David Flood | Why Love is the Only (Best) Way to Communicate

David Flood - Look Inside

In this great motivational speech, David Flood recounts a heartwarming tale of how his son’s hockey team taught him a life changing lesson about the power of love and its impact on every beating heart.

Transcript:

This is your first challenge. I'm going to give you 30 seconds, I want you to turn to someone sitting near you, next to you, okay, look them in the eye, and this is what I want you to say: "When I look at you, I see blank," okay. 30 seconds, go. You're going to look at me and say, "When I look at you, I see blank."

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Okay.

Okay.

When I look at you, I see a smart man.

Now I go. Alexis, when I look at you, I see me. Where am I looking? I'm looking in their eyes, deeper than that. Where am I looking? Their brain and their heart, we're getting closer. Yes? Where? Their soul, we're getting really close now. Where is your soul?

Inside.

Inside. That is your first challenge for today, stop looking at people on the outside and say this out loud: Look on the...

Inside.

Inside. And here's where you use this, it's really hard to look at someone who doesn't look like you and see yourself in them. My children don't look like me, they look like their mom, they look Asian, they look Filipino, they have black hair and brown eyes and Asian skin, they're tan, and they just don't look like me. My son, Justin, he likes Anime, and Justin likes wrestling, WWE. What you need to know about Justin though is that he has autism, and he's awesome. He's kind, he's compassionate, he's caring, but he doesn't understand where he fits in socially. He can't look people in the eye, he doesn't know how to interject himself into a conversation, he doesn't know where he fits in.

When Justin was in middle school, he used to come home from school every day and I would ask him, "Hey buddy, where'd you eat lunch today?" And he would say, "Daddy, I ate alone." He still does some days now in high school. Justin looks like all of you guys, and he is just like all you guys. Not here, here. And there's a difference, guys, between being alone and being lonely. No one here is alone, we're all in the physical proximity of people, but there are people sitting in here who are lonely. Lonely is a feeling, lonely is toxic, lonely is dangerous, it leads you to do things that you normally wouldn't do. A lot of times unhealthy things.

About five years ago now, Justin learns how to skate, and eight months goes by and he gets invited to play, he wants to play in a rec league team with typical kids, with regularly developing kids. The last game of the season we were losing, it was 8-3, it was about three minutes to go and I'm in the bleachers. There was a face-off, and Kyle takes the puck and he passes it to Justin and Justin skates in, and he takes a soft shot and it goes off the goalie's pad and he gets the rebound and he stuffs it in the goal, and the kids are going crazy. Needless to say, I'm crying, I'm like melting the ice with my tears, and so I went over to the opposing team's bench and I reached out my hand to their coach, because I knew what he had done, and I said thank you. And he looked right at me, he looked right at me and he said, "Don't thank me, thank the boys."

They were ten and eleven years old, and all they did was let a kid score a goal. But here's the takeaway: They had no idea how they would affect that kid's father that day. They had no idea that that kid's father would go out and tell that story to over 100,000 kids, and I don't think you're too young to hear that message, and so I say that to you. Your life is not about you, your life is not about you, your life is about all the people around you. Your life is about all the people you can touch, all the people you can impact, all the people you can influence, all the people you love and all the people that love you. That's how you source your life. Live your life like that and watch your life change. It's amazing what happens.