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Video transcript
So back in 2018 when I already started to work for Slido, you can see by the branding. I started to experience little…like a minor vision problem with my left eye and it was very subtle and I remember that very vividly it was in a time when it was actually it was February and it was pretty cold. Little bit like right now I’m here over and there were two key moments that happened at the very same time. One of them was actually the launch of the Falcon Heavy I’m not sure if some of you remember do you? …when the Falcon Heavy was launched so it was at very exact same time and the second one was and this was very private second was the birthday actually of my daughter in the middle, I have three kids now we were just four at the time and she was just two and that minor problem, I decided I’m going to check with the doctor after two days literally after the party I went to see the doctor and she you know used these technologies to stare in my eye and after examining my eye for about 15 minutes she said a sentence that I will never forget. She said everything is perfect with your eye it must be something more serious and I couldn’t I didn’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or not but it was a little bit funny at the time but she she sent me to the hospital and in the hospital after all these examinations they concluded in that very same day which is pretty quick that I have a multiple sclerosis which is a autoimmune disorder that impacts you can see by the picture the brain and depending on what part of the brain it impacts it can cause that you might be wheel chaired, you might have a speech problems, you can have a vision problems, you can have other problems like depending on what part of the brain is kind is impacted and so they they told me that I’m supposed to stay in a hospital. So I expected you know like it’s going to be like this but actually it looked like this. Because it was Friday it was 9 PM when I went into the room. So what a great start of the weekend right? So after several months I started to take these beautiful pens. What the great design. I’m not sure if Alex is here from the design team. But the the pen, it was actually injection and it was very you know well designed. I was admiring it when I got it you know like from product perspective I was a product guy back then and I’m I was supposed to inject myself every two weeks and I did because that was like the advice I got and I didn’t know what else what to do so I was waiting every two weeks for the click when that green thing change into that check box and this is actually how I felt after every two weeks. I was lying in the bed completely devastated I couldn’t really do anything like I remember my kids were running around my bed and I told to myself that hey like is this seriously like how I’m going to be like living from now on and I remember also that it felt like having Covid you know some of you maybe might have experienced Covid so it felt like having Covid every two weeks. And I know Maňo, where are you right now, I remember sometimes on Mondays when I still felt some symptoms we had a morning stand up with Maňo and with the team and it was a little bit tough for me but at the same time you know like that work kind of allowed me to switch a little bit the context and forget about the weekend so I was pretty much pissed to be honest like I couldn’t imagine you know like what the future will bring so I started to read and there is so many literature there’s so many resources. I spent every single minute commuting listening to some sort of a podcast because I was organising the TEDx events I could tape into that power of of various presentations and I went to the TED.com website do you guys familiar with the TED.com so I went there you know like excited I’m going to find something you you know how many videos I found? Zero. I was like what the fuc* ? There must be someone already who figured it out.But then I was like hey I’m organising TEDx events like there must be some TEDx organiser who already you know figured something out so I went to YouTube instead because back then like these videos were not uploaded to the main official website and I found so many resources so that’s what I was doing you know I was watching all these talks all these people, success stories like who were able to some somehow figure this out and I actually decided I’m going to design my own El Capitan. I didn’t know it back then but that’s what I remember that I was doing and there were all these boulder problems as Pali called them and Komo and my aspiration similar to Slido… Slido aspires to have these great meetings. I was aspired, like my aspiration was to have a long life without the medications after that experience in the end and this is what I found in all these books and resources it what the people were sharing so I started to change my diet, sleep you know, sporting more, relationships, I was paying more attention to the environment you know like how much sunlight I’m supposed to get troughout the day in the evening if I’m not exposed too much but there was one thing missing on that El Capitan strategy and that was actually the the mindset and this is what I want to talk about today. So I realised in order to achieve all these changes because there’s like a lot of changes I wanted to implement in my life, I had to really start working on my mindset so I can keep going long term and that’s how I found journaling. So this is how the story ends and let’s talk about journaling so before I get into details I want to just quickly have a pull check how many of you are journaling are right now maybe some of you do? How many of you would like to try but you never did? And how many of you never tried? Nice. So two thirds tried but stopped interesting I didn’t expect that statistics thank you. So for those who never tried I would like to maybe persuade you to try and then those who are journaling congratulations maybe you can also share some of your tips with the rest of the group, you know afterwards, after the break so who are those people brave souls if you can raise your hands? Brozi, Mara, Emma who else? Just 3 of you? So it turns out it’s actually perfect timing to talk about journaling because Apple is going to be releasing the app I’m I think they say they might be postponed a little bit but this is the the news I got some time ago they’re supposed to be releasing journaling app with the iOS 17 which is coming in September which is coincidentally this month but also there were other people throughout the history that were journaling you know like their great minds of our time you know Albert Einstein the guy in the middle Mark Twain or the Leonardo da Vinci you know they used the journaling to capture their thoughts you know feelings there and some of their ideas so they can reflect on those and also get some inspiration from themselves in the future and these are the three main takeaways I want you to take away from this presentation so first why journaling could be relevant for you and why it’s important. I want to show you some techniques how you can write because some people ask me like how do you do it? So I want to share that that with you three of them and then I want to persuade it’s actually cool and it’s healthy for you. So let me start quickly with the observation. Not everyone experiencing you know like the these medical disorders like myself but I’m definitely sure that we live in the era of over stimulation you know like there’s so much information coming at us and I checked the numbers and some of the research say that there is actually 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts that running through the head of a individual throughout the day which is ridiculous number right so I was like okay is it true? I checked the different resource the other more conservative say about 6,000 to 10,000 which is again maybe you can pick your number I don’t know uh how your head is working but it’s definitely a lot of information. And we get distracted right a lot we have mobile phones all the time on us social media or Slack, in case of work. We are multitasking all the time we have all these calendars, reminders, you know, we in case you do, there’s like a lot of you know news or you know blogs or articles you can be tapping into and we don’t get that much sleep as maybe people in the past and you might actually end up like this guy, you know some of the days and as a result you might feel stressed and maybe you feel anxiety at some point and you need to somehow you know fix it or you want to get over it and there are multiple techniques that people do some people they go running, some people sleep more, you know some people just you know spend time with their loved ones, some people paint, some people walk and go into the forest, some people watch TV. There are endless number of techniques and and practices and there is no right or wrong it’s just you know different people enjoy different things but they’re all trying to kind of release that stress or maybe the tension and I want to talk about the journaling and that this could be like one of the things or one of the techniques that you can actually use anytime that you feel that way. So what is journaling? It’s simply writing down your thoughts and feelings so you can observe and understand them better. And there are actually many benefits that people report over time so one of them is you know you get more happiness, some people report that they’re more healthy, more inspiration some people say that hey I have better memory I remember more things I keep forgetting suddenly I do remember more and it’s great for personal development as well. And there is actually a science. It’s called psychon neuroendocrinology I had to use these you know dashes so I could split the word so I can read it properly but it’s actually a science that talks about how the emotions impact the body and if you keep you know these emotions a lot of thoughts in your head you’re kind of suppressing that and according to this science, they are somehow impacting your body like your chemistry, your body as an organism but if you release certain emotions and again like journaling is just one of the techniques you can be talking to a you know therapist you could be you have a coach you could be talking to a friend if you release that you’re kind of like releasing certain chemicals from your body and that allows you to be healthier. Do that’s just one of the interesting things I came across. Some people ask me so how do you do it? How do you journal? What do you do like you write about your day every single time? And I was struggling as well. I don’t think Mark Twain was writing every single day about you know like this was my day about but I started to research search and I was I wanted to find out what are the techniques how you can journal what you can do. And there are like endless amount of techniques and I decided I’m going to share 3 with you today and you might see the papers and pens you know like on few of these tables so these are for you. So if you can just grab them and for those of you who don’t have any you know pens and papers you can just use your mobile phones just open up the mobile app you know just like a note app and we can we can definitely use that as well so you will be you will be also participating. So these writing techniques I’m talking about so we’re going to be doing 3 minutes activity the room is going to be silent so this is going to be very relaxing for you you know no one is going to be hopefully talking. I’m going to shut up and we’re going to be doing the exercise I call it the Mind dump. And this mind exercise is pretty simple. You’re just going to take your pen and paper paper or mobile phone whatever you have and you’re going to just write the things that you’re thinking of and it could be anything in my case I wrote down I need to pick up the mail, I have a lunch with Komo you know I need to maybe get ready for it, I need to organize some tickets, this is the Project X I’m thinking about and so on so on this is just a quick example and you can write as many as you want there’s this is not a challenge by the way but try to write as much as you’re currently thinking of as like you know people you met in the morning whatever is on your mind and I’m going to start a timer and once the timer is over we’re going to continue with the second one. Any questions before I start the calm down? Yeah anything yeah any keyword it could be short if you feel like writing a sentence go for it, it could be literally. You can! Up to you. You can write both sides. You are not going to ask us to share it then? No no no. Okay. No worries. It’s all private. Keep it for yourself. You can you know put it in your pocket afterwards. So the count start now and I’m going to enjoy 3 minutes of silence. Last seconds. All right, so thank you for that. In the next exercise I wanted to ask you to count the number of them but this is really for you, you don’t have to even vote I was checking the time I’m a little bit over time so I’m going to be moving forward but different people experience different things. Some people capture just a few, some people capture over 30, there are like a lot of things going on and this exercise allows you to externalise your thoughts, just look at them from the higher perspective see what’s relevant see what’s important you can circle things you want to focus on, you can spot immediately the things that maybe are not that relevant to you so it’s pretty powerful it’s quite simple, you can literally do it for 5 minutes, for 10 minutes, if you have minute you can do it for minute. So I’m just going to quickly move there are two more techniques they’re super quick they’re easy. Another one is one line a day. This is an exercise where we actually start with a prompt you can pick a prompt whatever it it is. And every day you spend 10 seconds and you write whatever you know answers that prompt so it could be I’m grateful for meeting my 270 plus colleagues today. Or it could be I had a warm lunch which was great. Or it could be a morning cup of coffee that you enjoyed with someone or it could be just a little thing you know like talking to a stranger on a bus so this is very you know not time consuming exercise where can you practice gratitude you know thinking about things you like you enjoy but there are other things you know there are other things like the and this is the third technique which I’m going to close with where you can actually design your own prompts that can trigger what you’re going to be talking about and writing about. So for example what gave you the most energy today? So you don’t really have to think about okay what I’m going to be writing today, you can already have a pre-prepared prompts that can trigger some of your responses. Sometimes you write a paragraph, sometimes you write two, sometimes you don’t like a prompt, you just write about your day. It could be you know that simple. So these are 3 techniques if you’re interested in more there is a survey poll running right now in the background so please evaluate you know like this presentation and I’m going to send you for those who leave me the slack handle in the end I’m going to send you the 15+ techniques because I actually have a blog about journaling so I figured that maybe I’ll share with you some resources that you might also enjoy. So to close, we are living in a era of over stimulation. Journaling could be one of the ways to approach it. There are many benefits you know more happiness, stronger health, better memory, better you know development, personal development, more inspiration and these are the 3 techniques that you experienced. The Mind dump, very quick three minutes exercise, One line a day and then the last, The prompts where you can actually have these prompts ready so you can answer them. So journaling is very easy. It’s free. Everyone can do it. You can do it anytime. You don’t have to pay to anyone, you don’t have to talk to anyone and it’s very powerful technique and if you remember my El Capitan, it was really one of the key components that enabled me to actually work on multiple of these steps throughout the journey. Thank you timer. And in the end thanks to the journaling, I also managed to stop the medications, which was very tough but I I managed to do it and it really helped me to overcome you know like that problematic period of my life and I’m completely fine right now. So I would like to close with this quote. This is the Anne Frank. She was a a jewish girl that was hiding under the Nazis persecution during the second world war. She unfortunately died of typhus in a death camp but her father survived and he published her journals afterwards and this is what she wrote. I can shake off everything as I write, my sorrows disappear and my courage is reborn thank you.