Here is the full transcript of Roger Christie’s talk titled “What Really Matters In life!” at TEDxStHildasSchool conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello everyone, good afternoon. Thank you for coming back in after lunch, and thank you for hosting me. My name is Roger Christie. As you can see from the screen, I am going to be loosely touching on social media today.
The Core Question
The bigger question that I am talking to you all about is, and this is quite a large one, what really matters in life, and why it is important that you learn now. That sort of question, you are probably thinking, “How does that apply to me?” or, “Is that not too large a question to be addressing in such a short space of time?” The reason I want to talk about what really matters in life, is because I think it determines a lot of the other decisions you are going to make in life. Being aware of what really matters will help drive your path.
Particularly with all of you here today, you have all got exciting and interesting lives ahead of you, and I think it is important to drill into what really matters to set yourself on the right course from the word “go.” Over the next 15 minutes or so, I hope that one thing that comes out of today’s discussion, if you can go away from today’s talk and over the weekend, with your friends and family, actually question and ask yourself, “What really matters to you?” I will have hopefully met my goal. Hopefully, it is not actually the answer that is important; it is the process of asking the question, showing that you have thought about it, that you have considered what is important to you.
A Personal Story
I’m going to start with a story though. What is happening on this dark road? I was walking home from work one night back in 2013, I suddenly realized, it was quite late at night, I had been at work for a long day, and I suddenly realised, “What was I doing?” I had been there since 6:30, I was leaving at 8:30, and I thought, “This is not exactly how work is supposed to be.” I used to work quite close to home, about a 20-minute walk, and I thought when I started that job, “How handy is that? How handy is it living 20 minutes walk from your office?”
If you had to do extra work, if you have to get something done late at night or early in the morning, you could stay back and that was quite a benefit. That was completely wrong. As it happened, because of that convenience, because of that access, I actually changed my behaviour and I started doing things which perhaps I shouldn’t have been doing, and things that started to form into a habit, dangerous habits I suppose, of working too long, and getting my priorities wrong.
As I was walking home that night on that dark street, I started thinking to myself, “Why am I doing this?” “What have I missed along the way?” and, “How did I suddenly find myself in a career where I was spending 14, 16 hours a day in the office? Not leaving much time for anything else.”
The Real Priorities
The things that I wanted to do, I wanted to be spending time with my wife, I wanted to spend time with my family, my friends. They just weren’t happening because of the decisions I had made around work. Let me go back to the formalities, I haven’t properly introduced myself. Roger Christie. So that was a story just to set the scene. That is me, obviously quite a few years ago. I am a little bit bigger now.
As I said, my name is Roger, I run a social media consultancy. Social media, I am sure many of you know; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. you are all probably on multiple social media channels. I run a consultancy which is focused on helping businesses understand how they can use social media technologies to do better business.
Back when I was a young fellow, I probably followed a similar path to you guys. I was born, went through pre-school, primary school, high school, learned a lot of things along the way. The point where you are at now, I then made a decision to go on to university. From university I decided I would go and do a couple of internships, look for a job. I was fortunate enough to find a job, I suppose you’d say, and then from that job, have basically been in my career ever since.
Interestingly, all along that journey, the first time I actually stopped and thought about what I was doing, was that night in 2013 I just described, when I was walking home. So the age of 27 was the first time that I stopped and thought, “What really matters to me? What is important to me?” Which is a bit concerning, that I have spent 27 years without actually wondering what was really important to me, and how that was going to drive my future decisions. Anyway, that is a little bit about me.
What I wanted to talk to you about though, in terms of how I got to where I was on that night when I was 27, was what I have called “The absurd dilemma of life”. This is totally my own thinking so I have not stolen this from anyone, but basically why I have called this “The absurd dilemma of life” is, we’ve got this spectrum: we are all born and eventually, we all die. And what we do between, not to be morbid, not to be sombre, but what we do between that, is our lives. That is really what is most important to us: how we impact others, how we impact the world, and the legacy we leave behind.
What I find absurd is the fact that I feel like most people’s lives are broken into these stages.
The first stage you have is what I call, “The stuff we largely don’t remember” phase. Between the ages of zero to eight to ten, maybe some of you have better memories than me, I was dropped on my head as a young child so that’d explain a lot, but I do not remember a lot of that period. After that is what I have called “The fond memories period”. What happens here is this is your adolescence. This is the time when you go out and do things. You experience things, you learn things, you build friendships. This is the time when you really relish the opportunity of life.
You do not perhaps have some of those pesky things like responsibilities, jobs, bills, taxes. All those things which you have got to look forward to, shall we say. That “fond memories” period ends a couple of years ahead of where you are. Or you are already entering that phase right now. That brings us to the delightful phase called “Stuff we would largely prefer not to do, with some good stuff mixed in”. That is quite a large chunk of your life.
What that involves is things like work. Things like chores. Things you would rather not do, but you realise you have to, in order to “do life”. Then at the end, we are left with this period called “Retirement”, which most people will get to a few years down the track, where you pick up golf or reading or whatever it is that you want to do. You suddenly realise that you want to use that last window of life to do as much as you possibly can, and try and make the most of the time you wasted in that little red period.
The Importance of Now
The reason I’m talking about this absurd dilemma today is because this is probably where you guys are. The reason I said, “Why it is worth learning now”, is because you’re at that point where you’ve probably had a pretty good run-up to this point. You’re about to enter a phase of life where you start to make lots of decisions. I think it is worth considering what really matters to you as that will determine the path of your lives ahead. I have broken this down into 3 key-questions and this is what I was saying earlier: I’d love you to go away and think about this in your own time. What matters to you? What’s the most important thing to you and also, the people that matter to you? That is the first question you should be asking.
The Three Key Questions
The second question; what will help you get there? If you know what is important to you, if you know what matters to you, what are the different things you need in your life to help you achieve that? Thinking about what matters then structuring your life around it. The third thing, are you happy? If you have worked out what matters to you, if you’ve worked out how you can achieve that, are you still happy with that life that you have set up for yourselves?
I think it is important to keep asking those things in a cycle and pardon the skewed graph here, but what we’re trying to say is that will keep feeding into, “What matters to you?” If you keep asking yourself those questions, you will ensure that you set yourself on the right course through life.
What Matters to Me
We’ll start with what matters to me. and I am going to tell you some stories that illustrate this from my own experiences. That is my dad. He was, and still is to this day, a very hard worker A very dedicated worker, a very passionate man. When he was thinking about what mattered to him, he was raising a young family, 3 children, I’m the youngest of 3, I’ve got 2 older sisters. He decided that what was important to him was to ensure that his two daughters and his son had the same education and life opportunities that he did.
His response to that was to work as much as he could, as hard as he could, to ensure that the kids had those opportunities. As a result though, what that meant was that he spent more time in the office trying to enable us to have that lifestyle, rather than less time in the office being part of that lifestyle. The motivation, the thing that mattered to him, was allowing us kids to have opportunities. As a result, we were sharing those things without him. I share that story not to be sombre, but to demonstrate how knowing what matters in your life helps drive what you do.
Understanding What Matters
And knowing what matters in the lives of those that matter to you helps determine what you do. This feeds me to my story. This little fellow is not me, he looks quite different. He is actually in the room somewhere. Oh, hello! Thank you! This is eating into our time. Aww! He spat the dummy.
This is Xavier. Little Xavier is 11 weeks old as of yesterday and the reason Xavier’s here, and the reason why Gemma has conveniently appeared from side-stage to bring him out, is that he is one of the key motivations. I will try and get you out of the light buddy, there you go. He is the key motivation why I do what I do. I think knowing that is critically important.
Having time with him, having time with my wife, Gemma, is why I’ve set up my own business, and why I’ve structured my business the way I have. It is not necessarily about saying, “I need a certain career,” or, “I need to get that job.” Sure, if that is your motivation, fantastic, but for me, this was my motivation and so therefore, I’ve chosen to structure my life around my family. I just wanted to make that point very handily in 3D. I will pop him back. Thank you.
What Will Help You Get There?
I will skip along here. The second question: what will help you get there? As I was saying before, sometimes we can spend time in jobs, has everyone seen “The Incredibles”? It is a really good movie, if you have not, it is awesome, go see it. You can spend a lot of time in a job or in a profession or in a life situation, you know if you are studying day in, day out, that you really do not enjoy or get a lot out of. You’re not motivated to do it, because you’re not that passionate about it.
If we go back to that chart, the three circles, if you’ve worked out what matters to you, and you’ve worked out what can help you get there, you’ll never find yourself in this scenario. You’ll never be sitting at a desk bored, because you’ll always be motivated to do something. In my case, as I said, setting up Social2Business, which is my social media consultancy, was to enable time with my family. That’s myself and Greg, that’s my colleague, we share that value, we share that principle together.
Our philosophy is that we would rather work an able life, rather than restricted. The way we structure our days is more based on what we need to do outside the office, and therefore what to we do inside the office to help us achieve that. Which is a different way of thinking, but if you know what motivates, and what matters to you, then you can structure your life to help you meet those goals. It’s important for you guys, when you’re thinking about not necessarily work down the track, but in your studies, what are you passionate about? What subjects? What topics? What people are you passionate about? Who do you enjoy spending time with? Structure your lives so that you can spend more time being with those people.
Am I Happy?
The last question: am I happy? This is really a validation test. You’ve asked the first two questions, this is just about keeping yourself accountable, keeping yourself on track. This is a later stage than you saw earlier in the pool with my dad and I. The reason I’m sharing this is because my dad did go through that transformation. He’ll put his hand up and admit that it took him a few decades.
But the happy news, the good story out of all of this, is that he did realise himself what was important to him. He worked out what mattered to him, he structured his life around that. The reason he did that, the way he got to that decision, was he worked out what made him happy. He realised at a certain point in life that what he was doing wasn’t making him happy, and he changed his life. As a result, he has a fantastic relationship with his kids, he has a fantastic relationship with his friends, his family.
I think that is a really good lesson and while we’re talking about this today, you don’t need to wait until you’re in your 60’s to work that out. You can absolutely start today. I waited until I was in my late 20’s. You guys can start today by thinking about what matters to you, structuring your life, how can you get there, and then continuing to ask yourself, “Are you happy?” As I said to you before, that’s how I’ve structured my life, that’s how I’ve decided to spend my time. All the decisions that I make now are based on, “How can I try and spend time with my family, with my friends, with the people that I love? In my faith? How can I spend time doing those things that I love doing? And being with those people that I love being with?”
I think if you start there, that’s actually a really promising way, and beneficial way to live your lives. So I encourage you all to have a think about these questions as you leave today. I should not say questions, “Comments.” Give yourself space and time to think. I don’t know if any of you have actually sat down and thought, “Where do I want to go in life? What do I want to do?” It’s a big question, I’m not expecting you to have the answers. I did not have the answers for a long time, my dad even longer. I will keep changing my answers. Those priorities will keep changing; that’s okay.
As I said at the start, it’s not the answers of what matters to you that’s most important, what’s most important is the process of asking yourself what matters. Start asking those things, give yourself space and time to think. Write it down. I don’t know if some of you keep diaries, or do refer back to things you wrote when you were younger, but it’s a good way to see how far you’ve come, how much you’ve changed. It helps keep you on track as well. Seek help from those who know you best. They can be friends, they can be family, they can also be teachers. They can be peers, they can be older relatives, or neighbours. People who know you well, who can help shape your thinking.
I certainly know that when I was younger, I did not have anywhere near enough life experience and wisdom to be able to set the path for the course of life I was about to take. I had no idea. That’s why it took me so long. That’s why I went through high school, to university, to a degree that I, today, don’t actually use, to a job that I ended up changing, down the track. I wasn’t really defined on what I wanted to do at that point, because I was too young to make those decisions. Talk to people around you, start shaping that thinking now.
As I said, your priorities will change over time. Keep asking yourself, “Why?” Why am I doing this? Why am I studying? Why am I not studying? Why am I spending time doing this and not spending time doing this? Why do I enjoy doing that and not enjoy doing that? If you keep asking, “Why?”, you will continue to refine your course, and set your course. At the last point is to be brave.
Don’t worry if you make a wrong decision. As long as you learn from that decision, it’s not a bad decision. Be brave and be confident and comfortable to make those choices. I went out and made a decision in terms of my social media profession, I went out without any real business knowledge and set up a business, and went out and two years down the track, things are going very well. But I made mistakes along the way and I learned from them. I think that’s the most important thing.
Asking yourself what matters, what can help you get there, and then questioning whether you’re still happy. If you keep asking those three things of yourselves, you will set yourself up for a very happy and successful life. Thank you.