hey guys C the lazy geek here and
welcome back to the channel tonight we
are going to be comparing how my Imaging
and my astrography Compares when I'm
Imaging from my rooftop balcony here in
Tokyo so bordal 89 Zone very light lots
of light pollution It's amazing And when
I take the same telescopes to a much
darker area which is in yamanashi
prefecture and is a bordal for Zone and
we're going to take images of the same
Target on the same night I've actually
already taken uh the the images of M31
m33 with two telescopes over in that
bort 4 Zone and now I'm going to do the
same here in that uh bordal uh nine or
eight Zone and we'll be comparing the
results in the end I've already filmed
in the bordal uh four Zone I didn't
expect to actually be retaking the same
thing here so I'm reshooting this
introduction Sor if there's some
repetition but I'll be taking pictures
of m33 with the sea star M31 with the
dwarf 2 telescope here and we'll see
what gives between bortle 9 and bortle 4
so anyway let me hand you over to quiff
from the past for the bortle 4 Imaging
Different Locations
today I am in the dark because I am in a
bordal four Zone specifically it's my
paragliding school where I go flying
pretty much every weekend in the
prefecture of yamanashi to the west of
Tokyo and so I'm kind of in the
mountains but still not ideal because
the East there's of course the Tokyo
metropolis and the whole light Dome
there to the West we have a large town
uh like Northwest there's a large town
called K and right to the south of this
area here we have a highway rest area
which is uh called the the rest area of
Dango zaka and it's also almost the half
moon but I am still in the borderl zone
just looking up I see so much more stars
than in Tokyo and so I wanted to see
what can I achieve is it going to be
like just easy for me to get good images
uh from a darker Zone even though it's
not like a a bortle two bortle three
it's still like a decent bort four and
uh despite the moon despite like
projectors of light coming into my eyes
right now they're very aggressive from
the the highway rest area I want to see
what I can do so I wanted to bring my
red cat 51 with the um ASI 071 or maybe
my ascar V with the Tobe Tech IMX 571 uh
but I had to leave in the hurry in the
morning because I had overslept a little
bit and I needed to come to the school
to fly I did have a very nice two-hour
long flight it was really nice but that
means that since I needed something grab
and go quickly I took my two smart
telescope so the dwarf lab uh dwarf 2
telescope which by the way has a new
beta firmware that I have available I
don't think it's public yet uh but it
makes it much better I'll go very
briefly into that in the video but also
I brought my sear s50 which also had a
firmware update that I added like
different speeds for the scrolling for
kind of like manually moving the
telescope around all those two tools
getting better is really really nice and
so I have currently the dwarf on M31 and
I'm going to put the sear on m33 because
the Sear has a much smaller field of
view so it's not very appropriate for
large targets like M31 and I just want
to see what I can get okay so I'm
currently looking at the interface of my
dwarf lab dwarf 2 telescope and you can
see M31 maybe for you guys it's not like
impressive or anything but for me this
is absolutely amazing we have just over
five minutes of data six minutes of data
now and it's just like so visible
already this is so exciting to
me I've also taken some uh dark frame
separately so I can uh hopefully stack
this manually later and and process it
myself uh if I manage to do that of
course it's going to be in this video so
stay tuned um this is super cool uh just
quickly by the way the the beta software
it adds a lot of things uh in particular
I cannot show you right now but it adds
a much better autofocus that that seems
to be properly doing a v curve it really
goes like inside Focus outside of focus
and then suddenly it's in Focus so
that's exactly what you would expect
from a v curve algorithm which is the
perfect one for astrophotography and it
worked on the field of stars without any
like particularly bright star so this is
really cool and also if you go to the uh
function once you're in the Astro mode
um you have the exposure stuff but if
you change to that little uh Cube here
you can see you have the calibration
which is to set up the go-to which also
has become faster as far as I can tell
uh and you also have star Target and
here you you have proper uh a proper
list that you can search filter all that
kind of stuff so all I did is tap on M31
and it go to there without any issues I
feel like this beta firmware really
makes the dwarf lab uh dwarf 2 much
better and a bit of a better competitor
to the SE star so it's really good to
see competition effectively spurring
Innovation and I really hope that dwarf
lab will be able to release their
firmware uh soon enough and they it can
be soon enough because it's uh it's
really a good enhancement and with both
the zwc star and the dwarf lab dwarf 2
telescopes hard at work on their
respective targets let's look at how it
looks like for the SE star okay and
actually uh we the sear has just
finished its first five minutes of light
accumulation or basically stacking life
stacking of frames it's on m33 the
triangulum Galaxy which is lower than
M31 in the sky they're both both targets
are away from the moon but they're
towards the Tokyo Sky pollution Dome so
it's not like the ideal Target and it's
not the ideal time either I really
wanted to do this during the full moon
but it was unfortunately not possible so
here I am freezing myself off in the
half moon but I can see the Milky Way
guys it might not be like incredible for
most of you I know that bortle four
bortle 5 is very easily attainable in a
lot of American Suburbia kind of
conditions but for me it's it it's
amazing anyway I'm freezing myself off
I'll go in the car uh and uh yeah warm
myself up because I need to and I'm kind
of shivering while taking this video uh
and yeah we'll see the results in in an
hour or so and uh after that once I get
back home and I have some time I will be
uh processing those results I
unfortunately have to work today uh not
tomorrow um so I will not stay too late
here and here is that parking area from
uh closeup I'm here because the two
telescopes are Imaging back there and I
have some free time so I'm gonna eat
because I'm
hungry but yeah it is very very bright
especially those like almost spotlights
type of Lights oh well I'm done with the
Imaging and let's give a little summary
Summary
of what happened so the dwarf 2 images
uh they're gone I lost the micro SD card
I have no where it is uh so
unfortunately we'll have to go do
without the images of of M31 so we'll
have to use the images from the sear
which are of m33 and I was kind of
hoping to see a similar result for
several reasons I took one hour worth of
exposures in uh uohara the place where
my paragliding school is it's a bort for
Zone but m33 at that time was fairly low
on the horizon it was within the light
Dome of Tokyo and on the other side uh
we had the half moon or the 40%
something like that Moon uh that was
there uh being very bright and annoying
and then because of uh all of the
traffic jams on the way back home uh by
the time I was taking uh the same 1 hour
worth of exposures from my rooftop here
in Tokyo the half moon was set so there
was no moon and the object was much
higher in the sky so I was thinking like
hey maybe it's going to like counter
itself out or at least reduce the
difference so did it let's have a look
at the results that we have on the
screen now and here are the results you
can probably guess which is which this
is with only a photometric color
calibration U spectr photometric color
calibration on the left we have the
image the image from Tokyo on the right
we have the image from the bottle for
for zone so obviously we can see a big
difference in terms of the details that
are available in the image but also and
this is something that whoever uh
basically processes the images that I
took from here my rooftop always remarks
on it is the background gradients that
are very different and it's one of the
reasons that my pictures are much more
difficult to process than something
taken in a botal for Zone it's the
background and the gradients in the
background which should be made easier
with something like grabert AI
especially now that it can be used
directly from within pix Insight if you
want to know how to do that my friend
Luke from the lcao channel made a made a
tutorial video on that I'll put the link
down below if you're interested but
anyway let's go back to those images and
I want to show you how I processed each
of them and the image on the right from
the bort Force Zone in all honesty was
was much more of a pleasure to process
than the image on the left so I did the
usual noise exterminator blur
exterminator all that kind of stuff and
then some stretching and let's look at
how it is right after stretching the
image here is how it looks like after
stretching the image I think the
difference is even sharper um yeah the
the background I could not get rid of
them even with um grabert on the left
hand side image this is just the n
nature of taking images Broadband in
Tokyo you get such re like ridiculously
hard to deal with gradients and after
that it was really a matter of doing
some masked saturation to kind of like
saturate the Galaxy while desaturating
the background um doing uh curves
Transformations these kind of changes
and this is what we end up with after we
do all of the curves transformation
changes and yeah the the difference is
even more obvious I mean yeah it's just
like if we zoom into the same region
it's just not the same thing not the
same thing at all even the colors have
been affected for for whatever reason
it's almost impressive um so yeah very
very very interesting to me but of
course I had a last step which is
reducing the stars and also I wanted to
register the uh Tokyo image to the bort
four image just so that we can see with
the exact same field of view and with
that this is how it looks like
right it's ridiculous how how different
things are I mean come
on I you you see like in the arms were
losing the color simply because I had to
desaturate to some extent and I couldn't
select the background as well as I could
with the image on the right it's just
it's not only the final image result
it's also like like the pleasure that I
take in processing the image it's so
much easier with the bottle for Zone I
mean it's not surprising is it but it's
just for me I'm not used to doing that
I'm I'm mind-boggled by the difference
and I expected less of a difference
because of the half moon that I had at
the bort 4 Zone because the object was
still low on the horizon at the bort for
Zone because the object was still lost
in the Tokyo kind of like sky or light
dome in the B for Zone but even with all
of that it's just completely different I
also did some like curves changes I
think I went a bit overboard but you can
see like this or or that whichever
result you prefer but it's like it's so
different from the image on the left and
so I really want to do a similar kind of
uh a test but with my red cat 51 and a
cooled camera and I'm thinking about
either taking the red cat to the bort
for Zone and then travel traving back to
Tokyo and doing the same image from
Tokyo on the same night or basically
going to the bort for Zone with my red
cat and then remote controlling my ascar
V at
home which I used for a comparison
between the two setups recently and then
you know uh taking the image of the same
object at the same time with bort 4
where I would be physically remote
controlling the bortle 9 telescope at at
the same time and then comparing at the
end let me know what you think of that
down in the comments and what I should
do for the next time that I do such a
check and of course during a new moon I
want to know all of your ideas for a
comparison protocol there but I think
having like the two setups Imaging
exactly at the same time would be super
cool while you're on your way to the
comments please like the video please
subscribe to the channel if you're new
in which case welcome to the channel if
you like a photography I guarantee you
won't regret it you will also get 50%
more clear Nets sorry this is changing
every time but don't worry it's all
guaranteed and if you want to support me
you can join my patreon you can join the
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my channel members and patreon
supporters or if you want something
that's at no cost to you and you're
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you can use the links down in the
description anyway I hope you found this
video interesting thank you so much for
watching as always but more important
than all of that don't forget whenever
you came to look up at the stars pref
preferably from a low bort zone so you
have more stars it's more
beautiful and I'll see you next time

Today, artificial intelligence helps doctors diagnose patients,
pilots fly commercial aircraft, and city planners predict traffic.
But no matter what these AIs are doing, the computer scientists who designed them
likely don’t know exactly how they’re doing it.
This is because artificial intelligence is often self-taught,
working off a simple set of instructions
to create a unique array of rules and strategies.
So how exactly does a machine learn?
There are many different ways to build self-teaching programs.
But they all rely on the three basic types of machine learning:
unsupervised learning, supervised learning, and reinforcement learning.
To see these in action,
let’s imagine researchers are trying to pull information
from a set of medical data containing thousands of patient profiles.
Supervised learning
First up, unsupervised learning.
This approach would be ideal for analyzing all the profiles
to find general similarities and useful patterns.
Maybe certain patients have similar disease presentations,
or perhaps a treatment produces specific sets of side effects.
This broad pattern-seeking approach can be used to identify similarities
between patient profiles and find emerging patterns,
all without human guidance.
But let's imagine doctors are looking for something more specific.
These physicians want to create an algorithm
for diagnosing a particular condition.
They begin by collecting two sets of data—
medical images and test results from both healthy patients
and those diagnosed with the condition.
Then, they input this data into a program
designed to identify features shared by the sick patients
but not the healthy patients.
Based on how frequently it sees certain features,
the program will assign values to those features’ diagnostic significance,
generating an algorithm for diagnosing future patients.
However, unlike unsupervised learning,
doctors and computer scientists have an active role in what happens next.
Doctors will make the final diagnosis
and check the accuracy of the algorithm’s prediction.
Then computer scientists can use the updated datasets
to adjust the program’s parameters and improve its accuracy.
This hands-on approach is called supervised learning.
Now, let’s say these doctors want to design another algorithm
to recommend treatment plans.
Since these plans will be implemented in stages,
and they may change depending on each individual's response to treatments,
Reinforcement learning
the doctors decide to use reinforcement learning.
This program uses an iterative approach to gather feedback
about which medications, dosages and treatments are most effective.
Then, it compares that data against each patient’s profile
to create their unique, optimal treatment plan.
As the treatments progress and the program receives more feedback,
it can constantly update the plan for each patient.
None of these three techniques are inherently smarter than any other.
While some require more or less human intervention,
they all have their own strengths and weaknesses
which makes them best suited for certain tasks.
However, by using them together,
researchers can build complex AI systems,
where individual programs can supervise and teach each other.
For example, when our unsupervised learning program
finds groups of patients that are similar,
it could send that data to a connected supervised learning program.
That program could then incorporate this information into its predictions.
Or perhaps dozens of reinforcement learning programs
might simulate potential patient outcomes
to collect feedback about different treatment plans.
There are numerous ways to create these machine-learning systems,
and perhaps the most promising models
are those that mimic the relationship between neurons in the brain.
These artificial neural networks can use millions of connections
to tackle difficult tasks like image recognition, speech recognition,
and even language translation.
However, the more self-directed these models become,
the harder it is for computer scientists
to determine how these self-taught algorithms arrive at their solution.
Researchers are already looking at ways to make machine learning more transparent.
But as AI becomes more involved in our everyday lives,
these enigmatic decisions have increasingly large impacts
on our work, health, and safety.
So as machines continue learning to investigate, negotiate and communicate,
we must also consider how to teach them to teach each other to operate ethically.

let's talk about the best meal to
actually clean out your arteries and I'm
talking about
atherosclerotic plaquing this is some
new information that I think will
actually blow you away and you can apply
this to a lot of different body problems
and since heart attacks are the number
one killer I think you're going to be
glad that you watch this I was studying
Your microbiome and your arteries
some research involving germ free mice
because they do a lot of experiments on
animals that are germ free and like what
is this germ free thing right well
there's a way to grow an animal without
any microbes living on or inside them
and so they're really kind of a sterile
animal and that way they can do various
experiments and keep the microbiome out
of the picture now the question is can
an animal live germ free well yes they
can survive but I think they don't
survive very well first of all they
require a lot more nutrient dense foods
to survive because they don't have the
help from the microbes they have stunted
growth
underdeveloped Hearts lungs and their
liver is smaller they even have low
cardiac output so their heart doesn't
work as well the lining on their
intestine is thinner and they also have
a lot of GI problems and their immune
system doesn't develop fully and they
have a lot of inflammatory conditions
and there's even atrophy of their lymph
nodes but other than that they do quite
well so now how does this relate to your
arteries well I started looking into the
connection between germ-free mice
research and what kind of effects that
can create on your arteries I want to
see if there's any connection between
this lack of microbiome or dysbiosis and
your arteries and I found all sorts of
amazing amazing data when you start to
destroy the microbes in the gut actually
in my studies or basically have a
germ-free mouse they develop a lot of
inflammation throughout the entire body
including the arteries which is the kind
of the trigger of this whole Cascade of
effects that happens in the arteries
with plaquing and some people still have
this concept that
our blood is sterile okay we have no
microbes in our blood it's completely
sterile it's not there are
microorganisms living in your blood in
fact there are pathogens living inside
your plaque in the arteries yes
pathogens I'm talking about chlamydia H
pylori staphylococcus those pathogenic
microbes are living inside that plaque
and you have a lot of other microbes
inside the arteries too I mean think
about how many microbes we have in our
guts living on our skin why wouldn't we
have them throughout our organs well we
do and so apparently if there's an
imbalance in the microorganisms in our
body it can lead to all sorts of
problems in Our arteries now the other
An important vitamin for the arteries
piece of this puzzle that I want to
bring up now is there's this one very
specific important nutrient okay it's a
vitamin that has this responsibility of
keeping the calcium buildup out of the
arteries because when you have plaquing
you have inflammation you have calcium
and you have cholesterol plaques right
well this vitamin which you may already
know is called vitamin K2 and its job is
to keep the calcium out of the arteries
okay it directs the calcium back into
the bone and if you're deficient in
vitamin K2 you could actually build up
this calcium in the arteries now the
reason I'm bringing up K2 is because
guess what makes vitamin K2
microbes your own gut makes vitamin K2
it has the ability to convert the
vitamin K1 from leafy greens to vitamin
K2 vitamin K2 is in fermented foods
because the microbes the bacteria in
those fermented foods can make vitamin
K2 especially fatty fermented foods like
fatty cheese okay which is a fermented
product the fattier the cheese the more
vitamin K2 you're going to get and other
fatty things too like fatty meats you
can get it from salmon salami which is a
fermented product certain sausages
especially fatty pork sausage has
vitamin K2 up to five times other types
of sausage even certain hot dogs and
even bacon can have K2 in it now of
course you also have sauerkraut is
loaded with vitamin K2 and and yogurt
this is interesting because
what does the mainstream medicine tell
you to do to prevent this plaquing avoid
saturated fats avoid all these
cholesterol foods that have apparently
K2 which is like the antidote to this
calcium buildup and there's a great test
that you can do is called a CAC test
stands for
coronary artery calcification test and
it is one of the best predictors of
heart failure okay it's the amount of
calcium in your arteries it's a
relatively inexpensive test you can go
get it done and it'll actually give you
a good idea of where you are on the
stage of this problem if you were going
to take vitamin K2 as a supplement it
works better with vitamin D3 okay you
want to take those together and the
ratio would be this every 100 micrograms
of K2 you want 10 000 IUS of vitamin D3
but this is what you need to know
probiotics are
atheroprotective they protect you
against this hardening of the arteries
and this calcium buildup and this plaque
information your friendly microbes are
your natural probiotics the microbes in
your gut actually can eat fiber from
your vegetables and make certain things
as a byproduct and one of the things
they make is small chain fatty acids
which they basically is a type of fat
that helps lower insulin and helps
regulate your blood sugars which can
also help decrease the inflammation in
the arteries now the whole point of this
The best foods for the arteries
video
is to take a look at your diet from the
viewpoint
of
are you living on germ-free sterile
Foods okay I'm talking about pasteurized
Foods you have pasteurized milk you have
pasteurized juice everything is cooked
for shelf life we eat foods from boxes
right on the Shelf canned foods radiated
Foods that's right they use radiation to
kill off microbes so they will last
longer on the Shelf I mean just go to
the grocery store and just look on the
shelves you will find
so many sterilized Foods it's insane and
also we cook our Foods we cook the heck
out of our foods and we basically kill
off all the microbes we don't eat a lot
of raw foods anymore and on top of that
we're eating animals that had
antibiotics you have to realize that one
of the big side effects from antibiotics
is that now you have this dysbiosis
when you kill off microbes you kill off
the good microbes with the bad microbes
and the microbes that survive become now
resistant and now you have all sorts of
additional side effects one being
inflammation and if you're eating
animals that have antibiotics could that
have an effect on your body I think to
some degree again when you eat raw foods
and I'm talking about like plants like
microgreens that have been grown on soil
or or really healthy plants from your
garden there are a lot of microbes in
those raw plants that you're getting as
well and they can be considered almost
like a probiotic as well and if someone
really understands that concept they're
going to start eating more fermented
foods right and there are a lot of
different fermented foods fermented
vegetables is a great source of these
friendly microbes because not only are
you getting more microbes as an
inoculation to your existing microbiome
but you're getting kind of this
pre-digested food that's easier to had
digest and the worse off your digestive
system is the more you should have those
type of foods so let's Circle back and
take a look at what would be a really
The best meal to clean out the arteries
good meal that would help with your
arteries okay and also this meal that
I'm going to talk about is pretty
contraintuitive if if you match it up
against mainstream medicine for this
problem because we're going to pack this
meal with the fattiest cheese talking
about brie cheese combined with fatty
pork sausage and of course sauerkraut
which you know I'm sure that's
acceptable by the mainstream medicine
these other two ingredients probably are
not but just think about what you're
getting when you have these three things
together
first of all each one of them is loaded
with vitamin K2 secondly you're getting
something else all three of these are
fermented which means bacteria has acted
on these foods to enhance
the availability of nutrients the
digestibility of these products are much
better because they're fermented and
each one of them are not sterile they
have microbes that you can use in your
own body so the next time you're at the
grocery store start looking at the foods
from the Viewpoint of how many foods are
actually sterile pasteurized over
processed and make a shift to start
buying foods that are more alive more
fermented more enhanced with this
fermentation process so since we're on
the topic of plaquing there's more to
Learn more about supporting the arteries!
learn about this and I put this video up
right here check it out

When I was 27 years old,
I left a very demanding job in management consulting
for a job that was even more demanding: teaching.
I went to teach seventh graders math
in the New York City public schools.
And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests.
I gave out homework assignments.
When the work came back, I calculated grades.
What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference
between my best and my worst students.
Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores.
Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well.
And that got me thinking.
The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math,
sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram.
But these concepts are not impossible,
and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students
could learn the material
if they worked hard and long enough.
After several more years of teaching,
I came to the conclusion that what we need in education
is a much better understanding of students and learning
from a motivational perspective,
from a psychological perspective.
In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ.
But what if doing well in school and in life
depends on much more
than your ability to learn quickly and easily?
So I left the classroom,
and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist.
I started studying kids and adults
in all kinds of super challenging settings,
and in every study my question was,
who is successful here and why?
My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy.
We tried to predict which cadets
would stay in military training and which would drop out.
We went to the National Spelling Bee
and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition.
We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods,
asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching
by the end of the school year,
and of those, who will be the most effective
at improving learning outcomes for their students?
We partnered with private companies, asking,
which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs?
And who's going to earn the most money?
In all those very different contexts,
one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success.
And it wasn't social intelligence.
It wasn't good looks, physical health,
and it wasn't IQ.
It was grit.
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.
Grit is having stamina.
Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out,
not just for the week, not just for the month,
but for years,
and working really hard to make that future a reality.
Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.
A few years ago,
I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools.
I asked thousands of high school juniors
to take grit questionnaires,
and then waited around more than a year
to see who would graduate.
Turns out that grittier kids
were significantly more likely to graduate,
even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure,
things like family income,
standardized achievement test scores,
even how safe kids felt when they were at school.
So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee
that grit matters.
It's also in school,
especially for kids at risk for dropping out.
To me, the most shocking thing about grit
is how little we know,
how little science knows, about building it.
Every day, parents and teachers ask me,
"How do I build grit in kids?
What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic?
How do I keep them motivated for the long run?"
The honest answer is,
I don't know.
(Laughter)
What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty.
Our data show very clearly
that there are many talented individuals
who simply do not follow through on their commitments.
In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated
or even inversely related to measures of talent.
So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids
is something called "growth mindset."
This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck,
and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed,
that it can change with your effort.
Dr. Dweck has shown
that when kids read and learn about the brain
and how it changes and grows in response to challenge,
they're much more likely to persevere when they fail,
because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.
So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit.
But we need more.
And that's where I'm going to end my remarks,
because that's where we are.
That's the work that stands before us.
We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions,
and we need to test them.
We need to measure whether we've been successful,
and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong,
to start over again with lessons learned.
In other words, we need to be gritty
about getting our kids grittier.
Thank you.

What if this was the moment your life changed?
How would you know?
How would it feel?
Imagine there were signs from the universe,
clear signs that you could trust,
so that you would always know
which path to take or which decision to make.
What if I told you that those signs are right here
for you just to see them or even to make them up.
Quantum physicist Max Planck has said,
"When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change."
When I was growing up in Finland,
I loved books - I still do.
One day I was in my hometown bookstore and saw a book that caught my attention.
I had to open it.
I began reading and tasting every word.
It was Pablo Neruda's poetry about Machu Picchu and the Andes.
Honestly, I didn't understand much at 13,
but every word somehow moved me into my core.
I had to know more,
so I bought the book and I went to my hometown library,
and there,
looking at the pictures of Machu Picchu,
I promised myself that one day I will go there.
At 13, I didn't know much about signs,
yet one sign was given to me,
and some part of me understood it.
As it so happens,
I currently live in the Peruvian Andes,
(Laughter)
and I have been many, many, many, many -
did I say many? - times to Machu Picchu,
and I stopped counting when I hit a hundred.
So we often see our lives through limitation;
we hold on to stories
that make us small or keep us small,
we even start seeing signs that support those limiting stories,
or we start seeing even bad signs - I don't recommend that.
So sometimes we might lose or miss the signs
that are there to support us in our path
because we are too busy and too hardheaded, maybe,
to think that we need something else or want something else.
One of my favorite poets, Rumi, has said or asked us,
"Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?"
So what do you do
if you feel that you are in prison or stuck with a limiting story?
Do something surprising,
like brrr, to shake it off.
Let's all do that. Brrr.
And just to demonstrate,
if you do it without sound,
(Laughter)
it doesn't work so well, right?
(Laughter)
Another good technique is snap out of it,
literally, snap your fingers and move out of that space -
something happens in your brain.
Try it.
But you have to move from that space, so -
(Laughter)
you try it at the intermission -
and then you blow that energy out: Swish!
You might do this - Swish! Swish! - quite a bit.
Feel your body. Do that right now.
Hug yourself. Hmmm.
Tell yourself, "Oh, you're so amazing."
Hmmmm.
And remind yourself that this is where you are,
not in the future, not in the past,
not in the story of should, could, would,
not a victim of the circumstances,
but right here.
Tell yourself, "I love you."
Tell yourself, "I'm so proud of you."
And breathe, right now:
Ahhhh.
Remember the signs themselves are not good or bad;
it is our judgment or our interpretation that makes them so.
So why don't we decide, right here, right now,
to only see good signs?
Good, a deal.
Albert Einstein has said,
"There are only two ways to live your life:
as though nothing is a miracle,
or as though everything is a miracle."
Remember the law of physics:
When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.
Let me tell you a story about hard-headed.
When I was preparing to come to New York City
to study at the Juilliard School,
I went to a bookstore again,
and I found a book that was meant to deliver messages.
You open the book and you read the message - easy.
So I took the book and I concentrated, asking for a message,
and I open the book:
Hmm.
I didn't like the message so much, so I decided to concentrate again,
and then I opened the book again:
that same message.
But I thought there was something wrong with this book,
so I took another copy of the book, and I opened that;
and I ended up opening five different copies of the book.
And did I read it? No.
I thought that there was something wrong with all of them:
they opened up on the same page - a defect of the book.
So I told a friend afterwards that this is what happened
and it was really weird.
And he said, "Well, what was the message?"
"I don't know.
Something like energy or opportunity."
I had no idea.
I had not even bothered to really read what it said.
Some weeks later, he and I were having dinner,
and he said, "Close your eyes."
He gave a book into my hands, and he said, "Open it."
I opened it.
Can you guess what happened?
Mm-hmm, yep - that same quote.
So at that time, I started paying attention.
This is what it said,
"How much longer will you go on letting your energy sleep?
How much longer are you going to stay oblivious to the immensity of yourself?"
"Don't lose time in conflict; lose no time in doubt -
time can never be recovered.
And if you miss an opportunity,
it may take many lives before another comes your way again."
Fast forward, and there I was in New York City,
a doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School, flute major,
studying with the amazing legendary Julius Baker.
I loved it.
I was thriving.
I loved both the academics and the performance opportunities.
I was in Lincoln Center.
I got to play with some of the most brilliant people on this planet
and to study with some of the most brilliant people on this planet.
And yet, at the same time, often I felt insecure;
I felt not good enough or even doubting if I was on the right path.
So one particular summer Sunday,
I was in that conflicting moment where I felt that nothing was moving,
that I was stuck or I couldn't advance
or I couldn't figure it out.
And I say "conflicting"
because at the same time, I loved performing
and I felt something wanted to be born through me.
And I was playing in hospitals and mental wards
and by hospice-care patients' bedsides.
Especially in those moments, I really truly felt the healing power of music
and I felt my soul calling me to that greater purpose,
but at that time, as I said, I could not figure it out,
I could not see it clearly.
I was banging my head on the career doors that were not opening,
so I decided to talk to the universe.
"Hello.
Anybody?
I am tired. I am frustrated. I am scared.
I don't know what to do.
And please don't give me that listen-to-your-inner-wisdom business,
because I don't hear a thing,
and if I hear something, I can’t trust that, because I'm a mess.
(Laughter)
So here's the deal:
I am willing to persevere
if I know for sure that I am on the right path.
If I'm not on the right path, let's change it right now.
I can do many things.
So - are you listening? -
give me a sign.
And give me a sign that I can understand.
None of those cryptic messages, okay?"
(Whispering) Silence.
On one hand, I felt better because I had vented out to the universe;
on the other hand, I felt a bit shaken
because I had just demanded a sign from the universe.
So I decided to go for a walk.
And as I was walking,
I really felt sad and lonely and lost:
"Nobody loves me."
And as I was crossing Broadway at West 83rd Street,
I saw a book on the ground -
again a book.
It must be somebody's book, I thought, but I can at least take a peek.
So I pick up the book; I turn it around.
The title of the book is "The singing flute."
Hmm. Could this perhaps, maybe, possibly, be my sign? -
I was still doubting.
They might as well dropped the book on my head,
but I had asked for a clear sign.
So I open the book and I read,
"This is a story of a little Finnish girl."
(Laughter)
(Sigh)
I close the book and say,
"Okay. You got a deal. Just show me the way."
Why I love sharing this story is that it really happened.
If my mom was here in the audience, she would say, "I've seen the book."
(Laughter)
I love it because we all have signs.
And in my case, I was looking for other people's signs -
I was looking for my professor’s signs or other colleagues’ signs -
totally missing my own unique signs.
And I am here in front of you,
from Finland, through New York City, through the Andes,
because I did start paying attention to signs.
Since finding the book,
I have grown to the habit of talking out loud to the universe.
I have manifested computers, cameras, a piano,
amazing journeys around the world,
amazing people around the world,
men.
We've manifested each other tonight
here in TEDxBigSky.
And also when I was planning to go to Peru for the first time
to fulfill that promise that I had made at 13 -
in 2010, when I was going there -
I asked the universe for an extra financial assistance
as a sign
that this indeed was my time to go,
and at that exact same day,
an unexpected substantial amount just showed up.
So I got my sign and I live in Peru.
So remember the universe speaks to you through everything.
Listen to it.
The signs are everywhere.
See them.
Recognize them.
Feel them.
Be them.
Make them up.
Trust them.
I am the flute, the singing flute,
and so are you.
The 15th-century poet and musician Kabir wrote,
"The flute of the infinite is played without ceasing,
and its sound is love.
When love renounces all limits, it reaches truth."
So we are all flutes
through which the infinite longs to play.
Listen to the sound of love beckoning you,
your own soul calling you to renounce all limits -
there are no limits.
And remember, when in doubt, brrr.
(Laughter)
Have courage to follow your heart and to create your story.
Choose to live as though everything is a miracle -
it's in the small things.
And when you show up authentically here and now,
you might be a sign for someone.
So I ask you,
"What if this was the moment your life changed?
What if this talk was your sign?"
Thank you.