spin out that business, and to take that as a separate business and try to derive value from it. It was a dog of a business at the time. It wasn’t performing very well at all.
During the course of the next year, we changed the metrics of the business. It succeeded. We did really well. After a year and a half, I was ready. “Okay. Our company’s doing great, our employee’s willingness to recommend scores are really high, all of our scores across customer willingness to recommend are really high. It’s time.” Because we started doing so well and forecasted great growth, a parent decided they weren’t going to spin off the business and that they could derive greater value by selling it to one party. The entire company. My hopes were bashed. I was broken.
That night, I flew home from New York City very broken. I actually threw up on the airplane. The next morning, I woke up and I remember thinking, “Today can be the worst day of my life or it can be the best. It’s up to me.” I decided that it was going to be the best.
Later that day, I had an idea to create the first Medicare opt-out company in all of healthcare. The first company that takes no money from the government. I didn’t realize how big of an idea that could be. It’s a year and a half later, and Friday, just yesterday, I toured the Bausch + Lomb building. Bausch + Lomb was just bought by Valeant for $9 billion. I toured the Bausch + Lomb building and made a bid on the property in 18 months.
What can your mind do in 18 months if you free yourself from fear? Nelson Mandela spent 29 years in prison, as a political prisoner, having done nothing wrong except express his ideology and philosophy. Everyday, while they made him chip stone, he remembered one poem by William Earnest Henley. “Out of the night that covers me Black as the pit from pole to pole. I thank whatever gods may be. For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance. My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years. Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
Each of us is the master of our own fate. We can overcome fear with gratitude. We can overcome fear with intentional choice. Our perception drives reality. In life, you don’t get what you deserve always, but you almost always get what you expect.
That moment when I held my daughter, I decided, 17 and a half years ago, that every day I would tell her I loved her. That she would be a beautiful woman. That she’d be the best daughter I could ever imagine. Her name is Madeline. That she would be smart, sophisticated, polite, kind, and grounded. She’s become exactly that.
Life happens to us everyday. We can decide what we’ll do with it. Let’s all decide that we are the masters of our fate. That we are the captains of our own souls. Thank you.
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