Sisu: Transforming Barriers into Frontiers by Emilia Lahti (Transcript)

Emilia Lahti on Sisu at TEDxTurku

Here is the full transcript of positive psychology expert Emilia Lahti’s TEDx Talk: Sisu: Transforming Barriers into Frontiers at TEDxTurku.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Sisu – transforming barriers into frontiers by Emilia Lahti at TEDxTurku

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone. I’m so excited to be here. My name is Emilia Lahti and I’m a researcher. And some really smart person once said that research is often, in fact, me-search. So we tend to get interested in things which are of some personal significance to us, and I’m no exception.

So what I will share with you today is a discovery that has impacted my life and thinking in a really profound way, and it originates from a trauma that I survived to, a few years ago.

As a result of these experiences, I became very interested to understand how humans persevere in the face of extreme adversity, and how do we keep on going when we feel that we’ve reached the end of our capacities. I’m sure we can all think of some people like that from our lives.

Here’s one person like that, whose story I would like to briefly share. Her name is Kati Lepistö van der Hoeven, and she may look like a completely ordinary woman to you — well, excluding the fact that she looks like some ethereal goddess of Lapland in this photo — but, the truth be told, Kati’s life is a beautiful ode to human resilience.