“How changing your story can change your life-Lori Gottlieb”- ESL analysis
Today, I was looking through TED talk playlist to post my third TED talk of month and found this amazing therapist talking about people’s points of view. That was like paradigm change for me so I wanted to share with you. Her language is very organized, but not only that, she is very insightful in explaining her point very clearly. I think it is a good example of original presenter. If you have presentation coming up, watch this video. Before I indulge too much on my own thought, here’s the talk.
Video
Jane’s Summary
This editor/therapist talks about how you tell your story is often shaped by your current point of view, often biased, if the other person in that same place saw it would disagree and write a totally different story. (We often minimize our fault and emphasize our own values in our stories, than the objective truth.) She points out two common themes as she edit the novels or stories she got a s a therapist: the urge for freedom, and change. She points out that we want freedom but we don’t want responsibility that comes with it, being cowardy and avoidant self. We want change but we don’t want to lose our familiar things we are comfortable with. (And, how It is all controversy.) I liked it when she mentioned people want to change themselves but what we really want is to others to change for us (a.k.a no sense of agency of our own situation). I could also relate that people around us just give advice or sympathy for us, although they do not know much about the story, being indifferent about other people. So, she suggests to constantly rewrite the story you have in a way you don’t get paralyzed of your own negative feelings, but instead choose to edit it in a way you want your story to be, with more hope and in support of those around us.
Vocabulary
- purposefully misleading: biased, mean to fool others with bad mind
- venture: involving risk or danger
- minimize/emphasize: reduce/increase importance of
- ‘loss of familiar’: lose the things we usually do or already know about
- recurring: happen again and again.
- ‘idiot compassion’ vs. ‘wise compassion: following what speaker say without thinking deeply or showing the same feeling as the speaker without judgement (does not help the speaker) vs. still relating to their feelings, help to see the clearer picture of the speaker’s situation, even if that involves disagreeing with the speaker.
- nuance: what word means in context
- arbitrary: based on no reason, personal feeling at the moment
- vulnerable: being easily attacked or exposed to harm
Comment
The speaker is very good at articulating her point. Although, there are not many difficult vocabularies, it was very sophisticated speech, showing how a profound knowledge leads to a good speech, regardless of complexity of words. I think it will help students who do presentation in near future at their college-her body language, how she structure her speech, how she engage the audience.
Jane Lee
Thank You !