You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity
every day.
I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
Today a humorous talk about how not to lose your sense of humor.
It's from my friend, comedian and fellow TED Audio Collective host, Chris Duffy.
He teaches us an important lesson on how to turn off self-judgment.
It's a lesson he learned from an unexpected source, his former elementary school students.
Coming up after a break.
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You should check out the TED Radio Hour with NPR.
Stay tuned after this talk to hear a sneak peek of this week's episode.
And now our TED Talk of the Day.
My favorite part about working in an elementary school is that I could never predict what
was going to happen next.
Every day was a new, incredible day.
There was never a boring moment.
I was teaching a class on human biology to my fifth grade students, when one of them
afterwards handed in this anonymous question card.
And you know, what really gets me about this, what kills me, is we had spent so long studying
punctuation.
And he still used a period instead of a question mark.
What are balls for, period?
At the same time that I was teaching elementary school students, I was also teaching adults
improv comedy at a local theater on the weekends.
This was a group of retired folks, graduate students and semi-successful business people
who were paying money to spend their Saturday mornings in an unventilated basement with
me.
And most of the exercises that we were doing together were to get them to let go of the
self-critical part of their brain.
To release the idea that there was a right answer to find, and to instead be more comfortable
with their honest, creative, idiosyncratic thoughts.
Now any elementary school teacher can tell you that getting kids to share their honest,
unexpected thoughts, that's not something you have to cultivate.
They will do that whether you want them to or not.
I mean, here are some real questions that kids asked me out of the blue with no context
during what was supposed to be a silent work time.
Is it possible to make myself live longer so that I can see the sun explode?
Are pigs actually prejudiced against women, or is that just an expression?
If your brother isn't married yet, why doesn't he just marry your mom?
And actually that brings up a really important point, which is that kids' ideas are not always
good.
Sometimes they're very bad.
I'm personally very grateful that my mom and my brother are not married.
You know, there's some research that suggests that for many of us, fifth grade is close
to the peak of this kind of wildly free, uninhibited, creative thinking.
But that does not have to be the case.
In my experience, the difference between people with an amazing sense of humor and those without
is often just whether they are willing to accept and notice their honest reactions or
whether they try their hardest to fit them into a box.
And that can shift over time.
I saw that shift with my adult improv students.
At first, when we would do an exercise where they were asked to name seven things in a
way as smoothly as possible, many of them would get stuck.
One guy, Rick, a corporate tax lawyer, answered the prompt, seven weird types of shoes by
saying brown shoes, white shoes, black shoes, gray shoes.
I'm not going to name all the shoes.
It was all a lot of boring shoes.
You get it.
But then after we practiced celebrating our more bizarre thoughts instead of repressing
them, Rick eventually came up with a list that included things like shoes covered in
mud, shoes covered in gold, shoes covered in the blood of my enemies, which is like
that's a lot, Rick.
Actually, that's a lot.
It's really a lot.
But it's also definitely more interesting.
And I think that's the point.
When we turn off our self judgment and we just notice the things that stand out to us
or that we think we can surprise ourselves in ways that are hilarious and delightful.
And now back to the episode.
Every comedian that I know has a notebook or some sort of document where they keep track
of all the little odd things that they notice or think throughout the day.
And what you find when you start keeping track is that there is no shortage of material out
there.
There are so much to laugh at.
And if you have a little bit of courage to allow yourself to be laughed at and to laugh
at yourself, you can make discoveries that you never would have otherwise.
If you want to know what balls are for, sometimes you've got to ask.
I have found that you can find laughter in even the driest places if you bring some of
that mischievous fifth grade energy to the instructions and to what you're supposed to
be doing.
It doesn't have to be geometry class.
It can be an opportunity for you to hang out with your good friend Gabriella.
Now, I have had the most fun when I apply these lessons that I got from my fifth graders
to self-serious adult spaces, to places where I maybe feel intimidated or like I don't necessarily
belong.
So, for example, for me personally, LinkedIn, terrifying.
I've never had a professional resume.
I've never been comfortable with business networking.
But I've also always been kind of fascinated by LinkedIn.
Like, they let you make a profile and they don't verify that you work at the place you
say you work.
So, I decided I was going to test this out and have some fun.
I made a profile on LinkedIn where I said that I was the CEO of LinkedIn.
And I didn't think they would even let me do that.
But not only did they, after I made the profile, one of the most incredible things that has
ever happened in my entire life happened, which is that LinkedIn sent this email to
everyone in my contact list.
They sent that email.
Congratulations, Chris, on the new job, Chris Duffy is now CEO of LinkedIn.
That's a better joke than anything I could ever write in my entire life.
I was the CEO of LinkedIn on LinkedIn for one year.
And at that one-year mark, LinkedIn sent yet another email to everyone in my contact list
asking them to congratulate me on my work anniversary.
And at that point, I received a message from a woman named Faith who worked on LinkedIn's
trust and security team.
She said my account was being locked due to concerns about its inaccuracy.
So I sent her back a photo of my license, front and back, to prove that my name was
in fact Chris Duffy.
Faith responded, the thing that we are concerned about is not that your name is not Chris Duffy.
It's that you are claiming to be the CEO of LinkedIn.
So I responded, Faith, you are taking a pretty disrespectful tone for someone who works
for me.
Ten seconds later, she permanently deactivated my account.
It was a short but glorious stint running my own personal social network.
And now, what am I up to these days?
I'm so glad you asked.
I'm more than just a fifth grade graduate.
I'm actually, I'm the founder and owner of TED.
Congratulate me.
You know you want to.
Thanks for coming to my conference.
And that's it for today.
TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This episode was produced and edited by our team.
Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar.
It was mixed by Christopher Faizi-Bogan.
Additional support from Emma Tomner and Daniella Thalerazo.
I'm Elise Hugh.
I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Thanks for listening.
Here's the right amount of it.
Like when you get a flu shot.
If friction was working against you so much that that needle is having to be pushed multiple
times and harder and harder because the stopper is getting stuck, you would definitely know.
The hidden role of friction in our lives.
That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
PRX.
