TEDx Vancouver

Before I go ahead with the writeup, I just wanted to recommend that everyone go see a magic show at least once in their lifetime.

The night before this TEDx event, my cousin and I (along with some of his friends) attended Vitaly Beckman's Sensation of Magic here in Vancouver and let me just say that it was a nice little break from reality. A break that enabled us to enter into the world of imagination.

Now, I've been reading about illusions over the last several months to give me a better understanding of how humans perceive the world (*note: this is relevant when it comes to pain management) but sometimes it's just nice to tune out.

Let me share with you this TED talk to transition into my writeup.

Some of you may be wondering why I, as a health care practitioner, would want to attend TEDx Vancouver. If you're a regular on this blog, you'll know that it comes down to this.

A passion for education...and knowledge dissemination.

Not one of today's talks had anything to do with health care, save for one of the speakers who was a physical therapist, but as one speaker mentioned today, ideas come about when professions overlap. Just like we create opportunities...rather than simply find them...we create ideas. We think laterally, we reason spatially, and we collect all of our experiences from everyday life to create that one idea. That one idea that's worth spreading.

The main concept of today's event was The Frontier, a topic they selected as a reflection of the new wonders undreamt of in our time. And to get our wonder juices flowing, we were handed a two piece name tag, one to wear around our neck and the other to make origami with.

To me, this was both relevant and significant. Framing and context are important in every day life. You saw this in the magic talk above but this is also especially so in health care and our interactions with patients. Take, for example, walking into a dreary-looking clinic filled with "miserable" staff and condition-specific "educational" artwork. How difficult do you think it would be to affect a person's "painful experience"? I wrote about this in a previous post of mine.

I hope you see where I'm going with this as it definitely affected the TEDx experience.

.There were thirteen different live talks with six various talks streamed from ted.org. Naturally it will be difficult to summarize each talk, especially since none of them, as mentioned above, pertained specifically to sport medicine, rehabilitation or sport performance, but here are some ideas stemming from the talks that may be relevant to athlete and patient care today and for the future.

From Reid Gower's talk

• Necessity changes us, we are an adaptable species. "We humans are capable of greatness".

From Marcin Jakubowski's (online) talk

• "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come" - Victor Hugo

From Romeo Dallaire's talk

• "The future aint what it used to be" - Yogi Berra
• There is no way that we can sustain status quo, we're in a revolutionary time
• "Inaction is an action". Not wanting to do something is an event...a negative one
• We need our youth to become activists
• "Don't tell me you can't influence the future...get engaged"
• It's a time of great opportunity for those willing to take the risk .

From Charlie Todd's (online) talk

• Play is a good thing
• There is no point, there doesn't have to be one
• There's no right or wrong way to play
• "Some people say improvers (make sure you watch these videos) have too much time on their hands, but what about watching football for four hours on a Sunday afternoon...it's part of life"

From Kara Pecknold's talk

• Design - is a process
• Design - is a tool kit
• Simply designing objects is not enough to solve our problems. We need "ACTIONS worth spreading"
• The DESIGN PROCESS (turning an idea into action): Discover -> Define -> Develop -> Deliver
• We think "experts" know the answer, but we're ALL experts...of our own experiences. It is important to empower everyone. We need to give them the tools to discover, define, develop and deliver for themselves
• *We need to empower our patients to do the same for their health*

From Stephen Slen and Aaron Coret's talk

• Humans have an inclination to finding things that define themselves
• Pursue what gives you meaning...and what allows you to share your joy with everyone
• Don't worry about what you would be losing if you don't take the chance, worry about what you would be missing
• "Twenty years from now, the things you would be most disappointed by are the things you didn't do, rather than the things did" - Mark Twain

From Christopher Gaze's talk

• Everyday we're quoting Shakespeare and we don't even know it (see quotes here)
• **From a rehab and training perspective, consider this - Everyday we're quoting Janda and we don't even know it

From Mark Bezos' (online) talk

• "Don't wait till you make your first million to make a difference in someone else's life...do it now"
• You may not make a difference in someone else's life but you can certainly affect it

Sean Aiken's talk

• It doesn't matter what you do, just make sure it's something you're passionate about
• Most people don't even know what they're passionate about
• "The people who are most connected to their work are the ones most passionate about the meaning behind it"
• Inspire possibility - what matters is what makes you come alive, not what the world needs...what makes you come alive?

Matt Cutts' (online) talk

• Start with a little change...for 30 days
• 30 day challenges can change your life
• If you really want something bad enough, anything is possible if you try it for 30 days
• Small changes = sustainable
• The next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not try something you've always wanted
• **I think this is quite relevant when working with the patient population. How many of your patients want to start living healthier lives but think they can't?

***The following are the two talks that resonated most with me and my objective for being here

From Victor Lucas' talk

• The 3-D Rules

1. Don't be a dick! People love people who aren't dicks. Cut the sarcasm. What people remember most about dicks, are that they were dicks.
2. Don't dick around! Touch the world. It takes work, planning, and goals to be happy. Don't let dicking around be your goal...don't work hard your entire life for the time and opportunity to just dick around
3. Don't hang out with dicks! If you aren't a dick, you'll attract people who don't dick around. If you hang out with dicks, other people will think you're a dick.

• The 4th D - will give you strength to follow the 3-D Rules. DREAM!

From Nolan Watson's talk

• Compassion kills!
• On humanitarianism - don't treat the symptom, treat the cause. "Saving lives...is deadly"
• **I've talked at length about treating the cause of pain or injury rather than the symptom, be it cognitive or tissue related. Nolan wants us to reconsider giving to charity whose sole purpose is to provide money to the poor only to enable them to live longer impoverished lives. We need to find the source of the problem.
• "Your actions shouldn't result in sustained dependence"
• **I firmly believe that our treatment and patient interactions shouldn't result in sustained dependence

Hopefully you can see, from my experience at TEDx Vancouver, that we don't need to be attending sport medicine and fitness conferences only to become better clinicians. There are ample opportunity to create ideas and solutions for better patient care and athletic development in all aspects of life, especially if we think outside the box. While there are certainly leaders in each of our respective professions and individuals that we look up to, we each are experts in our own right. Experts who can make a difference and experts who can change the world.

So what's your idea?