TEDx Rexburg event rethinks the ordinary

(Courtesy Rexburg Standard Journal)
REXBURG — Rexburg was exposed to some “ideas worth spreading” after last Saturday’s TEDx event with the theme of “Rethinking the Ordinary.”

One hundred specifically selected individuals gathered at The Atrium at Hemming Village to hear eight speakers share their views on a number of subjects including love, practice, relationships and even Africa.

The very first speaker was Chad Martin, who spoke on the importance of strengthening communities through hard work, and about helping our society remember the importance of hard work.

He said that in his experience in education, many students and parents, judging from their complaints about homework difficulty, do not understand the value of hard work.

He encouraged audience members to develop and teach their children a “growth mindset,” or an attitude that people have the ability to improve themselves regardless of their current situations.

Selflessness and self-control

After Martin, Jason Hunt, a faculty member of the biology department at BYU-Idaho, spoke on the best way to develop self-control.

He said the hormone tied to self-control, oxytocin, is also present during acts of selflessness.

Hunt emphasized that the more selfless a person becomes, the more he or she can develop self-control.

Weapons of love

David Pulsipher’s talk “Weapons of love – How confrontational compassion defeats violence,” focused on the power of acts of love to stop violent behaviors.

He advocated the idea of using “confrontational compassion,” or the courage to respond with an act of love when confronted by violence, as a way of stopping the cycle of violence in nearly every situation.

“Love is an effective tool against violence,” Pulsipher said.

Pulsipher compared violence to fire, suggesting that for violence to die, it needs to be starved of fuel.

He suggested that acts of love that establish a personal connection with the opposing individual deprive violent behavior of its rationalization and are such unpredictable responses that they often disarm those who have violent intent.

Pulsipher said the key to learning to develop a love that can combat violence is to train oneself to be “reflexively” loving, or to practice loving acts enough that they become a natural part of oneself.

Relationships

Mark Morris, a business management professor at BYU-Idaho, talked about what he calls “win-win relationships” and how they can improve our lives.

Morris used dating as an analogy, explaining how after a bad dating situation, he and a friend sat down and talked about what they could do better.

He said one conclusion he came to was that coming into a relationship with the expectation of personal gain is detrimental.

He said that instead, he decided to define success as ending his relationships in friendship.

From this he said he developed the idea of win-win relationships, which put emphasis on helping others instead of on merely entering any sort of relationship with the expectation of personal gain.

The music in me

After a 30-minute social period, refreshments were served and guests were encouraged to interact with each other, after which Claire Tueller, an aspiring concert pianist, spoke about the importance of “perfect practice.”

Tueller spoke mostly through her instrument as she opened her 15 minutes with a piece on the piano.

After her musical number she used her remaining time to instruct the audience on the idea that “perfect practice makes perfect.”

Although she originally intended to play her piece and be finished, she felt she should say a few words about practice.

“As an instrumental musician I prefer to let my hands do the talking, but when I heard the theme of TEDx Rexburg, which was ‘Rethinking the Ordinary,’ I decided I wanted to talk to you about the most ordinary thing in my life, which is practice,” Tueller said.

Tueller told the audience that she has spent 6,440 hours “on the bench practicing.”

She said it isn’t enough merely to practice something.

“I’m sure you’ve heard that ‘practice makes perfect.’ I’m hear to burst the bubble. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect,” Tueller said.

She then defined perfect practice as practicing something in the best, most correct way as many times as possible.

Losing self-esteem

Matthew Whoolery, a psychology professor at BYU-Idaho, spoke on the myth of self-esteem in a talk entitled, “How to lose your self-esteem.”

He said self-esteem is one of the most pervasive ideas in America today.

He said he did a Google search and found numerous references to self-esteem that blamed it for every kind of social ill.

“Low self-esteem is blamed for poor school performance, violent behavior, all kinds of things,” Whoolery said.

Whoolery said his goal was to encourage the audience to lose their self-esteem.

“Now notice I’m not saying lose your high self-esteem or low self-esteem. I’m saying lose your self-esteem altogether,” Whoolery said.

He said that America tends to place a high emphasis on the individual, which is less common in the cultures of other countries.

He said this leads to natural tendency for Americans to references themselves.

Whoolery said this focus on self was counter-productive, “a kind of burden we carry around,” and that the best thing we could do was let go of our self-esteem altogether.

He then gave the audience three steps that would enable a person to lose their self-esteem including experiencing genuine gratitude, admitting and realizing that “you’re not really amazing,” and doing the good you can do and not regretting what you can’t.

The Africa question

After Whoolery, David Pigott briefly explained the reasons behind African poverty and what we, as Americans, should do about it in his talk, “Why is Africa Poor? Why should we care?”

Pigott, who has visited Africa several times and produced a documentary about its people, gave a brief summary of the reasons for Africa’s severe poverty.

He said that when he taught both African and American college students, he would ask them why they felt Africa was poor.

He told the audience that although there were some similarities in the responses of students, several responses from American students reflected many misconceptions about African culture and about the reasons for Africa’s poverty.

Pigott then outlined why we, as those living in a richer, more technologically advanced nation, should even care.

He said that a growing population, successful economic developments in many areas and a vast abundance of untapped natural resources make Africa more valuable than many understand.

He said that countries like China are recognizing this and helping Africa develop economically, while the United States seems only invested in limited military interests.

“China has invested heavily in Africa. China has commercialized Africa, whereas we as the United States have largely militarized Africa,” Pigott said.

He said that as a result, the United States is missing an important opportunity to invest in a continent that could yield enormous economic benefits if it is developed correctly.

He told audience members that the best way to help Africa was with small investments of private capital, such as micro-loans, which have helped many Africans create successful businesses.

Five minutes of courage

Redge Allen spoke about what he called the “five minutes of courage project.”

Allen began telling the audience about his struggle to combat major health issues in his life.

He said although he made several attempts to change, he kept letting himself down.

He said he felt his failures were not a result of an overall lack of motivation but that at times his motivation would fail, which would lead him to fail.

“What I think it came down to was I lacked motivation at times,” Allen said.

He said that motivation aside, even when he had important goals, the demands of life can make obtaining those goals more difficult.

Allen said he continued to study out how to create lasting change and, after discussions with other people, developed the Five Minutes of Courage project.

“I found out that it only takes about five minutes of total, complete courage to put together a plan that creates lasting change,” Allen said.

He then explained how he worked through this project with hundreds of individuals to make lasting changes with a variety of goals.

He said two prerequisites to beginning the program are an absolute commitment to honesty and integrity and a total desire for change.

“Without one of those two requisites, the project would never begin,” Allen said.

Allen said that participants tracked their successes and failures during the project, and there were 7,065 total succeses and only 31 confirmed failures.

Allen said participants determined what they wanted to become and then listed specific goals and actions that would help them become that vision for themselves.

He also said those involved would come up with a consequence for failure that would motivate them to avoid failing to meet their commitments.

His own punishment is to require himself to freely give people money.

For those interested in viewing the full length talks, videos will be posted online within the week at the official event website, TEDxRexburg.wordpress.com.

This article was written by Rexburg Standard Journal Reporter Caleb Despain. The original article can be viewed here.