How compassion can save the world | Dr. James Doty | TEDxMenloCollege

[Music] [Applause] so my story is that I grew up in poverty my father was an alcoholic and my mother had had a stroke when I was a child and neither my parents had gone to college we were in public assistance essentially my entire life my mother had this stroke and she was paralyzed and she had a seizure disorder and she was chronically depressed in fact she attempted suicide numerous times we were evicted from our home multiple times and you probably appreciate that when you grow up in an environment like that what do you think the

likelihood of overcoming that situation it's probably pretty low and in fact we now have something called aces have you heard of that adverse childhood experiences it's this rating system so that if you have poverty in your life as a child if you have stress if you have anxiety if you have alcoholism if you have violence if you have mental illness the likelihood of you being a success in life diminishes with each of those but something changed for me and what changed for me was that I walked into a magic shop and what happened in that

magic shop to this 12 year old kid who was suffering who felt he had no future no possibilities had an immense amount of anger who felt hopeless did not feel loved was that there was a person who when I walked in looked up from her book that she was reading looked at me directly in my eyes had a radiant smile which embraced me and what it did was it made me feel safe when you feel safe when you feel accepted when you feel loved everything changes it takes you from darkness to light it takes you

from seeing nothing and darkness to seeing infinite possibilities and this woman looked at me and after about 15 or 20 minutes of conversations she said to me you know I really like you if you come here every day for the next six weeks I'm gonna be here the summer I'll teach you something that I think could change your life and I did show up and it wasn't because I had insight or self-awareness frankly it was because she was feeding me cookies during our conversation and I showed up and what she made me realize was that

I had created a prison for myself when you come from an environment that I came from you don't know what is going to happen next to you life is chaotic and your life is fear and what this woman taught me over this period of six weeks was that I could change my mind I believed that nothing was possible I believe I wasn't good enough I believed I wasn't smart enough I believed that there were no possibilities for me and through this period of time with this woman she made me realize that every time I had

that negative statement about myself It was as if I was Lena a brick down creating a prison for myself and that prison kept getting smaller it kept getting darker and the possibilities diminished and after spending a period of time with this woman where she taught me to relax if you will to meditate to take this inward journey where I could have peace within myself and release that fear and believe that anything was possible suddenly I went from fear and self-loathing and shame to one of love and what happened is that I realized that I had

my own suffering but I also realized now I could say it was okay that I was okay that I was worthy of love that I saw infinite possibilities but I also saw that everyone is suffering and is within that place of suffering that people do things that don't help them and they don't help others and in fact I talk about each of us have wounds of the heart each of us some events that have made us suffer and for most of us they heal but I would suggest you that every major calamity that is facing

our species is a manifestation of people who have deep wounds in their hearts that have not healed and is within this that we have people who hurt others because they are hurting it is with this in this environment where there is darkness and you cannot see light I have spent the last decade understanding how the brain works to give me insights into why people fear and not love and what's extraordinary is a species we have been designed to care and to love but what happens is that when environments are created that stimulate a part of

our nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system this flight-or-fight response negative physiologic things happen and negative things happen in your brain those parts of your brain that are thoughtful that are discerning that allow you to make good decisions actually are shut down when you are scared or frightened you have the release of hormones you have the release of cortisol you have the release of interleukin six you have the release of inflammatory proteins all of these that have a negative physiologic effect but the thing is that you can change that and that's what this woman taught

me once you have insight once you have self-awareness everything can change and the part of our physiology the part of our nervous system that actually takes us out of this fear mode and shifts us from our sympathetic nervous system to this part of our nervous system which is part of the vagus nerve is the parasympathetic nervous system and this is the rest and digest system it's called and you know what happens when you can live there now a part of our brain called our executive control function works at its best you are more discerning you're

able to take memories of good experiences you're able to make thoughtful decisions you're not making rash decisions to survive your physiology actually works at its best and it is in this place that you are meant to be it is in this place that you can be anytime it is available to you and this is the place that gives you your power and this is what this woman taught me because everyone in this room has an immense amount of power within them but it is often this negative narrative about themselves sometimes they feel like they have

this imposter syndrome and it limits us what this woman did for me and what each of us can give to another is an openness and acceptance and an unconditional love because when you give that that changes not only them but the reward centers the pleasure centers are stimulated there's the release of what's called oxytocin which is the nurturing or love hormone which gives you this warm feeling when you connect when you're kind and I talked about an inward journey I did have this inward journey because as Gandhi said you cannot have peace in the world

until you have peace within and having spent time understanding how to give myself peace which is through love it has now allowed me to see the world with love as you see in this little drawing which I did not do I don't take credit for it you can see the head voice and you can see the heart voice and if you look at the title of my book it's called into the magic shop a neurosurgeons quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart because when you stimulate that vagus nerve

and engage your parasympathetic nervous system that is when you have transcendence that is when you have meaning in life because you've left the internal place where often time you ruminate and you talk about how bad things are and you talk about how negative things are within your mind and is when you were of service to others when you care that everything becomes possible you know this feeling of transcendence this feeling of contentment this feeling that you have meaning in your life it is only through this outward journey that that is possible it's interesting as our

other speaker was saying we have an epidemic of sadness anxiety depression loneliness yet we have amazing tools of science and technology and I would suggest to you that those tools can go one of two ways they can result in a profound effect on the human landscape and take us to the deepest darkest valleys of human suffering or they will take us potentially to the highest peaks of human potential and the determinants of which direction that goes is by compassion through love because it is through love the darkness is vanquished it is through love that fear

dissipates it is through love that we reach our true potential and when we look at the world through that lens what happens we no longer see our family as our brother our sister our mother our father we see that every human is part of our family we don't see our home as the place that we live we see the world as our home and it is through compassion that transcendence occurs and it is through compassion that we are able to reach that far shore where we look and we recognize the other as our brother as

our sister and is where we see that the world is our home and we find that there are no longer barriers that separate us but powerful forces that bind us and you see that when that possibility manifests then we shift from the term this is America as not being a negative term but a positive term of how we can all make the world a better place for every person because what you do for the other is what you do for yourself I mentioned that sometimes we think we cannot do anything but look we already see

this young lady and look what she has done sitting out by herself in August of 2018 and what has this person done she has mobilized the world because she recognizes that we are all in this together that there is no planet B and that what happens to someone across that far shore ultimately will affect us and I would like to close with this statement by Margaret Mead and tell you that never forget the power each of you has when you walk in this world with love and not fear thank you [Applause]