ETİKETLERİN ÖTESİNDE: UMUDU KORUMAK | Işıl Tabağ | TEDxHisar School Youth
Işıl Tabağ shares her personal story of overcoming labels and maintaining hope through life's challenges, from being born during a wartime blackout to struggling with infertility and raising children. She emphasizes that negative labels are temporary costumes rather than permanent identities, and advocates for choosing hope and kindness despite difficult circumstances.
Summary
Işıl Tabağ begins her TEDx talk by recounting her birth during the 1974 Cyprus crisis in İzmir, when she was born during a hospital blackout and her arrival literally brought light back to the building, leading to her name Işıl (meaning light). She then shares her personal struggle with infertility, describing how being told she would have difficulty getting pregnant made her feel inadequate and labeled. This experience taught her about the restrictive nature of labels, which she compares to wearing a tight suit that makes it hard to breathe. She discovered Professor Carol Dweck's concept of 'yet' - transforming negative self-talk by adding 'yet' to statements like 'I'm not good at math yet' instead of definitive negative labels. After eventually becoming pregnant and then experiencing pregnancy loss, followed by successfully raising children, Tabağ learned valuable lessons about resilience. A pivotal moment came from watching a video about a 100-year-old woman who raised a happy child in a prison camp, sharing the wisdom that 'if a mother smiles, heaven is there for the child.' Tabağ developed personal coping strategies, including reframing situations (imagining angry drivers are rushing to the doctor) and making connections with others during difficult times. Through working with young people, she observed how traits often labeled as negative (like being obsessive or quiet) actually became professional strengths later in life. She emphasizes the power of words and thoughts on our physical being, questioning why we expose ourselves to negative content when positive influences could be more beneficial. Regarding education, she defends the importance of school as a unique environment for learning to navigate relationships and shared experiences. Her core message is that labels are temporary costumes we can choose to wear or remove each day, and that hope - like the sun - is always present even when obscured by clouds.
Key Insights
- Tabağ argues that negative labels function like restrictive clothing that prevents people from breathing freely and reaching their potential, rather than defining their true identity
- She claims that adding the word 'yet' to negative self-statements transforms them from permanent limitations into temporary challenges that can be overcome with time and effort
- The speaker discovered through working with young people that traits commonly viewed as negative labels often become professional strengths later in life, suggesting that perceived weaknesses may actually be unnamed powers
- Tabağ contends that consuming negative media content physically affects our bodies and questions whether focusing on positive, kind content would create better life outcomes
- She maintains that hope and renewal are constant possibilities in life, comparing them to the sun which is always present even when hidden by clouds, and emphasizing that each morning offers a fresh opportunity to choose one's emotional costume
Topics
Transcript
Erdoğan Reviewer Reviewer Great. Thank you very much. All the speeches were very nice. I hope we will continue in the same beauty. Year 1974. A hot day, but a really hot day. There are cars outside. On the headlights of the cars, a blue cover was covered. A hospital. All the windows of the hospital were covered with newspapers, curtains were closed. There is only one light in the corridor. And the blue cover was around that light. The time of the Cabras Movement, the planes were planned to block the city lights from above so that they could not see them and bomb them. On such a blackout day, I came to this hospital in İzmir and to…
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