Following is the full transcript of interior design professor Helen Peterson’s TEDx Talk: The Power of Positive Thinking at TEDxDhahranHighSchool conference. This event occurred on February 28, 2015.
Listen to the MP3 audio while reading the transcript: The Power of Positive Thinking by Helen Peterson @ TEDxDhahranHighSchool
Helen Peterson – Professor of Interior Design (Prince Mohammed University)
Thank you very much.
When I was first considering whether I should accept the opportunity to give a TEDx talk, I spoke with a friend about how a surprise to be asked. After all I’m not globally influential. I’m not famous. I’m really just an ordinary unremarkable person.
And to my surprise, he became quite angry with me and spent quite a bit of time telling me just how foolish I was to be thinking that way.
However I was still stymied by what I had to say the rest of the world needed to hear. And it wasn’t until about three o’clock one morning when I realized I was thinking about it all wrong, that given the opportunity what would I tell my three young adult children and my students, what would I want to describe to them that would improve their lives. And after that, it became very simple and very easy and devious really because ordinarily they wouldn’t listen to me but they’d have to watch my TEDx talk.
So what I want to say – what I want to talk about today and everything I say will tie back into this, is that it is important to recognize the power of positivity.
About 10 years ago, our family experienced a health problem that changed life for the worse really as my husband and I and my children knew it. And it was really a very difficult situation.
And so I found I was faced with a choice. I could sit around and complain about how bad things were. Or I could put the most positive spin on what was a difficult situation. And I realized that people who complain end up making themselves and everybody around them miserable.
And so I chose to select and work with the positives that I could find and build — rebuild my life based on that.
One of my brothers who knew of my situation commented on how he admired my coping skills. And I told him at that point of my decision and he said, “Wow! Took me years of therapy to realize that.” To me it is seemed pretty simple and I apply it everyday to my life.
This is my third year in Saudi Arabia and I’d like to use a few examples of my experiences here to illustrate what I mean. One of my favorite quotes and has been very helpful here in Saudi Arabia is by Wayne Dyer. And it says, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Good example. Our compound quite often would — we get up in the morning to try to go to work and there would be no water. And we were getting pretty tired of having to heat water every other morning or so to get ready for work and there were lot of complaints on the bus.
About that time, I was researching water conservation for my design sustainability class and came across the statistic that many people in Africa exist on the average of 3 liters of water a day. And that’s for everything. Double-checking that statistic for this talk, I found that the number might be higher but not by much.
So what we use — what we can use for one toilet flush is what some people are existing on for all their water needs. That includes drinking, cooking, bathing, washing clothes, sanitary necessity.
So thinking about that, the next time the water ran off, I got up that morning and I said I’m going to take a shower in three liters of water. I want to see if I can do that, because she was like ordinarily been using quite a bit more and tried and found that it’s actually very difficult. It was so left and what do you do… and it was just a shower, and I realized how fortunate I was, because I had the expectation that water would come back on at some point. And that there would be plenty of it. Many many people in this world do not.
And so since then — and because I know that just about every drop of water that we use here is manufactured, I have been trying to conserve water as much as possible.
So when you change your perception of things that appear to be negatives and turn them into positives, you not only change yourself but possibly change the people around you — the people on the bus didn’t appreciate my comments — and maybe even the entire world. So there’s that.
Another component to positive outlook is humor. Laugh. Laugh with people. Make people laugh. Laugh at yourself. Even the most miserable situations can be helped by using a little humor.
A little over a year ago, I was deported from Saudi Arabia. Me! And they still asked me here to talk today. Actually it was over a visa misunderstanding and I was lucky enough that the wonderful father of the lovely co-worker who had been traveling with me managed to convince the Saudi Arabian officials that it was okay to deport me to Bahrain which is nearby, thank goodness, rather than back to Europe.
I was assured by my employer that it would only be a matter of hours and they would have me another visa and they’d get me back into the country. So I went to Bahrain and got a transit visa which is, feel good for about 24 hours, should have known better.
Saudi Arabia like many countries in the world things take a little longer than you would expect. I was standing in Bahrain for almost a week. At the time I had very little humor about it but I was fortunate in that I had two friends who called me and check on me every day to make sure I was okay and that really did help.
Within a day, of course, my Bahrainian visa expired. Four days later when my university kindly sent somebody to rescue me and take me back to Saudi Arabia, I noticed as we were headed towards the border that the visa documentation that I had listed my occupation as escort. Ordinary enough word except that in the United States it means sex worker.
So I looked at that and I looked at the young man who was about the age of my youngest son — extremely handsome, charming young man – I looked at that. I looked at him and I went, I’ll take it.
So in the course of a week I was a deportee, an illegal alien and an escort. And when I told my mother, she was so proud. Pretty funny, right? Actually it was a very expensive painful experience but what would you rather hear, how frightening it was or the story I just told — find the humor.
Another facet to posit that look is to smile. Get up smiling. Smile with people. Smile just for the pure power that a smile carries. Mother Teresa is credited with saying, “peace begins with a smile” and she also said that we shall never know all the good a simple smile can do. And I tend to agree with her.
In this country I have had the chance and the opportunity to connect with people just by virtue of a smile and a hello. It’s been a really really great experiences and I’ve also been fortunate enough to have been told just how good — just how much good my smile has done.
Here in Saudi Arabia women don’t drive and that’s fine. I’m good with that actually. Where we use drivers and cabs to get around works out pretty well, except on one day not too long ago, my regular driver was out of the country, my substitute driver got stuck in a sandstorm. And so I was forced to flag down one of the many white cabs that are here around town.
Having had several bad experiences doing that alone in the past, I typically don’t do it but this time I had no choice. So I flagged down a cab and get in and the cab driver turns around says I’m glad to see you again. I went oh no, it’s going to be bad. I know it’s going to be bad. I was wrong.
It turned out to be really good. As it happened, my friend and I had use the exact same cabdriver a week before. And he said we had changed his day and I said really. He said yes. He said you were the first people in a long time that had gotten into my cab smiling and happy. He said it made me feel good and that changed my day that I knew that they were still happy people left in this world.
So something that I barely remembered could have a profound effect on him and so often we just do not realize as we go about our daily lives just how much we can improve people’s lives just with a smile.
One thing I have learned, however, is that of smiling in some cultures my smiling at men implies that I want a deeper relationship than just a trade of smiles. So I’ve learned to use good judgment on that one.
And another part of positive outlook is to embrace diversity. Everyone is important no matter what — country of origin, race, religion, age, gender, sexual preference, financial and educational status, height, weight, color of eyes, whether we have eyebrows or not, all right so silly right but it just goes to show that it is ridiculous to define people by what they are rather than who they are.
Take time and get to know people that are different from your own experience. A couple of the people that I respect most in Saudi Arabia for their intelligence are people who work in what here are considered menial jobs. And they have had limited educational opportunities and yet in many many ways are smarter than I with half the alphabet behind my name. And so I learned that we have to appreciate people for who they are.
A friend of mine and I’m going to generalize his idea — sorry — is he told me that the world is like a cake where basically we agree on the cake part, the bread part, every human pretty much wants the same thing: safety; security; happiness; love; raising our children well. I mean we all as humans agree on these same basic principles.
What we fight about — we sometimes even go to war over is the type of icing we put on the cake. Sounds simplified? Yes it is. But think about it. It actually kind of makes sense. So following that idea it’s okay if you like lemon icing and I prefer cream cheese, that’s okay. It’s good. What’s not okay is if I feel that cream cheese is the best and I insist that you eat it too, that is not okay.
I should be open to listening to your excitement about lemon icing and how good it tastes. I should be open to trying it. I still may not prefer it but I can appreciate the fact that you do.
So I have found in my experiences that embracing diversity has really opened up a wide world to me, and I have better understandings and it has improved my positive outlook on life.
Now obviously it is not possible to always be positive. My life is not perfect. There are things in my life that are not positive. There are things in my life that are downright negative. And you know while I love my job and I’ve got classrooms of students who are intelligent, wonderful young women and I’d like to thank them for their care and respect, it has made my job so much fun. The Saudi Arabian people that I have met are generous and also caring and will stop and help anytime they feel like you are in trouble.
They also are open to talking with American women who are curious about their lives, which is which I do appreciate. The mix of international people who work here and live here is fascinating and their histories are just unbelievable. But — and like many people here I live 13,000 kilometers away from my family, and I miss them every day terribly.
So my friends and family will tell you I do have my deep and dark days. Find your way back to the positive. Look at the beauty in this world. Do what it takes to get back to a positive place whether it’s reading a book, watching a funny movie, spending time with friends, taking a walk, get a good hobby or all of it, you know whatever you can do come back to that positive place. This world is an amazing place to be.
This is all I have time to say. There’s so much more that I would love to communicate to my students and my children, things like love wholeheartedly every chance you get in spite of the risk of being hurt. Work — work hard and a job that you enjoy. Give whenever you can.
There are so many other TED talks by people who are far more qualified that you’ll speak to those topics that I think I’ll let them do that.
So what I’m hoping is that my experiences have helped you to recognize and understand the importance and the power of being positive.
Thank you.
Related Posts
- How to Teach Students to Write With AI, Not By It
- Why Simple PowerPoints Teach Better Than Flashy Ones
- Transcript: John Mearsheimer Addresses European Parliament on “Europe’s Bleak Future”
- How the AI Revolution Shapes Higher Education in an Uncertain World
- The Case For Making Art When The World Is On Fire: Amie McNee (Transcript)