Mara Gleason: Every Human Has A Superpower

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When Mara Gleason was made fun of in college, she realized she had a superpower which could deflect the insults thrown at her. Speaker: Mara Gleason, taken from a talk she gave to high school students at the Peace Summit in south side Chicago for One Solution Global

Transcript

00:00And he looked at me and he goes, gross, cellulite.

00:03And I have this moment of like, ow, that's not nice.

00:09That's mean.

00:11And my guy friends sitting next to me

00:12was all like, oh, hell no.

00:15That was wrong.

00:16Like, I want to chase that kid down,

00:17tell that scrawny little crap what he's made of old.

00:20And I was like, no, no, sit down, sit down, sit down.

00:23Don't go do that.

00:25We were having a really good time.

00:28Let's keep having a good time.

00:29And he kind of looked at me like,

00:31you're just going to let him say that to you?

00:33I was like, why do I care?

00:35It's his thinking that he has to live with, not me.

00:40He has to walk around and whatever

00:42that kind of thinking about humanity feels like.

00:46And so I literally had a split second

00:48where I had a little thought storm in my head of,

00:50oh, that's messed up.

00:51He said that to me, and I feel bad.

00:53And then I realized, nah, I don't want to.

00:58Because I don't have to.

01:01I don't have to.

01:03I don't have to believe what you think.

01:05I don't have to believe what you say.

01:08I'll give you another example.

01:10So I travel the world, and I share an understanding

01:14of how the mind only works inside out.

01:16It doesn't work outside it.

01:17That's a short version of what I do.

01:19And I do that in all different capacities.

01:21And for the first 10 years of my career,

01:23I worked with a lot of leadership teams at businesses.

01:26I worked with physicists.

01:27I worked with engineers and scientists.

01:29I found myself at 23, 24, or 25 years old

01:33sitting in rooms of people who were three times my age

01:37with degrees that were way fancier than my degrees.

01:41They were men.

01:43They seemed powerful.

01:44And I remember for the first year or so of doing this work,

01:48I had a lot of thinking about being young and being a girl.

01:53And I thought, in my own mind, that

01:55meant I had to work harder.

01:58I thought, I made up in my own head

02:01that because I was a woman and because I was young,

02:04I had to work harder than other people

02:06in order to gain respect.

02:08I had a conversation with one of my colleagues.

02:11And he said, you know, Mara, that's only real

02:14if you're thinking about it.

02:16And if you're thinking about it, it gets really, really real,

02:19and it looks like a really big deal.

02:22And you notice that's true.

02:23That's how the mind works, is that a thought can't bother you

02:27if you don't keep thinking about it.

02:29And what I want you to realize is it's not me.

02:31I'm not special.

02:32You have the same exact superpower

02:34because your mind works the same exact way.

02:37Your mind is yours.

02:39Nobody outside of you can tell you to think

02:41something about yourself.

02:43The truth is, I'm a human.

02:45So some days, I'm insecure.

02:47Some days, I'm in a crappy mood.

02:49Some days, I don't feel like I'm good enough.

02:51But since discovering my own superpower

02:53was different for me as I realized,

02:55that's just me having a crappy thinking day.

02:58There's nothing in the world out there.

03:01Notice that every thought you've ever had eventually,

03:03eventually passes.

03:06When you realize that your mind is your own,

03:10you can't blame anybody else.

03:13And when you can't blame anybody else,

03:15you can't be angry at the world.

03:18In order to boldly embrace your superpower

03:21and your freedom of mind, you have to be a rebel.

03:25You have to be a rebel because this is not the story that's

03:28being told in the world right now.

03:30The opposite story is being told.

03:33You need this in order to feel good.

03:34Buy this stupid product in order to feel better about yourself.

03:38Oh, I'm pissed because the world is this.

03:40But you're going to have to boldly stand up and say,

03:42you know what?

03:43Screw that.

03:44I'm going to go against the grain.

03:45I'm not going to go with the mainstream.

03:47I'm not buying it.

03:48Why?

03:49Because I know that my mind is free.

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