 My turn? Yes? Okay. I have to admit something to you. And usually when I teach, I'm really not nervous at all. In this period I teach three lectures a week, so it's kind of a thing that I do all the time, and that's very much okay. And for instance, last summer I danced the whole show and I wasn't nervous, but now I'm really, really very nervous. And there's two reasons. The first reason is that I'm teaching, I consider this teaching to a different audience. So it's my colleagues, my family, my friends that are sitting in the front rows, some of them are sitting a little more in the back, and that makes me very nervous, because I never talk to you, right? The fact that there's also students makes me calm again, so that's very nice. And the second reason is because I understood that in the last lectures you also talk about yourself. I mean, not as a goal. It's not that you talk about yourself, like see who I am and how fancy I am, but it's about what is important to you as a person, and in order to try to show that to you, I also must tell you something about myself, and I really, really dislike talking about myself. But I will have to do that, because otherwise I can imagine that you think, okay, but why is this woman standing over there and teaching this lecture? So this is one of the tasks that I've set myself that I will do today, not for a very long time. I try to keep it as short as possible, but I will have to tell you something about myself. When I told people that I was going to teach the last lecture, there were two sorts of reactions. So the first was the reactions by my colleagues, and they said, oh, I'm great, and that's really an honor, and wow, the students was really value you and that made me only more nervous. And then I thought, okay, but wait, this is great, it's such an honor, then maybe I should invite my friends and my family as well, right? Because that's then something that you can show to the people who are important to you. But then when I told you, my friends and family, that I was teaching the last lecture, you all said, huh? Are you fired? What's going on? And somebody even asked, okay, but sorry, is this your strange way of telling me that you're dying? That this is your last lecture? So it was a really very different response, and I agree that I consider this an honor. I don't think I can see it in any different way. If you are asked if there's something about what makes you take what is important to you, then that's a big honor. And no, I'm not fired, at least not that I know of, I'm looking at my balls right now, but maybe I'll be fired after this lecture, we don't know, but as of now I'm not fired. Just to make sure that you can sit comfortably and that you don't feel scared or worry. All right, the idea of the last lecture, and before I report here at this university, I also didn't know about this idea. It's, I think, a relatively old thing that has been going on for many years, and the idea is that it's an ongoing series of lectures, which means that at university, and here we have every semester, or at least once a year, right, one of the teachers is asked to pretend that they are giving their last lecture, so it's something that goes on and on every year, where some academics are asked to think deeply about what really matters to them, right? So it's not, I didn't think about which subject is most interesting to teach or which subject is most fashionable, but I really thought about what is it that is important to me, and that I would still want to teach. And then you were supposed to give this hypothetical final talk where the idea is that I think about what wisdom can I give you, can I show to you that I would tell you if it was my last lecture, right? That's the idea of the last lecture. So I picture all of these great scientists behind the microscope, and they do big, they find great things and they get global prizes, and that's, I thought, the type of person that we actually give a last lecture. And one of you, I won't call that any names, actually suggested that I would buy a suit which would make me look much older in order to fit more with these women. I decided to look like this. I'm sorry if that is a disappointment that that was also an option, but yeah, well, I don't really fit the criterion, I think, of what you might think about the last lecture. This is really hard. So the question could be why me, right? I'm not a talk academic. I mean, I don't even do research anymore, so that's one of the criteria that I'm dealing with about academic. I'm young, or at least young-ish, right? So I'm not old and then matured and wise and maybe closely dying. I'm not dying as far as I know. So why me? And I ask myself this question. So, where are you? There, there. He came to me in the hall me and he said, hey, Anne, would you like to do a last lecture? And I was a little bit like, no. And then he said, well, you know, you would be a good candidate and then I thought about it and I thought, well, maybe I might be a good candidate and there's a specific reason that's also the reason why I need to tell you my life story and the reason is that I felt different in the sense that I felt that I would be dying very soon for a lot of time. And I'll tell you my life story in a couple of slides because that's how you understand why I felt that I would be dying for a long time. And then we'll move on to the academic and the more fun part. So this is my metaphor for this last lecture. So it's important, right? And I like this metaphor. It's a metaphor for life in general. I like this metaphor because it has one little box for each year and I like structure and I like things to be neat and exact. So this is the metaphor that we will use and this board game ends at 62 but when you talk about life it might continue later or it might stop earlier, right? And just as in a board game at the end of its game, right? So I think this is a nice analogy to talk about life. This is me when I was about three years old on the red couch that I still have, by the way and I was I think listening to a fairy tale over the headphones and I would say I look very happy, right? I look like a happy radio, okay? And then when I was four and this is a lightening this is quite a big lightening because my mother who was 33 at the time she died of cancer she had me and my brother who was only six, not six 11 months old and this has had a big impact on my life and it's like sorry, I see my aunt crying so if trying to do it I'm not crying so the big, real emotion of a little bit as well that's okay so this is really an event that has had a big impact on my life and I would say it has the shadow over the next couple of years and I really often get the question what does it feel like losing your mother and it's a really hard question for me to answer because I don't live in a parallel universe where I didn't lose my mother, right? So that's the reality of things and I just know how I feel and I don't know how I would have felt otherwise so it's a difficult thing for me to say but I try to think of, again, a metaphor and I think the metaphor for me is that my life from the outside, when you look at it it looks perfect, it looks like a house with a roof and all these nice things but what's actually going on is that underneath this house there's a very icy roof which means that no matter how happy I feel no matter how good I feel I always also feel sad and this is really true I always also feel sad and I notice it especially when things when I'm very happy I don't remember what it was I was very happy at a specific moment and then I felt also because I was preparing the stuff that the more happy I get the more sad I get so that's the strange thing going on and if you live on a house that is built over an icy river it's just really hard to get warm and it's really hard to feel comfortable and it's really hard to not have damn clothes all the time so it's really something that sticks with you When I was 16 my father became ill and I was learning more about my father so I had this one parent left and he was my everything and he was gone all of a sudden and that sorry that was too much the shadow over my life became a very big shadow I won't say that it was hard to continue living because that's what people ask of isn't it very hard to continue living it's not hard to continue living it's the only thing that people do there's no other choice so you just do that but the water actually rose and near the water is the house but sometimes it also felt like it was there and sometimes it still feels like it's there so even though again from the outside the picture looks perfect it's not so perfect from the outside and it's not something that is with me all the time luckily because I can also be very cheerful and very energetic but it is something that I always losing both of my parents really made me prioritize so it really made me think about what matters to me and what I still want to do in my life so from an early age I remember really being a small kid and thinking about this already also feeling very different from other kids who were just playing I don't think about what do I still want to do maybe there's not so much time left so what do I still want to do with my life what do I want to achieve and which things to actually make me happy and I did this as a young person already and then in the years after my father died I really lived on full speed I did so many things it's almost imaginable so I had a full-time job next to this full-time job I had two volunteering jobs I started my own company I went on four study trips to different countries with students and one of my co-study trip people is over there so she was my major I got a Ph.D. degree I made my own music theater show that we performed in different cities I danced in six other shows I got married to my husband who was sitting over there I made a documentary about my parents so a movie of 45 minutes I went volunteering abroad twice and I did all that before I was 30 in about 5 or 6 years and the reason my life lived at full speed is because I always thought that life would end at 33 I thought that my life would be finished when I was 30 because Jesus supposedly died at 33 or because Jeff Buckley the singer of the best version of Hallelujah died at 33 but because my mother, she died at 33 and I felt that I would be like my mother I would be like my mother so that really made me the big difference as big as my own life there was this wall between the age of 33 and the rest of my life there was it was just not possible for me to look over this wall it felt like I couldn't look into the future and then a very strange thing happened I turned 34 I turned 34 and I celebrated this with my friends and family we had a big party we talked about my parents, what they were like we talked about what I was like whether I actually looked back down and so on and it was really a very big thing for me to turn 34 around that time I also found that I wasn't likely to die over a long time which is why my mother died there because they didn't have her back Jesus I thought this wall came from down and I really felt like I had to step out of this coffin that I was already lying in I was kind of ready I had to think about oh my god this future oh my god this future what do I do with all this money I'm 38 so it's been a couple of years between turning 34 and 38 and I've got a little bit used to the idea that there's future ahead of me I think you understand by now why I took the invitation to come over here and talk about what I want to teach because I've really been thinking about this already so today I will talk about what people actually teach me I will talk about what I actually teach already because I figured the things that I teach already the things that I teach my students in my courses is probably the things that are important to me so I looked into my courses and because they said they are very personal to me I put everything that I think is important including my courses and to see which lessons, of all of these lessons because I teach my courses I would have to teach for them this supposedly last time so students I know some of you who wear my courses or are still in my courses if you recognize some things and there is one common denominator of other good things that I teach that I found very important which is called character build and this is really about and this is now I'm talking to my students sorry I'll call you my students today and you are here to learn more than the content of your courses you are not here to only learn about you know social innovation or economics or whatever it is you are here to learn from life and obviously if you want to do university you would also learn from life but I think being a university gives you a very good way of learning lots of tools in order to learn what is involved in life and when we talk about character building if you look into the literature this is about the ability to engage in self-criticism so the ability to look at yourself and see what might be going wrong or what might be better and it's about societal critique so looking at society and trying to figure out what might be different in society and do something about it which means responsible citizenship so in trying to help you build your own characters we also hope that you will become more involved in the responsible citizens because I think that's really what our country or maybe not even being what the world really means like that so in order to do that you must develop a couple of things the first one is self-reflection so you need to be able to look into the mirror and be honest about what you see for the good and the bad and be even critical about it so think about who you are what makes you you and what you still want to change and I think especially being at university there's all kinds of ways that things can be usable to change but it's not only about looking at what could be compared it's also about looking at what you could be it's about building confidence it's about seeing the potential that you have and if you can see that potential in order to act on what you think is important and grit is another one so whatever happens you do your very very best to get to what you want to achieve and perseverance is another one so this snail would never get anywhere if it didn't keep on trying no matter what and it turns out that grit and perseverance are and success factors in your later life so if you have a lot of grit and perseverance that leads to success but also to success and freedom and I think that's why this is very important and it's character building if this is done well within a person at least professionals who are very responsible so who will take up the responsibility to act if it's necessary people who are solidarity and who will try to look at other people and who will try to make connections and make sure that everyone is okay and people who have developed personally so that they get the best out of themselves people who are team spirited so people who are easy to work with who know how to deal with other people and people who are engaged in terms of citizenship so these are all very nice qualities when we talk about character very nice things that I think are important today I teach you four lessons that I think are most important to me and again it is my advice that I was the one who could choose what I think is most important and they might be different than what you expect but I do think that they are related to character building and I will tell you how they are related to character building and I will also explain the theory behind the advice we are here at the university so I also need to tell you something about the background of this teaching so that is what I will do during the rest of this lecture and feel free to ask any questions for those of you who have been in my courses you know that I maybe you don't know but then I tell you now I like it best when students ask questions and I have to think very hard about what it is and why and so on because that makes me learn as well and I agree to ask questions if you have the first thing the first lesson that I want to teach you or that I want to show you is relight do things that make other people happy and sometimes you can do things that make yourself happy and there are different ways in which you could delight other people and for every person I think if you start doing this you find your own distinct way of delighting but I will show you a couple of examples so that you can know which kinds of things to think about so it's relatively easy to delight by getting somebody else a present and it doesn't have to be a big present it doesn't have to cost a lot of money it's not about how much it's worth but it's about the fact that you give something to somebody else that you give attention to so this is an easy way another easy way and I practice this I usually when I feel down so then I go outside in the middle of the city center of the city and what and when I feel down I go out I walk around and I just smile to people and what always happens is that people first look at you like a being what is this woman doing and then they cannot help themselves with smile that and if I do this for 15 minutes and I've got 27 smiles in return then I feel better again and I can assure you that these people also in a brief moment felt better so again it's a very easy way it works best without so if you want to try this out because they don't do the heart they just smile back at you another idea is to give people confidence so look at a person and see what you like about them and tell them it's really as easy as that to do it than that one of the things when you talk about compliments is you have to say stuff that you really believe so if I hate Gaston's shoes I don't but then I tell you oh Gaston the shoes are very nice then you will feel that I don't mean this company so only say nice things to people when you really mean them but I think that can make a big difference on that person's attitude you can also think like yourself and I'll show you an example of how I think like myself but it's I feel a little bit vulnerable sharing this example with you so I'll first tell you about the example and then I will set some rules and so the example is something that I asked on my birthday so in last they always ask me for a list of what do you want and then I put this thing on my list and I had to send them an email afterwards I really want this don't think that this is a joke and they bought it and then they gave it to me during a nice dinner and I unpacked and everybody at the table was looking at me that oh god she's mad why would you want this right you know what I'm talking about but I knew that if this would be in my house it would make me happy it would make me grin all the time I have it in my house and every time I come down to that room and I walk into my little room I really feel like doing that so I'll show you what it is but there's a couple of rules so the picture that you are about to see is confidential anybody who shares this outside of this room I cannot put sanctions on that but I will be very visible this is a joke this is my shark sleeping bag and it has real fins so every time I sit down I put too much Netflix my TV is on that side I put on my shark sleeping bag and I feel like look at this shark and then when I'm not wearing it it hands over the back of the couch so when I come down I see this shark lying on my couch maybe you think it's stupid but it really reminds me and it's not about what you think of this it's about doing things for yourself that make you happy whatever then alright so the lighting is about doing something that makes another person or yourself also find smile and the idea behind it is called a mimicry and the idea behind the mimicry is that we automatically mimic take over things from other people and we do that very automatically we don't have to think about that so and this mimicry is taking over things from other people facilitate social interactions so it makes it easier to talk to each other and to for instance work with each other and it facilitates interpersonal bonding so you get a better relationship when you mimic somebody else and we do this unconscious that's something that we have to think about does this make you feel like you're on it that's exactly what mimicry is about so our brain works in that way that when we see somebody doing something we want to do it as well and even for babies who are very small it is actually shown that they imitate each other's cry so if there's a baby crying in a room with other babies they also are crying because they imitate each other and the funny thing is they only do that when it's a real cry so when one of the babies is crying not because they feel sad but just because they want to do whatever then the other babies don't cry it's only when they are really sad speakers also adopt each other's accent so when you leave you will speak English a little bit more with a Dutch accent like mine because you've heard me speak you will mimic my accent the good news is that this also wears off so you don't have to speak English with a Dutch accent if you didn't but you will for a brief period of time so we take over feelings and gestures and takes and accents and all these kinds of things from other people as if they were our own it feels like this is something that we do because we feel like doing it and we even do this with strangers and that's also why the smiling in town works even with strangers you can just smile at a person they have to smile back there's no way of not doing it and when we do I think that's the most confusing part we like each other better so if I smile at a stranger the stranger likes me better than if I wouldn't but also if I were sitting at a dinner table with any of you and I would mimic your posture you would start liking me back so that's maybe something that comes in handy in the dating scene or whatever you would like you know how to do this and this is why this is happening this is called the perception behaviour which actually says that the regions of the brain that become active when we see something are the same regions of the brain that become active when we actually do that same thing so to our brain there is no difference between seeing and doing so whether I see something the same thing in the brain is actually firing as when I do something so it doesn't matter whether you see somebody doing it or whether you do it yourself but I must warn you because the lighting is very difficult it sounds easy but in order to do it I really do it because it kind of makes you vulnerable I'm admitting that I have a sharp sleeping bag kind of makes me feel vulnerable because it's usually things that we're not used to doing so much like giving a compliment if I say to somebody well it's a very nice skirt it doesn't say all that cool it gives me a bad feeling it makes you vulnerable you have to set aside your pride and prejudice so you have to think about what can I do for this other person and it might be something that you're not comfortable doing or it might be something that you find strange with the evening so you have to set some stuff aside and another reason why it's difficult is because people don't recognise the effect they might have on others with these little things and everybody thinks how big of a difference does it make when you give somebody a compliment it does make a big difference but you just have to recognise that so do something that makes another person smile because then you smile as well and you get two smiles for the cost of one so even if you're into economics and you don't care about my psychological talk I mean this has to sell to you you get two smiles for the cost of one that's a bargain I would say alright this is how my students delight me sometimes my students don't always delight me but sometimes so once I look up my attendance list which is a list with names and then students have to put across behind their name to indicate that they were an elector and then I told myself could you please just give a piece of paper out of your notebook and then write names on it and the first students who did that actually added my favourite quote and then all of the students added their favourite quotes and all of a sudden I got this brilliant list with quotes from students that I knew and I could really see I understand why this is your favourite quote but it really made me very happy it's still on my cabinet in my office another example is a card that I got from one of my former students telling me what they liked about my course and it's just a small thing that you can do but that really makes me as a teacher motivated to be the best teacher that I can ever be because sometimes somebody tells you what it is and yesterday actually I taught my last lecture in the consumerism lecture and then two students came to tell me well I don't thank you very much but I enjoyed it and it really made my whole day so it's just as easy as that and even last week we were talking about Gifu de Kuk and one of my students is from Bulgaria and he said well I never had a Gifu de Kuk so first we all said you have a Gifu de Kuk you really need to eat a Gifu de Kuk and then during the break one of his co-students bought him a Gifu de Kuk that is what we're learning in the back it doesn't have to be a gift but it is about trying to see what the other person needs so it's our responsibility I give it our responsibility now I'm going to be the stern teacher that says there is a responsibility to delight and to look for the lighters because it makes the world fire and happier and frankly it's really about small things it doesn't cost you too much but it really needs to be different so that's my lesson one how is this related to character building well if you start delighting you have to be open to other people you have to look to other people and try to see what they need and that I think is if you can really learn how to do that that's very valuable for the rest of your life your future working life or just anything I think it's very helpful lesson two experience instead of buy and this is not due to consumerism students I'm sorry you can do yourself a little if you want to research so in these two pictures this is things that I do it might cost me money or cost me a lot of time but it doesn't get me anywhere but it's experiences that I do so for you on the right picture is where I work with children who lost one or sometimes more of their parents or who have cancer themselves and I coach them through this whole period in time I try to help them as much as possible I don't get anything in return in terms of money but I do get lots of meetings lots of interactions that I would otherwise not have and I would rather spend my money on these kinds of things than on stuff that you can buy so the question to you what do you talk about with your friends is it products or is it experiences and please shout if you want to give me that and I will wait until I get it yes it's more experience more experience so also products but more experience anybody who agrees can I see hands who agrees anybody who disagrees so that's what I expected another question is I'm stuck in this side of the room which might be very calm for you what was one of the best moments of your life so far and again I'll wait until I get an answer can you just shout an experience would you agree success success success is your best moment in life whenever you pass your work and you get your degree your achievement success is the best happiness come to your back and the relaxation for you is what makes you most happy or what is the best best kinds of moments of your life yes alright so I think this shows that when it comes to happiness or when it comes to things that you talk about with your friends it's more experiences than products right and the reason behind that is that experiences make people happier than material purchases or that product because experiences are more what is called mental positive reinterpretation which means that things that you experienced are only there in your memory anymore so there are only a mental representation is what that's called so there's nothing in you might have a photograph or a video but really the experience is only in your head and we forget all the not so nice things so experiences once time moves on become more positive because you don't think about the bad things anymore and these mental representations therefore become changed into this rosy picture right so that's also why I think when we think about you know back in the time when things were better things weren't better we just feel like they were better because we forgot the bad things and this is one of my examples and this summer my husband and I walked the coast to coast walk which is in England from one side of England to the other side which is 300 kilometers it took us 15 days and when I think about this coast to coast walk oh my god I'm floating it was so great and it was so nice but to be honest at least one third of the time very nice but I still feel like it was the best thing I ever did that's why experiences are better than products because products don't change experiences can change because they change in your head another reason is that experiences are more central to one's identity and so when you think about yourself you think more about your experiences than about the stuff that you have there might be some stuff that is really important to you and that's also central to your identity but usually it's experiences so a person's life is literally the sum of the experiences that a person experiences so if I would swap my experiences with any of you then you would become me and I would become you to a certain extent and material possessions, stuff that you have are really however much you like them they are outside of yourself whereas experiences are inside of you so they have a bigger effect and experiences satisfy what is called intrinsic goals so they help you towards personal growth towards thinking about life towards learning and so on and products usually we don't really learn from if you would buy a computer then you could say that you're learning from a computer right but it's really good very big effect experiences also contribute more to social relationships and that's because experiences are more pleasurable to talk about I mean how long can you talk about a computer some people can talk about computers for a very long time I know but we're not talking about the exceptions but experiences they have this narrative structure so you can say do you remember when we went out to the ha ha and then we did this and we ate that and then it ended so nice or maybe not nice it's really easier to talk about experiences because there's a story language in them and next to that being materialistic is becoming much more negative than being experiential so we do like people who say well you know I saved some money the young people I saved some money and I'm going to go travel for a year that's a story where everybody thinks that's great but if they say I saved some money and I'm going to buy for a year then everybody's like why would you do that what's the fun and the joy in that so it's easier for us to talk about experience there's also a relationship between experience and age so it turns out that the happiness you enjoy from experiences depends on age so younger people they gain more happiness from extraordinary experiences such as when you jump in and all the people they gain more happiness from family experiences such as having a family get together and I think this is interesting because the person over there is really sitting there being bored waiting until this is finished but the rest of the family is fine so it changes which type of experience you actually need in order to be happy can I ask the can I call you the older generation in this room do you recognize this that it changes which type of experience you enjoy yes no not okay okay there's no definite answer go back to go back to building peace where you got your studies as a not as a product but as an experience so you could look at your studies as buying an education or buying a diploma or buying knowledge but it's not about that it's about making the best of the experience that you are in and if you look at your studies that way then it's maybe different to study for your exams because it's not so much about only passing the time but it's about the whole everything around it it's about really living the experience okay lesson three is connect connect to other people and especially connect to people that you don't know or that you don't understand because as scientists we live in this ivory tower right we've all been told and we kind of look out at the world from the top of the tower and we know or we sometimes feel that we know the solutions to the problems in the world because we are highly educated people and I don't think that's true I think if you want to solve problems in taking care of animals in animal shelters talk to the people cleaning out cages if you want to solve the migration problem talk to the immigrants and talk to them about what their life is like right now and what they have to go through both for miles and miles on this rocky scene if you want to know what's going on in hospitals and why things are going wrong talk to the nurse that helped deliver your baby if you want to know what's the problem with elderly people talk to an elderly person if you want to know what disabled people feel like in terms of discrimination talk to the disabled people but don't sit in your ivory tower and just look out go out and talk to the people and there's also another research on brains that shows that connection reaching out to other people is really why we are here so our brain is really wired in such a way that it always tries to achieve connection so if we are connected to other people or if we connect to new people then that's what our brain makes us feel happy so that's really something that is very much basic to our psychological needs there's different ways of reaching out or connecting in that way is better than the other so there's sympathy which is when you feel poor people you think that's really bad for you or there's empathy which is where you try to feel with people you try to feel the same as these people feel and that's I think also the difference from looking to a problem from the ivory tower which is sympathy we look down and we think all these poor people are climbing down and going to talk with these people and that is empathy and I will show you a quick movie by Bernadette Brown I guess she is really a big on vulnerability and all the other topics that are usually not talked about but she explains the difference between sympathy and empathy. Empathy is feeling with people and to me I always think that empathy is this kind of sacred space where someone's kind of in a deep hole and they shout in the bottom and they say I'm stuck, it's dark, I'm overwhelmed and then we look and we say hey I'm down, I know what it's like down here and you're not alone sympathy is ooh it's bad uh huh uh no, you want sandwich I think this is the difference between sympathy and empathy right and empathy is really feeling with people and in order to do that you need to take their perspective, you need to talk to them and feel their shoes and walk with them and then see what it is that they are experiencing you also and this is very hard especially for scientists need to stay out of the judgment so you don't say to these people well you know this is your own fault or you're dealing with this in a stupid way it's their way of dealing and then you get this way and understand why they are dealing with these things because there's always reasons why they are dealing in a specific way it's about recognizing the emotions in other people and it's about sharing these emotions it's about showing that you know what their emotions are like that's what empathy is about and that really fuels connection that's good for connecting sympathy is feeling for people which is from your own perspective you think about what you feel like judging it's about looking at the other person and then saying why are you feeling this I always feel that it's about your own emotions and it's really not very open communication and I think we are usually taught to do this but I would like to ask you to try to move to that side so again a responsibility there so if you want to do that you need to be humble you need to understand that you don't have the answers it's the other people that have the answers you need to be imperfect because only if you acknowledge your own being imperfect then you can also see how other people can be imperfect and not be judgmental about it you have to allow yourself to make mistakes and I teach a course in social innovation and this is really the most difficult thing for students that take that course because we create this atmosphere and now I'm talking we as university people where making mistakes is usually package but making mistakes is how you learn and you have to be generous so you have to be a person that is open and willing to learn from all kinds of people because if you want to solve problems you will have to deal with people that are different than you are so you need to connect with the right way which is I think not really what we are being taught at university people so maybe you need to find other ways to do that so again as I said that's the core be your own hero be your own hero so here's a couple of heroes I don't really do heroes so I had to think very hard who are my heroes but maybe these are people that in general would be considered heroes so this is our queen Maxima, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa so these are people that we look up to and we think wow these are great people and we should learn from them that's usually what we do with heroes but it's not about them it's not about them it's about you you have to build your character and you have to be your hero so if you look up to these people who can do things that you can never do why would you do that right so you have to be your own superhero I think one of the ways in which to decide which things you could still develop and I'll go through this relatively quickly just to give me an idea so you start with something that you do very well and I'm an honest person so if you ask me what is one of the things that you do then I would say I'm very honest and that's a good thing but I also go too far sometimes and I then become blunt so then I become too honest and it's really people can really think oh my god and what do I need to learn these exact opposite and bluntness so if I can combine honesty which comes natural to me and I can try to look for diplomacy be more diplomatic then I might become a better honest person because I know when to be honest and when to maybe not be honest but do this a little bit what's interesting about this model is that if you are too diplomatic you become a person that doesn't have an opinion and that's the people that are really doing that I cannot function with people around me that don't have an opinion that's not because of them that's because of me because not having an opinion is kind of the opposite of honesty but what it teaches me that the people that drug me that irritate me they just have a little bit too much of the thing that I need so I can look at these people and think about them a little bit then that's the people that I need to be learning from so this is a model that I think is really insightful because of this relationship but especially because of these allergies because everybody knows what their allergies are you can all think of a type of person where you think oh my god, too much for me but then look at what they actually do than you so it's diplomacy I need it so if I want to become my own hero I have to focus on this the idea behind this is modeling which is a way in which people learn and the idea is that we learn from role models so we learn from the people around us the people that we see and we learn best from people that are close to us so people that are close physically that you see often or that maybe you share a room with for instance so you should try to surround yourself with people that are like you but a little bit different and then it's relatively easy to learn from them so I could try to be like Heradriel from Lord of the Rings right but it's better sorry if I look at my great cousin and I think well she's got some qualities that I would like to have as well and then try to be like her because I will never become Heradriel but it's relatively easy to look at my cousin and think okay she's doing this better than I am and how can I learn from that right a lot of things that we don't rest on small steps so our brain they panic and they freeze whenever we take a step that is too big so if we take very small steps then our brain doesn't panic or freeze and then it's actually able to learn so if the steps are small enough and the brain has to know this then you can change without this feeling so you need to choose your role models wisely you need to understand who you actually can use as a role model you need to don't try to become a hero and once don't take big steps because it's the small steps that actually work so you need to break running down into small steps right and you need to choose small heroes and I looked into my surroundings this time I chose my colleagues as the target here and I'll show you how my colleagues are my heroes and I only mentioned three I can talk about each and every one of you and tell you how you are my heroes but I'll just talk about three this is Kevin and he builds these kinds of things in Powerpoint and the first time I saw him do this oh my god my mouth fell open this was during a lecture I didn't even know that this was possible so I decided every lecture that I make I'm trying to be a little bit more like Kevin and I'm improving I'm not there, not by far but I'm improving another hero is David I'm happy that these two are not here because they become very shy and he knows how to translate anything into Latin, Greek and I think six other languages well many languages and could you please translate be your own hero into Latin and then he said sure I am and then it took him a while and then he said it's this and then I was stuck because I would speak any Latin so how do I say this then I asked him could you say this for me and he did another hero I'm arguing you just saw her standing over here she is the reason why this is the picture that I showed you I didn't show you a picture of a male I showed you a picture of a female and she is the reason because she always always stresses that it's females that are as good as men so why don't we look for female and sorry that's what I'm giving the rest I would hold the same story about me but I didn't so if you want to try to be your own hero look at the characters that you have within you so there's always a wise person within you there's also always a villain within you there's always a prince or a princess and always a fairy tale so try to look at the situations that you encounter which type of person you usually are in the situation which type of role model or character you might need so look at your characters acknowledge them I don't think you know this bad person I can never be the bad person use the bad person when you can use a bad person but also try to understand when he or she comes up and heroes are really not perfect you know when we talk about Maxima she might be perfect from the outside but she really isn't perfect and it's not about being perfect they do things that make them scared so that's what being a hero is about and then to quote one of my heroes Nelson Mandela I guess you might know this quote already he says courage is not the absence of fear but it's the triumph over it so the brave man is not the one who feels afraid but it's the one who conquers that fear so if you want to be a hero if you want to be your own warrior you have to conquer your own fears Renee Brown from the empathy video shows that courage is contagious so if you have courageous people around you that makes you more courageous courageous as now and every time we choose to show courage we make the world around us a little bit better again it's about this miracle right if I am very brave that other people might follow and we make the world around us a little bit greater and courage is especially about what you need and this is a really tricky one because I always feel that anything I need I can do myself that's how my father brought me up he said you never you should never need well not another person but he said don't ever need a man you have to be able to stand on your own feet which sometimes can be a little bit tricky but let's move on so I'll give you an example of me being courageous I'm writing a children's book this is a book for children who lost somebody they loved it's in that sorry there will be an English version and I was completely in a contest and I needed votes and what I did and I told you I really don't like to talk about myself but I went and talked to 1200 people asking them to vote for my book as in 1200 people I knocked on doors and I said hi and I'm writing this book which at least votes for my book and it was horrible really well I don't know how many times I cried during this period but it wasn't many more times than I used to but I hated it but I did it I didn't win unfortunately but I did it I told 1200 people about my book so I was my own viewer you just have to figure out what it is that you need so when we talk about character building I would say that you need to start delighting you need to start experiencing you need to start connecting in the right way and you need to start being your own viewer and there is no path that you can find you have to meet your own path and that's the difficulty here in academics usually there is a path your teachers show you the way and I mean it's a rocky road and it's still tricky but you can just follow the way but you have to make your own road before we end I'll tell you an inside joke this is me and my brother one of my fifth persons and we used to have a joke which is that we both become 44 years old because my mother died at 33 my father died at 55 and then we would add it up in the title and we would say well 44 I just have to live three years without you that's doable that's kind of what we said to each other and we say it every time and our family gets really annoyed when we do it but that's what we do that's our inside joke and then one of my coaches told me I really don't think that this is a good outlook on life why would you do that why not say I become 88 33 what's happening my life is going back let me fix this for a minute don't look at this close your eyes I'll do it like this she told me why don't why don't you live with the idea that you will become 88 and I changed that and I still need to live 50 more years and I'm done I was done at 33 I did everything that I ever wanted to do before I was 33 so the idea of having to live another 15 years really and I'm very serious it really scares me a lot so I need your help could you please tell me something that you learned from a life lesson or a course or the best compliment that you've ever given or received or an idea in which you could be like other people or something that inspires you or a question or whatever it is to get me through the next 15 years and I'm really very serious so when we go to the the common room where we will have drinks there will be pieces of paper and pens and whatever you can give me in order to make it because I sometimes feel like I won't if I don't get some nice suggestions or I'll go now to the last slide because the most important one are thank you for being here thank you for listening thank you for being my students and my colleagues and my friends and my family I appreciate you now let's go for a bit