Chalmers Brothers is a best-selling author, certified personal / executive coach, consultant, seminar leader and speaker. He has had 32-year career focused on leadership development, workplace culture, productivity and accountability, teamwork and clarity in communication, emotional intelligence, trust- and relationship-building.
He is one of our trainers in The Coach Partnership Newfield Ontological Foundations program. Our next program begins February 10th and you can learn more about the program here and register your interest using the program form.
Transcript of TEDxBocaRaton Talk:
We speak ourselves into the world. We speak ourselves into transformation, or not, into new possibilities and new results for ourselves, or not. Ted is about ideas worth spreading. I believe it’s also about ideas worth reminding ourselves of. Because what I want to share with you today, I believe many of us know or knew, but somehow, somewhere along the way, we forgot. And it’s easy to forget this, because in some ways, it’s so close, we don’t see it, it’s so obvious we can miss it. What I would love to do today is to reintroduce you to remind you of this idea, which is really two sides of the same coin, two aspects of the same powerful idea, and do so in such a way that you can leave here today more conscious, and more aware of how to purposely apply this in your life.
So I ask a roomful of people, what is language? What is language for? And what will the giant majority answer with? A tool for communication or some variation of this, this is such a widely held idea or way of understanding language, that most people don’t see it as an idea at all. We see it as a definition. As a fact, I offer this, if language is a tool, it’s a tool we cannot put down. When we look a little bit more closely, we can see that we are doing a great deal more than communicate and describe with our language.
Point number one language creates and generates it does not simply describe some examples. Think about every single time in your life. You ever said the word yes. Every time. Now consider if all those times you had said no. Would your life be different? You wouldn’t be here. The simple act of saying yes, you move in the world this way these doors open these doors close and vice versa. And I’m describing, one of my favourite stories about how language creates a baseball story to umpire sitting around talking the first one so you know, Joe is a fabulous umpire. There’s balls and strikes. He calls them like they are. A second person. No, no, Joe is a great umpire. There’s balls and strikes. But he calls him like he sees a Job said You’re both wrong. He said there’s balls and strikes, but they nothing till I call them. When he says strike three, it is strike through.
This question is for everybody who is married or has ever been married? It’s simple question. Is it different being married than not being married? Yes, it’s different legally, socially, sexually, emotionally, financially, it’s different. So the question How do we go from being not married? To being married? Have to happen? Somebody says, and in that moment, it’s different. And it’s not a little bit different. It’s really different. We speak ourselves into the world.
How was the United States of America created? What is there in the archives right next to the Constitution in Washington DC. Declaration this country was declared into being now there was work to do after that, yes, that without the declaration does not happen. How was Jim’s auto body shop down the street created? And all organisations for that matter? They were also declared into being and Jim and the rest of us can find the evidence in the file cabinet. We hereby shareholders declare part 100 ABC August 1, a company that exists August 2, it does. Leaders get paid to have effective conversations. leaders create and continually sustain and cultivate this non physical but very real and very powerful thing called corporate culture, not with shovels and fertiliser, of course, but with the conversations they have the conversations they require, and the conversations they prohibit in their organisations. These conversations shape and impact that culture every bit as much as the culture influences the workplace conversations. Causality is two way.
Now let’s get personal. Think about somebody in your life with whom you have a close, deep, excellent relationship. Your conversations with that person, create the experience of intimacy, generate the space of authenticity and vulnerability, not describe it. You change those conversations and you change that relationship. You end those conversations. You end the relationship. Back to the wedding. It’s not a moment at most weddings when the person doing the ceremony will say some version of this. Anybody here think that so and so and so and so should not be married? Speak now or forever hold your peace. He’s not prophesy you. You stand up in that moment and you scream I object. You are not describing you are create. Think about what you’re creating chaos a crisis. You’re also creating a brand new relationship with the groom. Think about it, and a brand spanking new public identity for yourself.
I am not saying we don’t describe with language, what I’m saying is that is not all that we do. And it’s this whole other not all that we do that’s worth looking at. One more example, in times of ongoing change exactly like those we live in today, our ability to continually learn is critically important. And one of the most spectacularly powerful prerequisites for learning, regardless of whether we’re learning to ride a bike or learning to rebuild a relationship, learning to lead a company, that prerequisite is a language step. And it’s when the learner says either internally or out loud, I don’t know. Declaring I don’t know does not describe a state of affairs, it produces something. What it produces is called a context for learning, not physical, very real. We declare beginner hood into being we speak itself, just like the umpire. Everybody here knows this, who here in this room has ever tried to teach somebody something when the learner thought they already knew it? How much learning takes place? That much.
So point number one language creates and generates it does not simply describe point number two, we live in language. We live in language. Now that expression, what does it mean? I’d like to frame it this way. Who here in this room has the little voice inside? Want to say what’s he talking about? So I’m talking about who has the debate team.
One of my favourite quotes of all time is Mark Twain. He said, I’m always in conversation. And sometimes other people are involved. It’s not just Mark Twain, it’s us. It’s all of us. And because we live in language, this is what we do. You and I and all of us, we are confronted with events, events, at home events, at work events, with our kids events, in college events, at the beach events, and what we do as a human being, we make up stories about these events. We hold these stories to be the truth, and we forget that we made them up. Now, when I say story, I don’t mean fib or fabrication. It’s not a purposeful manipulation. It’s not a self deception. It’s an interpretation and explanation. A crucial distinction for us to possess is event is not equal explanation. Event is not equal explanation. One example, your child comes home from school looks up at you straight in the eye and says I’m stupid. What are you talking about? I’m stupid. What are you talking about? I gotta hear from English test. In this little example, what’s the event? The F on the test? What’s the explanation? of stupid question? If that kid lives in that conversation long enough? Is that a descriptive thing? Or a creative thing? That’s a creative thing. And let’s back up from the F and the test and think more broadly, is it the events of your life? Or your explanations about those events that are more influential as to the actual actions you end up taking in the world? And how do the actual actions we take in the world we produce something called results in the world in a wide variety of areas? Do we not? Yes. And the explanation is the springboard not the event. Out of any given event, how many possible explanations are there? Infinite. What if we could break a habit? What if we could break the habit of throwing the right wrong scaffolding on top of our and other people’s explanations? My explanation is right. Yours is wrong. This is right. This is wrong. What if we could stop that? And instead have something called powerful and unpowerful? would look like this? Is your explanation powerful or unpowerful? Given the results you say you want this my explanation serve me or not certainly, given what I say I want to be do or have in this situation in this relationship, always with a tagline. Given the results we say we want, never in a vacuum. Never in a vacuum. Because we’re doing it already. Anyway. That’s not in doubt. We are Mark Twain.
Have you ever known someone who didn’t see themselves as doing this? Because this is about self awareness? It’s not a problem that we do this. The only problem is we don’t see that we’re doing it. Here’s what someone looks like who does not see themselves as doing this. Wonderful to meet everybody today. And it’s obvious to me how each of you are necessarily in influenced by your age, your race, your sex, your degree of travel or non travel when you were little and your cultural, educational and work histories and how these necessarily serve as filters through which you perceive reality. I on the other hand, if somehow blessed with cosmic objectivity it was somehow born unfettered in this regard and unburdened by all the cognitive, emotional and cultural filters that clog you up. My eyes are more like clear panes of glass, amazingly, allowing me access to native reality in such a way that it yields cosmically objective viewpoints, how excellent for me that I was somehow born and blessed with such a gift.
I get to this part, in a workshop, a guy stands up in the back room, says my brother, my brother, finally, someone who understands me, I thought it was alone, the burden of this gift, the only one with any objectivity. Everybody is interpreting, no matter what no exceptions ever. One of my teachers said this, he said, everything that is said is said by someone. Think about it, somebody who was born somewhere in some culture in some time period somewhere raised by individual human beings, each of whom had standards, distinctions, values, practices, experience moods, like each of us, folks, here is the consequence. And we know this, if you do not see yourself as doing this now, making up explanations. And you couple that with not producing some important result that you say you want, within the option for you of authoring a more powerful interpretation, it’ll never occur to you. It’ll be off your radar screen, because if you don’t think you’re doing it now, there’s nothing to update. And what you have effectively done is take off the table, a spectacular leverage point. For integrating at the level you can make a real difference which is you.
We live in language like a fish lives in water, a fish is born and water lives in water, water, water water. question we want to fish first no is born in water and lives in water. How many first know that you take him out. We are born in language, livid language, language all around language everywhere. Part of what I want to do today is create a space where we can begin to look at language instead of living through it. So we can be more aware of what we’re up to in language, and more conscious and more purposeful about how we wield this creative, generative energy that we call language. We are swimming each of us in an ocean of stories, interpretations, explanations and beliefs, all of which live in language, and a great majority of which we have long since forgotten that we authored some of the stories interpretations, explanations and beliefs absolutely do not take us today and will not take us tomorrow where we say we want to go but because we have forgotten that we are the author. We have also forgotten that we have the authority and the ability to change them a datum transcend them or let them go. So number one, language creates and generates plus number two, we live in language equals we are always creating or generating something. It is may or may not be what we say we want. What are you most seeking to be, do or have in your life? Because regardless of how you answer that question, these questions, I’m here today to remind you, you speak yourself into the world. We are not human beings we are human becomings we are and in this neverending dance of learning, growing, evolving and becoming this idea. This way of understanding language, this way of understanding ourselves is the key. I invite you, I challenge you, as you leave here today, to be a more powerful observer of yourself and what you’re up to in language and live with ongoing awareness and acceptance of your role as the author of your life.