The importance of inner space | Michele Simonato | TEDxHimi

I will never forget the very first time I came to Japan. It was not an easy period of my life, and I had the chance to meet an old monk close to Kyoto and ask him for advice. He listened carefully to my questions and asked me back, 'What's in this room?' 'Well,' I said, 'There's a table, a tatami, some books...' He stopped me and said, (Japanese) 'There is something much more important in here.' (English) Literally, 'There is something much more important.' I kept going into details, and he stopped me again and said, 'Do you know why was that so powerful to me? Because at that time, there was no space in my life - zero. I was 31 years old, I had two university degrees, and I was studying to get the third, I was the CEO of two startups growing internationally, a professor at university, always traveling, super busy. On one side, it sounds perfect, doesn't it? I mean, I was following the system's recipe for happiness. After all, isn't that what we're told? You study hard, you get engaged in a career with a high potential, you work hard, make money, and eventually, you'll be happy. 'Do I really want to spend 18 hours a day working? Basically, living on an airplane and having time for the people I love and for what I love to do once a month?' One day, I decided to visualize where I was spending my time and what kind of life I was about to live if I were to keep spending my time that way. I divided my daily activities in four categories. You can see working in black, everything that has to do with surviving in Grey - like sleeping, eating, commuting - everything that has to do with living in yellow and green. This was my average day at the time. Yeah; basically working all day long, and with the only two small slots for the things I was loving at that time, squeezed in before going to bed and after waking up. So the point was: what kind of life I was about to live by spending my time that way? Here we go. Supposing 50 years, from 25 years old to 75, pretty much from graduation to retirement, I was about to spend 34.5 years of my life working, 11 surviving. Look at this; I mean, do I really want to spend more time on Facebook than the time I spend pursuing my passions? The answer was no. As Mark Twain once said, 'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.' And so I did. I left everything, and I took a gap period. It's been a very tough decision, very, very tough, but finally, I could create that space in my life. I moved away from the bubble I was living in, and I finally took time to follow my inner voice. How did I start? My inner room emptier, and my knees more painful for the several hours a day of meditation. It's hard to describe what happened in that space and time. Instead of talking, it was listening. Instead of planning, it was flowing. Instead of complexity, it was simplicity. Basically, instead of being busy, it was just 'being.' I wasn't passive, but passively active. Like in aikido, isn't it? You're not really hitting your opponent, but you wait for him to hit you, and you try to use that energy to attack back. And the rest of my day was spent in meaningful activities, that were enriching me as a human being. So this would have been my life if I would have just kept pursuing that same path. Pretty impressive, isn't it? The sitting meditation turned into walking meditation. I undertook the Shikoku pilgrimage, the oldest, longest, and most fascinating pilgrimage in Japan: 88 temples, one island, 1,500 kilometers of flow, beauty, and generosity. It was all about being in the present moment. I will never forget one day when I got lost in the forest. I was really tired, without food, no water, and an old man came. He rescued me, and brought me to his hut. When I told him I'd got lost, he answered, 'Kid, if no one gets lost, who is going to find new ways?' Wonderful words. In that new way of approaching space and time, step by step, I started to appreciate the power of mindfulness; step by step, I got closer to my inner self, to the country of Japan, and the Japanese people. I really love Japan. Since coming here, I have gained so many things. When I came, I didn't know the Japanese language, history or culture. I did not have any friends, either. There are still many things I do not know, But I have experienced the Japanese culture directly. Well, my gap period was finished, eventually I went back to normal life, and a miracle happened. I've been able to merge the two opposites, and what I learned during my experience in a new balanced way of living. A life that worked with my priorities and my values; a life where there was space for what really counted. For example in the last three years, I fell in love with the sky, and everything that has to do with flying. And that brought me from living in the wild for months, - surviving in the wild, in the Himalayas - to swimming with whale sharks in the ocean, and much more. Pulled by the fascination for Asian culture, I traveled overland from Laos to India, for more than 10,000 kilometers by bike, meeting enlightened people along the way. Now I deeply understand the quote by Thoreau that goes, 'When you achieve your dreams, it's not that much what you get, but who you have become in achieving them.' This is my life now. (Laughs) As you can see, there is balance between the time spent working, living, and evolving, there is time for the people I love, for the people in need, and the funny thing is, that by working smarter instead of harder, my results are much better than before. Both financially and from a productivity point of view, much much better. And here we are. The problem was, though, that when I came back, We live in a system where people at 18 or 19 years old are pushed to choose a bachelor, a job, often with a lot of pressure from parents and society, and they end up not knowing who they are and what they want from life. In a life that just doesn't belong to them - that doesn't make them happy. We all know a bunch of people who would dream to be, I don't know, a cello player, or a documentary maker. But, the thing is that they have to work to survive. They feel that they have to work to survive; not to live, but to survive. We are born to live. We like to say, 'Hi, I'm a designer,' 'Nice to meet you, I am a lawyer.' It's work description as self-description. But the truth is that I am my time. We are our time. That's the only limited resource we have. The only one we can't buy back. When we sell 8 hours a day of our time for $100, $200, $1,000... it doesn't matter how much. What can we buy back with that money that is as precious as our own life? That's what Mandela once said, 'There is no passion in living a life that is less than the one you're capable of living.' I know how tough it is to step away from the beaten path, following your heart. I know because I went through it. But it's necessary. And I want to leave you with some words that always helped me when I had to make my toughest decisions. This is not something coming from a famous author; these are just the humble and wise words of two wonderful women, my grandmother and my mother. Thank you all. (Japanese) Thank you.