| : [♪ Μουσική! nenhum du � Handy, Ποιοι από εσάς έχετε γεμάσει σήμερα για πέντε λεπτά ή περισσότερα από ένα σχόλιο χέρις. Καλό. Ποιοι από εσάς έχετε γεμάσει αυτή τη εβδομάδα για πέντε λεπτά ή περισσότερα από ένα σχόλιο χέρις. Καλό. Ποιοι από εσάς έχετε γεμάσει σήμερα για πέντε λεπτά ή περισσότερα από ένα σχόλιο χέρις. Κοιτάξτε. Συμφωνώντας με την εργασία του ΓΕΛΕΠ, 8 από 10 Αμερικανούς έχουν γεμάσει σήμερα για πέντε λεπτά ή περισσότερα από ένα σχόλιο χέρις. Και η Ελλάδα δεν μπορεί να είναι πολύ βαθιά. Και όμως πρέπει να γνωρίζουμε ότι το σχόλιο χέρις είναι ένα σκοτεινό σκοτεινό. Παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ, παρακαλώ. Αν μπορούσατε να παρακολουθήσετε ένα μαγικό σκοτεινό και να παρακολουθήσετε κάτι που θέλετε, ποιοι θα ήθελαν να γνωρίζουν πώς να λατρευτείτε το σκοτεινό σας και να κατασκευαστείτε τελείως το φυσικό και το αισθητικό σας και το κατάστατο σας από ένα σχόλιο χέρις. Αυτή είναι η ιστορία μου και αυτό είναι ακριβώς αυτό που έχω κάνει και αυτό που πιστεύω ότι μπορείτε να κάνετε, επίσης. Ας ξεκινήσω με να πάω πίσω στον χρόνο, λίγο χρόνια, να πέσει στο 2004. Λοιπόν, Σεββέμβριο 2004. Έχω μόλις έρθει στην Μαμμπάι, στην Ινδία, έρχοντας από το Λοσάντζελος, στην Καλιφόρνια, ένα 16.000 χιλιόμετρα σκέψι και είμαι μυστηρικός. Είμαι τελείς, είναι καλό και χαμηλό, οι μοσκοί μου τελούν. Αυτή δεν είναι μια καλή ημέρα. Είμαι εδώ για να μάθω να χαμηλώ. Και η αλήθεια είναι ότι η χαμηλότητα είναι η τελευταία πράγματα που θέλω να κάνω τώρα. Τώρα, ξέρω τι πιστεύετε. Τι? Δεν είχε πει ότι έχει επισκεφθεί 16.000 χιλιόμετρα, 10.000 χιλιόμετρα, για να μάθει να χαμηλώ. Αυτό είναι ένα λίγο σκέψι. Ω! Ίσως σκέψι για εσάς, αλλά δεν για εμένα. Είμαι σχετικά 35 χιλιόμετρα, σε μια πολύ μικρή στιγμή στη ζωή μου και όλα τα πρώτα πράγματα που έκανε για τη σκέψη της χιλιόμετρας, μου έκανε πως μπορεί να βοηθήσει ακριβώς ό,τι έχω δημιουργηθεί. Πώς να μετατρέψω τη σκέψη μου και να αισθάνομαι καλύτερα. Μόλις, σε κάθε χρόνο, σε κάθε μέρος. Είμαι εδώ στη Μουμπάι, γιατί υπάρχει μια ομάδα ανθρώπων που παρουσιάζουν να έχουν μάστρει το τέλος της χιλιόμετρας. Δεν χρησιμοποιούν σκέψεις ή σκέψεις, ακόμα και έχουν γεμάσει κάθε πρωί για 20 λεπτά, για τα τελευταία χρόνια. Αυτό είναι πολύ χρόνο. Και πιστεύουν ότι είναι τα καλύτερα πράγματα που έχουν κάνει. Η κυβερνητή τους είναι ένας νοσοκοπητής, η κυβερνητή Κατάρια. Και αυτός ο άνθρωπος μου είπε ότι θα μετατρέψει ό,τι γνωρίζει για τη χιλιόμετρα, με εμένα, αν έρθω στη Μουμπάι. Λοιπόν, εδώ είμαι. Βλέπουμε τις εμπορισμούς. Hey, I'm Sebastian from California, we've exchanged emails, remember me? And then, just in my impatience and to make sure he is crystal clear as to why I'm here, I add, so you said you could teach me how to laugh, is that right? He looks at me, he looks at me, smiles and says, yes, yes, indeed. Do you want to laugh now? I get excited and say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I'm ready. What do I need to do? I mean, there must be a special trick, something clever and different. It can't possibly be that easy, can it? And then that man says two words. Two words that I can still hear echoing in my soul because those two words changed everything for me. And I will come back to those shortly, but first, allow me to backtrack a few more years because Mumbai is not really where my story begins. And Los Angeles is not really where my accent is from either. Ten years before this happens, I'm 25 years old and enjoying the best spring of my life in Florence, Italy. I've been here for the past three months celebrating a very special event. And metaphorically, I feel like this jingle bell. I'm ready to sing the music of my destiny. The very special event I'm here to celebrate is the fact that I am officially done with college. I now have a degree in international trade. And not just that, I've also paid my dues and served for one year in the French army. Yes, I was born in France. Which means that I am free at last. I have no more obligations. I can do whatever I want. My adult life finally is beginning. Please inhale as you come up. Hands up. And as you exhale, say yes. And again. Yes. And that's exactly what I'm thinking. This is really cool because I have a dream. And my dream is I'm going to travel the world a few times. And that's both my life and career plan. It's a bit of a vague plan, I know, but it's a dream I've had for as long as I can remember. And I just know this is what I'm supposed to do. I speak five languages. I've already visited 25 countries, worked in seven of them. And I've done enough and seen enough to know that I can make this work. Now just to be clear, I'm not rich and neither is my family. But what I do have is a very resourceful brain. And when it comes to traveling, I just know how to make things happen. And one thing I'm very clear upon right now is that traveling without money is not fun. So what to do? So to cut a long story short, I decided to start a business in England with two friends. The three of us are smart, bold, ambitious. And most importantly, we have a clever business idea that we believe will work. And if it does, then we will sell that business within three years for three million pounds. Working away with just about a million each. We've done the math and we believe it's possible. And if and when that happens, then I will be the happiest man on the planet doing traveling things I would never be able to afford otherwise. Something deep within me doesn't really like the idea of being locked up in a box of glass and concrete for three years or more. But one million pounds is a lot of money. It's a big motivation for an ambitious 25-year-old who's broke and dreams of world travel. So I ignore my gut feelings and go instead with the loud advice of one of my role models at the time, Richard Branson. Let's fast forward three years. In 1998, our business is flourishing. We've caught the dot-com bubble right at the beginning and it's the ride of a lifetime. For those of you who weren't there, think of the recent cryptocurrency bubble. We work as much as we want with who we want and at the price that we want. We're not a big business yet, but we already have 30 full-time employees, a pipeline filled with big clients, and a clear path for growth ahead of us. In my personal life, however, it's a different picture. There's been so much happening so fast and all the time for the past three years that I have slowly become addicted to stress, which is a different way of saying that depression is now almost always around the corner for me. And not just that, I've also allowed myself to be convinced that one million pounds is not enough. I mean, why such a lack of ambition? What I really need is 10 because with that kind of money I will never have to work again, like never in the history of forever. Am I blind? It's working. This is just a matter of time. I need to stay. I'm not blind, but I'm very confused because all I really want to do is travel. But 10 million pounds, man, that's a lot of money. And once again, yes, yes, yes, yes, I let money blind me again and I decide to stay. So let's fast forward three more years. In 2001, business couldn't be better. We now have 80 employees and cash is rolling in. But now something is really wrong with me and I can't ignore it anymore. I eat excessively. I've developed a really bad attitude. I'm almost insomniac. And most importantly, I feel like I'm drowning, chained to a routine that is slowly destroying my soul. Work has become my life. And my life has become a series of really long, endless work weeks, 80, 90, 100 hours long or more. It's time to quit and I get it. I will not die the richest man in my cemetery. Now I feel very good about this decision to reconnect with my dream of world travels, but my two partners do not. Please put your hands on your cheeks. Take a deep breath and say, oh no. I know, unlike me, they love their lives. They still love their dream, which was always very different from mine. And also they need all of the cash we've got to fund the sustained continuous expansion of the business. And borrowing money to buy me out is not an option they are willing to consider at this point in time. So we get involved in a heated legal battle that their team of lawyers manages much better than my one guy. My dream of becoming an English millionaire gets buried. And we all move on. Fast forward three more years. In 2004, I'm now living in Los Angeles, California. I came here on vacation after England just to clear my head. And then life happened again. Fell in love, got married, had a child. Just not exactly in that order. We had a child, then we got married. Life was great at the beginning, but life is not a long and calm river. Eventually, sadly, the marriage ended. And in ten years, I had shifted from this to this. At age 34, I am swimming in a pool of pain, guilt, anger, resentment. I feel like I've just experienced two major failures. First in my professional and then in my personal life. I know it's all in my head and yet I am stuck in that place where the eyes can't see. And I need something, anything to get me out of it. And the answer came in the mail. I picked up one day a magazine I never read. Fell on an article on the healing benefits of laughter. The emerging movement of Indian laughter club. And it was as if a light bulb had turned itself on inside. As if my heart knew something my mind couldn't get. Laughter was what I needed. And with this said, let's go back to the hot and humid Mumbai I told you about earlier. And the two words that changed everything for me. Now, would you like to know what they were? Do you want to laugh now? Ready? Go! Please laugh. And that pretty much is what I learned in India that year. It was weird and I didn't really like it at first. But it worked every time the veil lifted. I felt better again and I was hooked. So I trained as a laughter trainer and learned what was known at the time. And then set on a lifelong journey of deepening that knowledge. And I started to share what I learned with people around me. In Los Angeles at first, then Southern California, then across the US. And slowly but surely I and we as a growing laughter community started to attract a lot of attention. And I mean a lot. It was fertile. People loved it. So I expanded my laughter activities into Western Europe, Eastern Europe. I brought laughter therapy to Russia the first time in 2008. Then Pacific region, Australia, Mexico, South America. This is a map of where my laughter travels have taken me so far. That's over a million kilometers and that's just in the past decade. Can you please take a deep breath? And say wow. I know, I know. That would be great. But there is more. Just as a side note, I'm not implying that I'm the man who put laughter therapy on the face of the planet. There's an army of us. I'm just one of the most active. After years of much study and practice, I created my own method called Laughter Wellness. And it's now taught on six continents in a great variety of settings. From the world of healthcare because doctors and nurses need to lighten up as much as their patients. To the world of aged care because seniors need and love this. And the impact is nothing short of amazing. From the world of education because happier teachers lead to happier classrooms. To the world of corporate wellness at large because laughter, the way we use it, is a most impactful way to create, sustain and develop what we have of most precious in life and in business, which is called attitude. Now, what we share is best summarized by the sound of this jingle bell and the message that comes with it. There's a tremendous amount of positive energies that we all have direct access to right beneath our body and minds. And laughter is a great way to tap into them, but it's not a process of adding things, stuff, people into your life. It's the opposite. It's a process of letting go of what shouldn't be there in the first place, that's breaking those from free expression. I'm not claiming that laughter is a miracle cure, but it did save my life. And that of many other people I don't have time to talk to you about. Talking of which, I'd love to tell you more about my laughter peace project in the Middle East. This was Israel and this was Palestine last year. So I'm not going to talk to you about that because time is short. But maybe the next TEDx and if Big Ted wants to invite me, I could. Let's just say that there are now regular laughter wellness classes being taught there. Change will not happen from the top down, from the bottom up. If something is to be, it's up to me and you and us. And it may not be much, but it's something and it's on the ground. So some of you may have wondered why there was a heart on the map I just showed you earlier. Well that's because I only have one true love and that's where we met. Raquel is a master trainer in performing arts. She came to a laughter wellness teacher training I offered in Ecuador in 2012. It was love at first sight. We got married in 2015. That's Raquel. Number two on that picture is my son Julian who's been traveling with me every summer since he was 10 and with us now. And sometimes I wonder, where would I be? What would have happened to me if I had stayed in England? Now on the good side, most likely I would be a multi-millionaire. That's what my two ex-partners are. But at what price? Is chasing what you don't really want really more important than health and happiness? Actually, what are you chasing right now? And is it what you really, really want? How much is this costing you? And is it worth it? So there's a question I would like to ask those among you whose life is not 100% coherent with what you truly believe in. What do you think is going to happen to you tomorrow if you don't work on it today? In my life, I can't tell you this was an easy process. It was not. But it was very much worth it. So, how many of you here would like to accept a simple challenge that can greatly improve the quality of your life, physical and emotional well-being by a show of hands? And this is a time of commitment. What do you really, really want? The challenge is very easy. It's an invitation to ask yourself simple questions on a regular basis, if not daily. Number one, do I want to be right or do I want to be happy? Learn to let go and you'll find that laughter is greatly helpful in that process. There's no need to fight every battle. Choose your battles wisely. They are not all worth fighting. Number two, what do I want to create in my life today? Choose your emotional state. Choose your emotional reality every day. What do I, me, want to create in my life today? Of course, this won't happen every day. The flip side of the question is, how did I create this? It can be a hard question to ask, but I will argue that life doesn't happen to us, but always for us. There's always a blessing somewhere, but sometimes we have to look for it. And three and last, how coherent is my life today with what I truly believe in? Never lose track of your values. Those are the guiding lights in your life. And you all know, we all know that driving in pitch dark or with your eyes closed is a bad idea. This being said, I thank you and I look forward to the possibility of laughing and sharing with you more shortly. Thank you. Thank you. |
