for those of you unfamiliar with ted, their mission is to discover and spread ideas that spark conversation, deepen understanding, and drive meaningful change via events worldwide, and politicians, world leaders, climate change activists etc, have all done ted talks, and doing one was a personal goal i have had but never pursued until this year.
but it was very difficult distilling 61 years of life, and especially the bigmoose story, into a ten minute talk.
also, no slides to assist and prompt, just ten very punctual minutes to tell your tale.
but i did it.
achieving my 2025 goal of doing 12 talks in the process.
which i am number one very proud of, and hopefully along this journey have inspired one other person, with or without parkinsons, to not give up, whatever gets thrown at you, and number two, selfishly very pleased with what i have learnt along the way.
things i have learnt.
1. even if you’re afraid, try.
2. i need to mix with humans more. (i am very antisocial)
3. human to human connection by doing talks is so important for bigmoose, and the evolution of our charity.
4. being vulnerable is ok.
5. good people want you to succeed, and the others really don’t matter.
6. tell the world you’re going to do something, then you’ll make it happen.
7. i need to make the best out of what i’ve got, even though at times it seems tough.
lots to learn, but a thoroughly enjoyable journey so far, let’s see if we can do a bit more in the second half, ideas on a postcard.
as i sit here this morning, i feel very calm, and very reflective, as yesterday we had our 4000th referral since january 2022.
4000.
that blows my mind.
4000 human beings being given hope.
4000 human beings being given access to free therapy, with no waiting lists, no judgement of whether they are bad enough to qualify for help.
just, you feel you need help, we will provide it, no questions asked.
and last week as i sat opposite a family whose family member under 30 took her life, i watched and i listened to how much pain they were in, and i wondered how this event would affect their lives forever more.
and i wondered if we could have helped her.
helped her with her demons, her fears, the immense pain she must have been in to conclude that there was only one answer.
helped her get back to wanting to live again.
to see the sunrise.
to laugh.
to love.
to live.
and although we’ll never know, because our paths never crossed, this week we had our 106th person tell us we saved their lives, our paths did cross, our team did help them, and their families don’t have the devastation that the family i met last week had.
and that is wonderful.
and that as i spoke about last night is the legacy that losing gary ‘moose’ cloonan has created, i hope he would be proud.
blue skies,
jeff
p.s. dream big, it’s the only size.
