Posts tagged germany

High Energy at TEDxBerlin

TEDxBerlin was not my first TEDx event. I’ve been to a few before. Yet, I was looking forward to this one because it was about energy — High Energy.

At this event, as I sat in my seat, listening to the speakers, waiting to be impressed, I was reminded that TED is more than just ‘ideas worth spreading’ or having the opportunity to hear inspiring stories. 

It’s also about learning to think outside the box. 

Though the theme of the event was High Energy, it could have easily been about unlimited possibilities; less about innovation and new forms of renewables as changing the manner in which we live our everyday lives and about taking that same effort we put into our daily existence and turning it into a greener process - more effective, more exciting, more sociable, and most of all, more fulfilling.

During TEDxBerlin breaks, there was lots of discussion, and I had the opportunity to talk with a woman who had heard of TED and TEDx but had not necessarily come because she was interested in the event’s theme.

In Berlin on a sabbatical, and working on a project involving nursing and medical practices in the EU, she’d come to TEDxBerlin looking for fresh thinking. All fired up to change the system, she wanted to knock her colleagues out of their complacency, convincing them of the need to develop new practices in hospitals and care homes, helping her to create better environments for both patients and healthcare professionals. Listening to the talks at TEDxBerlin, she got caught up in the feeling that one person can make a difference, that good ideas can be infectious and that one person’s actions can serve as a model for others.

Sometimes, it’s less about making the biggest impact as it is about taking on a different mindset, bringing about change by simply adopting a heightened sense of living - more involved, more affirming and more worthwhile.

As Thimon von Berlepsch put it in his talk about magic — by consciously breaking the pattern of our everyday lives ever so slightly, we open ourselves up to a whole new world. Our perspective is altered and what we thought we already knew looks different, broadening our minds to other possibilities, allowing us to see the consequences of habits that perhaps we should rethink.

Sooner or later during such experiences, a point comes when we have the chance to make a choice. Do I carry on as I have before, or do I take a new path, following those ideas I’ve just been awakened to and seeing them through?

When you decide to take that new direction, it’s not so much because you have to or even because you should. It’s because you want to. And you know that just by that simple act of living your life exactly as you choose, the world that we all dream of comes that much closer to reality.

Written by Robert Barrett