2025 REEL Strengths Fair "Neurodiversity Unleashed: Turning Dyslexic Traits into Tools for Success"

I am a volunteer here with REEL and I'd like to introduce our speaker. His name is Gil Gershoni — he is the founder of Gershoni Creative, a creative agency based in San Francisco. For more than 30 years, Gil has transformed big ideas into impactful designs, campaigns and activations for brands such as Google, Apple, Spotify and Nike. Amazing!

In 2017, launch dyslexic design thinking — it's an initiative that teaches intellectually curious people how to create, collaborate and problem solve using the dyslexic mindset, which I'm going to guess you can talk about today. Dyslexic design thinking encompasses a podcast called Dyslexic Design Thinking, a postcard project Dear Dyslexia, which when you're done listening to here you can go look at what he did in the exhibitor hall, an art exhibit called The Dyslexic Dictionary, which I missed and I'm really bummed out about in San Francisco, and a thought leadership with Gil. Gil regularly speaking on the topics of dyslexia and design to audiences. Welcome!

Gil Gershoni:

Thank you very much. Hi everybody, I'm so happy to be here today. I don't know how many of you heard Sam earlier, and I felt that it was like his sort of definition of the dyslexia gift is really a foundation to my talk, so I thought it's kind of worked perfectly.

You know, maybe the first thing I'm going to do today is start with a classic icebreaker. You know, I would love for you to turn to somebody you don't know, introduce yourself by your first name, and listen carefully, I want you to tell them one thing that you're not good at. I'm going to give you two minutes to do it. Go ahead, turn to each other and introduce yourself. "Do you know each other?" "So you know what he's not good at?" "Right on."

All right, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So how was that for everybody? Have you guys ever introduced yourself to a stranger with the first thing that you're not good at? Was it inspiring? Would you like to do it again?

Well, I'm Gil. I'm dyslexic and reading and writing is not my strength. I have a design and branding agency in San Francisco, and for the last 30 years I've been working with organizations, schools, individual nonprofits to help them tell their story, okay? And today I'm going to talk about how to reframe, rebrand our neuro-individuality, and primarily for me, my dyslexia, okay?

When I start to work with organizations about how to rebrand or tell their story or tell their identity, the first thing I do is I look into assumptions. So I figured today is probably good to start with what is dyslexia defined by the dictionary? It's a learning of disability processing language that has to do with reading, writing and spelling.

It's important to know that dyslexia, like everything else, is a spectrum. There's many different types of dyslexics. I'm not as good an actor as them, I'm never going to sing as good a Cher, and I'm not the founder of a billion dollar organization like Richard Branson, but my strengths come from my dyslexia. My strengths remain possible because of my dyslexia.

It's important to know that one out of five are dyslexic. 66 million Americans are dyslexic. Just think about the amount of dyslexic and neuro-individuality in our community. It's also important to know that 35% of American entrepreneur are dyslexic learning disability — one out of five, 35% of thinkers in the entrepreneurial space are dyslexic.

Traditionally we define dyslexia with what we cannot do, you know, rather than what we can do. Today I would love to talk about how to reframe my dyslexia, your neuro-individuality, and see the strength that comes from that perspective.

It's important to know that I'm dyslexic through and through — I'm a whole person, you know? As we start today, we can talk about what I'm not good at, but what does it have to do with my whole person, you know? And why do we focus most of our time with things that are giving us the challenges versus the giving us the strength of being our best selves?

It's a lot easier for me to to work through my differences when I start from my strength-based model, when I'm seen through my community, my parents, my partners, my collaborators, my client with what I can do.

In my podcast, I interview a lot of different individuals that are dyslexic and there individuals in different industries. Just recently I had I had an opportunity to sit up with Nicole. Nicole works an intersection of neuroscience and mindfulness. I love the combination of both the neurosciences and how the mind works, but also being present, being in the mind, being you know, being your best self, being present.

She was mentioning this two two different ideas that really stuck me: one is that we're all neuroindividuals. I love that term because it means like we all individuals and we all have different brains. Just like our fingerprints are unique, our brains are also unique. None of our brains are the same, so when we're talking about the curve where we are with it, it's a misnomer because we are individuals and we see the world around us in a different way. You don't have to be dyslexic to be different.

So what is dyslexia really? Dyslexia is a hyper ability, and as a dyslexic I can make up words you would never find that words in a dictionary. I can spell them anywhere I want because I'm creative — just like Shakespeare. It was an interesting fact that Shakespeare never really spelled the same word twice and made up words because he was talking about creativity, language, humanity, stories. We gave him the freedom to do so.

So hyper ability is the way we look into insights, the way we think, create and relate to one another. My disabilities made me really good at what I do. It took me a long time to get to this perspective, to realize that my disability is actually my strength.

Hyper ability is born from taking perceived weaknesses and developing a relationship with it to be able to reveal the extraordinary capability that it offers. Often we try to stay away from our disabilities, from our differences, and what happens when we do that? They get louder, they get bigger, they chase us. But when we surrender to them, when we have a relationship with them, they become our friends and often they become our strengths.

So let's look at what the disability looks like first. C-A-T — the word "cat." For you most non-dyslexic, these are non-negotiable symbols or letters, and when when you look at the word "cat," probably in the first thing in your mind's eye you seeing the cat on your right. I wanted to create an infographic so you guys can kind of see how the subject and the objects compute each other, create an invisible relationship and understand what's going on in the blink of an eye.

When I see the word "cat," I see it kind of like that. My mind sees through the letters, below the letters, above the letters. I see a "t," "c," two "t"s upside down, 3D, and no matter which way my brain computes it, I I don't see a cat. What I have to do in order to see a cat is I have to suspend my gift of dyslexia. I have to hold so tightly to the letter "c." If I'm lucky to make it to "a" without seeing four or five triangles, I can hold it in my mind, and then I can jump to "t," and if I can hear it in my back of my mind as I'm speaking to myself, I see a cat.

But at that moment, my dyslexia goes on hyperdrive and I see more than a cat. I see a patterns, I see fashion, I see nature, I see friendship, I see community, I see my favorite cat, I see the story behind the words — more than just apparent to the eye.

You take the same disability with the letters and you take my cat hat and you stick it in the bag, and for you out there that are not dyslexic, I make sure that the tail sticks a little bit further so you know it's a cat. And I use the same disorientation as I do with letters. I see above, below, through, all at the same time in a blink of an eye, and I can tell you 100% there's a cat in the bag. What I'm doing is I'm using my disability, I'm leaning into it, I'm using this — the gift of dyslexia — in order to see the the invisible solutions out there.

So I guess the cat is out of the bag. So let's talk about dyslexia and how we think differently, you know? As a dyslexic, I've been working with my team around the world, around working with different neuro-individuals about how do we bring our gift, different gift, different neurodiversity to the work we do. And today I'm going to talk about three things that I do that consider to be my disability, how I lean into it and to make it my hyper ability, and I work with other neuro-individuals to mind-meld our differences so together we can reach better outcomes.

These are three tools that really stands out when we're looking at how I see letters. So the first one is turning disorientation into orientation. When I look at letters, it's disorienting and I have to work so hard, and I'm sure you individual, your children, have to spend their gift of seeing through objects, leaping through ideas in order to be able to just come up, you know, with a single idea or the single word that's written down. So I'm going to talk about how I lean into disorientation to reorient.

Seeing everything is negotiable. I never see the same word the same way twice. I never read it twice. I never think of ideas the same way twice. They're always new because my mind leaps around ideas and thoughts.

And the last one is brain — embracing the beginner's mind. Turning disorientation into orientation. We all experience disorientation. You don't have to be dyslexic to experience disorientation, you know? Maybe you were driving here and you got lost — that's probably felt a bit disorienting. Maybe you met a new person or came into a room and emotionally something triggered you and you feel disoriented, or you're speaking to a room of folks that you never met and you're trying to sort of share and maybe that's disoriented.

Disorientation is not a bad thing. It's how you regulate your disorientation that makes all the difference.

This is an art piece that we created for the Dyslexia Dictionary when I was trying to express how my mind works and how I always get stimulated through different ideas, color, textures and words. Disorientation without a relationship is this order, but I disorient by choice. I create environments in our studios where I immerse everybody on the team into the way I see the world, you know? I remember meeting with some of our designers and strategists and project managers. I asked everybody to print their research, to print their ideas, to print their words or graphics and print them on the wall. And in the beginning it's like "why are we doing this? It's under computer, we don't need to do this." But I asked everybody to do it. Then they have to cut all the piece of paper and they glued it around and they put points on it and they took strings and start to connect things.

And before you realized it, you were inside of the idea. You feeling the thought, you're feeling the different neuro-individuality and the way we're solving problems. It became so addicting that now every time I say "well I don't know if we need to do it," everybody wants to do it because you kind of get inside of this three-dimensional world and you start exploring the different way we see each other, you know? The writers move some graphics, the the graphic designer moves some words, and together we start to formulate what is the problem and how we going to solve it.

Turning this orientation into orientation has to do with how we see the world around us. When you guys look at your watch, you see time, but when I look at the watch, I can see all the parts of it. I can see the gears, the springs, the screws. I can suspend time, I can slow down and see through, above and all at the same time, and I can tell you where there's a discord, where there's a disability, where there's something in this mechanic that is just a tiny bit off. And it can be as small as a the smallest tinker of a of a screw that's sort of puts the clock back into time and you can see it again.

So when we're trying to solve a problem, we're trying to slow down to see all the pieces and immerse ourselves in the environment around us. So how do we do that? First and foremost, ask yourself where are you and what are you doing — not what you think you're doing and not what you assume you are, but what is the environment around you? Be present, get grounded, use your whole body to sense the world around you. Look around and sit in it — sit in the discomfort of not knowing because that's where the relationship begins.

I love this metaphor of how a pilot flies a plane. The pilot knows where they take off and they know where they need to land, and as they take off, all they're doing is looking at the instruments, looking at the weather, looking at the conditions, and they adjust every moment of the flight not only to land the plane on time but it's the most efficient way to get there because they're not finding the — they're not fighting the environments, they're embracing the condition and creating a relationship with it.

Turning this orientation into orientation has to do with slowing down. My brain processed so fast that I used to think that when I have to slow down, you know, I have to sort of meet, meet you, meet a different individual with different neurodiversity in order to relate to them. But what I realize by slowing down, I'm able to see a lot more. I'm able to embrace my environment.

This is an art installation that we did for Deloitte, and they were interesting for us to create a visual exploring what it is to be in the cutting edge of innovation, what it is to sit in discomfort of something new. Because what we're talking about embracing our differences, embracing our disability is you have to sit with something that maybe doesn't feel as comfortable as things that gives you that joy.

So we illustrated this beautiful young girl on a swing 30,000 ft under the air, and this piece is massive. So when you come to it, you literally feel the vertigo of being on the cutting edge. Mind you that the cutting edge of anything is how you get to to innovation. That's how you invent new thing, how you look at the world around you and try to find new solution for old problems. Dyslexic are really good at that.

I interviewed Sally Gardner — she's an author from the UK. I don't know if you know her, she's phenomenal, and podcast with her was super inspiring. And there's a few things she said that really stuck out to me. The first thing is that she really embraced this orientation — she loves to sit in it because it calms her down. She's able to regulate her dyslexia, she's able to sit in her disorientation and listen to the character she's writing.

One of her technique to understand the story arc of her character is she would take their characters to lunch. And I was like "what do you mean literally?" She's like "yeah, yeah, I go to the cafe. I'm writing about a p — a persona or a character — and I would sit there and just in my mind's eye I would talk to the character and ask that character 'is this the right story? Is this the right clothes? Is this the right shoes?'" And she's often — these characters disagree with me, but she's listening. She's listening to what the story is and not trying to force it. And she's like "the characters are always right, you know? If I'm trying to write something that's wrong, they would yell at me, you know?"

And one could say like "well she's maybe a little, you know, crazy," but in the best possible ways, you know? I've done the Dyslexia Dictionary with Sally. We've done a bunch of different global art project together, and she wrote this amazing poem for the Dyslexia Dictionary where we end up printing it again as as as as large as this wall. And the one sentence in that poem that really stuck with me is "not how you spell the word that matters — is what do you have to say that counts."

And every time I think about that, it makes me think about myself as a little boy, my son, my community, you know? Can we teach them to think differently no matter how they spell it so they feel their strength and confident and inner light?

Few years ago, we were invited to redesign the Charles Schwab Learning Center that helps students with dyslexia and learning differences, both for Stanford students as well as some of the surrounding high school and such. I was so impressed with their methodology — it's really looking at learning through based strength-based models, you know? And I met the the the team and the teachers and some of the students and walked around the space.

If you guys don't know, Charles Schwab is dyslexic and he's also a Stanford graduate, so him supporting the community this way really meant a lot to me and the community at large, you know? As we start to talk about it, we start to realize that even the words "Learning Center" emphasize that maybe something is different, something is wrong, something needs to be fixed. But what we were — what was taught to the students is how to be their best selves. So we start think "why not create an environment that stimulate your dyslexia, that celebrates your differences, that allows us to be not a place to be fixed but a place to learn how to be a better dyslexic, a place that allows you to then sit with other fellow dyslexic and neuro-individuals and learn how to be your best self?" Almost like an innovation lab for dyslexic, you know?

And it made so so much sense to me because when we're thinking about Stanford and the garage and HP and Apple and all the other or, you know, innovation and company, why not create a space that we can take the next generation of entrepreneurs and thinkers and empower them to be their best self, to celebrate their differences?

If you haven't seen the center, you should definitely check it out, you know? Some of the walls showing you how we see letters and how they you know, metamorphosize into shapes, which the way I see graphics — they're all negotiable. So, you know, instead of looking at the way it's spelled, what can we do with those letters, you know?

On the windows of the space, you know, we wrote some messaging that was all fragmented, but as soon as the sun hits it, the light on the ground spells it correctly. So you're able to feel how dyslexics see the fragmentation of letters and celebrate how they come together and fall apart it's just perception, you know?

And likewise we color when I look at color, I see a spectrum. I see a a a range of possibility they never end because my mind always leap through new ideas, always find new ways around it.

I wish this center was available when I was a kid, you know, because I think that would have been a little easier, although with my mom, she was so creative. She said to me, you know, "as long as you try, you never fail. At least you know what you're good at and what you're not." So I learned to fail, you know? Because if you don't fail, you don't try, and if you don't try, you don't know, and if you don't know, then how is that working out?

So for me, failure was always the idea that "I now I know more than I did, and what do I do with it?" Sam, Sam was talking about it earlier, you know? Find a way to be comfortable with trying, you know? The worst going to happen? "I'm not that good as a pianist," you know, "but I'm good in other things." So it's not about negotiability, you know?

The second the second tool that I want to talk about today is seeing everything is negotiable. It's not about good negotiability it's about seeing everything is negotiable, trying to find almost what is your inner resistance, what do you assume that's not negotiable that you are using as a framework to see the world around you?

Somebody codified it, somebody thought "we can do it quicker, faster, run faster, make it to the moon, invent a phone with no buttons, invent an automobile" by the way, all dyslexics — because they felt it that they can be negotiable, they can find another way through, they can find a different solution and suspend, you know, the laws or the ideas that are holding us back.

This is an art installation that we did for the Dyslexia Dictionary, and I was really interested to find a way to show non-dyslexics how do dyslexic see the world around them. So I started with a very simple premise: is the cup half full or half empty? And as you look at the water in the glass and you look at the text behind it, you kind of start to see how I see the world around me.

It doesn't have to be just copy or text or words it's everything, you know? Because my dyslexia is is driven by curiosity, and when I feed my dyslexia, I want more of it. It's addicting, you know? "What if, what if, what if, what if it goes there, what if it goes here?"

So as we sort of visualized it and we saw multiple of these lenders and these glasses, we start to realize that it's neither half empty or half full. Those are the boundaries, those are the non-negotiable constructs that we all come to. For dyslexic, it's both. For dyslexic, it's not how empty or full — it's through the glass, through the lens that the world transformed the possibilities, and that's where for me the negotiability begins, you know?

Whenever I think that it's not doable, stop why? Who said so? I'm going to show you we're going to reinvent, we're going to think about it differently, you know?

I was trying to think for myself: when I was a little boy, when did the first time I learned this? Because I didn't find that to be like a common thing as a young boy, boy sort of going like "everything is negotiable," you know? And I was like — so I remember my grandfather, you know? I was probably 6 years old, first grade or so, and I always love to hang out with him. And he would even say "go play with the kids." I was like "no grandpa, you know, I want to go with you. I want to learn how you do business."

He was back in the day he was well these days we call entrepreneur, he was just an a hustler, you know? He just love people, love relationship and love to make make deals, you know? So I would always stick around and go with them, and at the time time we went on the way to the office, we stopped at the farmers market, and there was an organic farmers there with all these great apples, and we were going to buy a few apples. And my grandfather started to talk to the merchant and asking about his family, the weather, the soil "is this a good season? Did you get enough rain?" And then he start to negotiate the price of an apple.

Now I was 6 years old, but I was pulling on his sleeve like "Grandpa, it's an apple, you know? Pay the gentleman the price." And he pulls me aside, he's like "no, no, I'm not negotiating the price it's about the value of the relationship." Now I know this man, I know what he puts the effort toward it, you know? He only bought Apple from this farmer, and every so often he would get a free apple. But it was never the point — he created a relationship, understood the other person first, he learned to negotiate and listen first before he had his assumptions about this person's life and what he's doing.

My grandfather has this kind of relationship throughout his life, and it always inspired me to first find out "how is it going for you? What's your world looks like? Where can we help? How can we flow when there's a lack of discord that we need to shift?"

I'm always looking "what my assumptions are," right? Creating the boundaries what are non-negotiable? How do I look at the way I look at letters through, above, below, all at the same time and apply it not as a disability but as a hyper ability, you know?

When I look at the world around me, I'm trying to suspend it. I'm trying to find out where there's lack of flow for myself and for my environment. I do everything I can not to solve the problem, and you can imagine as a creative director with a branding agency when my client comes to me and says "we needed to solve a problem" and the first thing I say is "I'm going to do everything I cannot to solve it," you know? They don't fully understand what I'm talking about because "wait a second, aren't we paying you to solve the problem?" I says "yes you are, but you're paying me to solve the right problem. If you knew what the problem was, you wouldn't need me, you know?"

What the indicator that's not working for you — maybe not flowing, maybe doesn't create an opportunity for your business, your community, your nonprofit — but that's just an indicator, it's a symptom. Let's follow the symptom down and find out where is the discord, because when we find the problem, then we can solve it in half the time, you know?

The goal is to find our truth. The goal is to find the source. The goal is not to run away from the obstacles, the problems, the discord, the disorientation or the disability you have to embrace it, you know? I'm a whole person, my disability is my strength. I disorient by choice. I try to be more dyslexic everywhere I can. I try to feed my dyslexia because it gives me the strength with the mind I have to see the world around me differently.

I interviewed Dr. James Kinross he's a a surgeon out of UK and first and foremost I was like "a doctor, a surgeon, dyslexic? How did you ever get through school? How did you overcome and you worked so hard just to try to get through it," you know?

He will be the first one to tell you that he's not only a great surgeon, but he's also an amazing artist, you know? And what he does because he has, you know, his his dyslexia — is both the right and left side of his brain, he uses them both. So pre-surgery, what he would do is he would draw the illustrate the surgery not as a not as a scientist or is a doctor but is an artist. He would spend time and render it and color it, and then he would put music to it, you know? Surgery as pre-doing million at the end, so he would coordinate with all of his senses how he's going to make this dance happen.

And then he brings the rest of his team some dyslexic, some not, all neuro-individuals — and then they sit together in the room, they all meditate, close their eyes, they look at the illustration, they listen to the music, and they get aligned, they mind-meld, they bring their differences together in order to be a stronger group to go through the dance of the surgery.

I would invite you to listen to him he was so inspiring and such a generous man, but just blew me away with how he does it and I haven't met anybody else that does it his way due to his dyslexia, you know?

So my last tool for today: embracing the beginner's mind, you know? For me, I can look at those letters and I never see it the same way twice, and it can be super frustrating, you know? It can be the kind of thing that "you know, why can't I do it?" I remember when I was a little boy, I was writing a little say I was maybe third, fourth grade — and in the same paragraph I spelled the same word three different ways. And my mom was like "whoa, that was so creative!" like she's like "how can you think of three ways to spell the same word," you know? She's like "is there any other way to spell the same word?" And we just went and I just wrote it in 10 I mean 10 different ways to spell it.

We celebrate the fact that I saw the possibility that it was new again, you know? Because it didn't matter now I learned that there's one way to spell it that everybody else agrees, but the way I spelled originally was probably a little bit better. It was more authentic, it was creative, you know? And made my mom need to do what I do is to say it out loud and decode it: "oh I I understand what you're trying to say."

My wife does it all the time. I combine words that don't exist. She's like "whoa, that's even a better outcome than what I knew it was," you know? And then sometimes I still feel a little embarrassed. I was like "well not sure how to spell that, but it sound right to me, it felt right to me." But instead of trying to run away from it, I'm embracing it, I'm sharing it, you know?

Now, you know, with my team Zilia here and others I inspire them to say "how would you do it differently," you know? "How do we look at the problem in a different way," you know? "I know we just almost solved the project," you know? "What? Forget it, let's do it again." Some of them get very frustrated when we do that, but for me it's like "can we see it in another way? Can we get underneath the story to get to that essence? Can we celebrate that?"

And you know what happened when you do it as a team and we work my with our clients is they fall in love with that process, you know? Because they feel that we're coming from a very authentic place, a genuine place. We all have our strength and differences, and we're embracing them as well, you know? We promote failure, we promote trying and not succeeding because it's the only way to discover, so becomes a safe place, you know?

You know, in order to be creative commercially, you know, people come to us and says "I need a campaign by the end of the week," you know? "We're launching a Spotify brand globally, can you do it?" And when I was younger, I would be so stressed out. I like "oh my God, we got to get with the best idea." But what I've learned is that if I just relax, my dyslexia naturally empties my creativity, you know?

If you to be creative — like the half full, half empty glass — you have to make room for it because creativity is about expansion. And if you're saturated, if you have creative block, that means you have no more room for expending. So what are the practices and routine you do individually, you know, teach your children to do it, that they can ground themselves, self-regulate, you know, to make more room for their and their individuality?

This is a mural that we did for the Schwab Learning Center, and when you come to it, it's again, it's a massive wall, and right in the middle of that mural there's a door, you know? And the idea here was that whenever you come to the center, leave you as some ions at the door because that's a first step to to create discord, to fight with who we are. But if we can put that baggage down and start again, the opportunity is endless, you know?

We did it so when you wear the 3D glasses, it's 3D, but I want to again to play with the idea that this is all negotiable, that, you know, when you see it and you're not dyslexic, you're like "oh, the colors," but you put the glasses on, the whole thing pops 3D. It's all perception — what are we going to do with it, you know?

Another part of looking at the world from the beginner's mind is the like child wonder, you know? It's very important that we're not looking at the child-like mind from a rudimentary perspective, okay? We all are trying to get back to the moment we were little kids — nobody judged us, we played in the world, we saw things that moved us, and we were content. As we get older, as we go to school, as we get judged, as we take tests, we start to be afraid to be ourselves because "what's the — how are you going to make a living by playing with cards in the sand," you know?

But if you embrace the play, the brain relaxes, you move toward what gives you joy, and if you do that, you attract more of it. And when you do that, it's easier than to find more of it. One of the things we do at our agency is we invite play. Some of our more traditional thinkers find it very stressful because there is an hour to finish the deadline, and I said "everybody stop" — from accounting to account management to copyrighting to strategist and designers and everybody in between and through all of the floors at the agency — "we do one minute dance party." I don't know if you guys ever done that, you know? Put a song, one minute on the clock, everybody dance.

And they get so in the beginning it was so overwhelming like "there's an hour to the presentation, we don't have the time." But as soon as you dance for one minute, you come back to your spreadsheets, you you see the problem, you come to the solution, you feel the outcome because you relax your brain. You let go of tightening up against what doesn't work and he said "what if, what if I saw it for the first time? What if I embrace my beginner's mind?"

This is an image of me and one of our executive producers in Chicago. We were designing a space, and after the space was starting to be design, I said "let's go outside and let me lift you up to look through the window." By the way, he's not dyslexic, and he's like like "you got to be kidding me, like why are we doing this?" I was like "trust me." And I sh in and he looked through it, and and I was like "can I bring it out?" Like "no, no, no, keep me out there for a little longer," you know? Because he was able to see the same space from an angle that you would never seen it otherwise.

And after he came down, we went back to the space and everything we thought we knew it was new again, and we changed our perspective to make it more even more encompassing for learning differences, you know?

Did you ever try to look at 2D object with 3D glasses, you know, or look at the world from a different angles, you know? Get on the same levels as your children and look at what they're saying, you know? It changes your perceptions.

Sometimes I take a hike in the park and I try to sit on the bench. If I look at a bird, I try to almost meditate to be the bird, you know? I want to see how that bird feels, embodied in that bird's reality again, just to play, to change your percept, to change your boundaries.

Embracing beginner's mind I'm looking to be pleasantly surprised. You can be pleasantly surprised if you don't take a risk, if you don't embrace something you don't know. So being pleasantly surprised for me is trying to look at ordinary things in extraordinary ways.

I remember walking in a park with my son G, there was a little flower and a little gray butterfly on it, and he leaned down in his little body and he held the flower so gently and look at the Spotify — and my first reaction is like "that's an ugly butterfly." But then when I look at it and I move to his level and I look through his eyes, he was so astonished, he was so blown away with the reality that through his eyes I was able to see again that flower in the B for the first time again. I was able to be pleasantly surprised with an ordinary life around me, and I've learned through him: if I do it every day and I collect it, you see more of it, you find more of these moments that otherwise you just passed through it.

Therese Fitzgerald is for over a decade she was the vice president of a brand creative for the Sesame Workshop. She was the one responsible creating all the Sesame Workshop worldwide lessons, characters, everything that we grew up our children are growing up she was at the helm for over a decade as a creator. I was like "what an amazing job to look at language, to look at object, to look at letters as a dyslexic and teach our children how to look at that around them, how to regulate their emotions, how to understand how they feel and give them words around it."

And I ask her "you've done it for over a decade, does it ever get old?" And she looked at me with a smile, she says "every time I do another lesson, I look at it through the six years old mind it's always new, it's always inspiring," you know? And I love the way she talks about her curiosity and how this the dyslexia mind is a curious mind, and she feeds it everywhere she goes. She just feeds her dyslexia.

So dyslexic dear dyslexia, the postcard project this is a global art project that I have at exhibition there as well, and I invite you and your children to participate and check it out online as well, you know?

How did I know that it was time to rebrand dyslexia? I asked I asked over 2,000 children of all ages, as little as six or three or four, all the way as 86 and I asked them "what does dyslexia mean to you," you know? And you would expect "learning disability, hard, challenging, depressing, sad," but that was the smallest part of the community because when we talked about our identity, "what else gives you joy? What do you love to do?" That's also your dyslexia because my brain is a dyslexic brain, so the fact that I can look through objects and I can fly and leap through characters — that's also my dyslexia.

So as I start to get these sports cards back, I was just blown away with the individual identity story stories but the collective, you know, how people start to sort of see the world around them and embrace and reframe their whole self.

So I think maybe it's time for us to sort of reframe a little bit, you know? What I would love for you to do is I would love for you to turn turn to a stranger, introduce yourself with your first name, but this time I want you to tell him something you're really good at. But wait, wait I'm not talking about your degrees, your accolades, your books, your successes. I'm talking about what gives you joy.

I'll start: my name is Gil, I'm dyslexic, and I'm really good at doing the dishes. I love it because it's not a chore it's a ritual, it's a habit. I love putting my hands into warm water, I love using a lot of soap, I love taking the time with every dish just to get it beautifully back to its, you know, its cleanliness. But the most important thing that I love about it more is when that dish is clean and I dry it and I look at it, I see my best self in the reflection, and that feeds my dyslexia, regulates myself, makes me present, make me see for the first time again and allow me to celebrate my gift and my diversity.

So turn to a stranger, introduce yourself and tell him one thing you're really good at that has nothing to do with your career. Go ahead.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So I just want to leave you this, you know: look at your strengths, look at your differences, celebrate your whole person, and whatever you do, dyslexify your life, you know? We have a few more minutes — I want to open up for some questions or comments or thoughts from everybody else, but thank you so much for being here everybody, really appreciate it.

Question:

"I want ask you — you mention and thank you for this inspiring talk about how this lecture can be used as an advantage, but I still wonder is there any value of helping people dyslexia meaning trying to fix it, trying to tell them, teach them how to read and so on?"

Gil Gershoni:

Of course, so that's a great question. First of all, I wouldn't use the word "fix" because I'm not broken, so I think that that's just a language, but, you know, what we are, what we say and what we put out, it's what we attract, right? So so there's nothing to be fixed by me, but with that said, reading is very important because that's how you create, get knowledge, right?

So yeah, I struggle to read and I read very well right now, but these days, like when I was a boy, you know, there was no mediums, there's no technology, there's no text audio or vice versa. So it's really more important to teach our children to be curious and to be curious to learn in their own way. Of course we have to struggle with reading and writing — it's an important thing to do, so don't get me wrong — but I'm much more interested to teach my son how to be curious and to be interested in learning and finding the way that he or she learns the best because then I'm giving him a gift for life, you know?

What tends to happen often when we try to fix our children is we remind them that they're broken, and here's the thing: is when we erode their spirits and confidence, it can take a lifetime to get it back. I much rather that my son doesn't read or spell the best he can, but his spirits and his confidence is high because he can do anything else. But that's a great question for sure, absolutely. Any other questions, comments, thoughts?

"Yes," "yes, you know, I love that you said that because and I think Sam in beginning — I know who was here for his talk was talking about all the various type of different types of smarts, right? Different types of way to see intelligence and see how we look at the world. It's very challenging when you go to the traditional school school system and we only look at one way of measuring intelligence.

Dyslexic — because reading and writing is difficult for me — I develop a photographic memory, I develop an emotional body that all I do can do is see you and I can sense and feel empathy for you or for what you're trying to say — like street smart, like seeing the world around you. So developing that in our children as part of their whole persons is a gift for life again, you know?

And I love that because I think that I remember when my son was young, we were living in a city, you know? I had to teach him how to know when people are predictable or not predictable, you know? And those are the words we use: "is this situation predictable? And if it is, you can move toward, and if it's not predictable, then move away from it." And it's a life lesson it doesn't have to be, it's just how you feel, how you see the world around you. But street smart just allows them to be present, aware and be able to make their own choices for sure.

Question:

"Yeah. I came late, so apologies if you hit this at the beginning, but I'm guessing a lot of the other people here like me are the parents of someone who has something, yeah, right? There's a lot of different things alphabet in our kids, so a lot of what you're saying is advice to the people, but what about the parents of the people, yeah? If you have advice for us?"

Gil Gershoni:

Yeah, so you know, when I so so when I look at my son, I'll talk to my personal experience, you know? My responsibility is to see his best self before he can see it, you know? It's part of guiding, right? They're gonna — they're going to grow on their own, we're just guiding them, right? We're helping them, you know, find the right way to make decisions, you know?

So for me is when I look at those differences is I always try to find the strength in it, you know, so they can see through my eyes that I I believe in them, that I love them unconditionally, that I support them no matter what they do, you know?

So for me as a parent is to be able to sort of be part of it — let them lead, ask them what feels good, you know? Let them find the things that so to give them joy and feed it, you know?

I was giving a talk in Florida just a few months ago, and a mother came to me and she was very moved. She wanted to give me a hug "oh my God, that was so meaningful to me and all this. My daughter's upstairs, she wouldn't come down, she's a teenager, she hate this, but she's dyslexic and I don't know what she loves to do."

And I said "well, what does she do when you're not looking?"

And she says "well she's always in the backyard with the dogs." She like "go and how did the dog feel?" "Oh the dogs I mean she can go to the park and 15 dogs come to her. I mean she just has this thing with the dog."

So I like "what are you missing? What are you missing about what she loves to do?" And she she looked at me like she it was almost like a paradigm shift because she's like "I kind of knew it, but I thought that what she'd like to do had to amount up to a career." But if she loves dog and she can relate to animal, are we questioning what career she's going to go to, you know? Maybe a veterinarian, may — so what should she do next? Volunteer, get another dog, go work for the ASPCA, you know? Found a mentor that's like works in the sciences with animals. Feed their dyslexia, feed their differences, find a way for make them more than make them less, you know?

And it's a practice, you know? For me, I sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong, and I tell my son "you are a teenager for the first time, I'm a dad for the first time, so you going to succeed, I'm going to fail, but we're going to do it together." And I'm allowing him to tell me that "that was really didn't work out, you were not — you were wrong," and I need to own it because I want to show him what it is to fail, you if I can fail in front of my son with confidence, then he's more confident failing too because he knows that it's not the end of the world we'll do something different, we'll try differently, right?

So by by action, by behavior, by letting them lead you, creating an agency and supporting their spirit, you know? I'm sure we can talk about how to parent forever, but I don't know if I answered your question, but that's some of the things that comes to mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, any other thoughts, questions?

Question:

"I have a question about this — a one about self — dyslexia. My daughter was diagnosed with that and I wasn't sure that she aided reader unless you ask to out loud, I just didn't know it. I don't — I mean —"

Gil Gershoni:

Like I said earlier in the talk is the dyslexia has a spectrum like everything else, and it's really important to know that our children as unique as they are, and my dyslexia is different than your daughters and probably everybody else in the room, you know?

What I do know from my own dyslexia is that my brain works differently, and interviewing, you know, hundreds of folks on my podcast over the years from different industry, different cultures and backgrounds, you know, there is some commonalities, but again, what the what the surgeon can do I can't do, or, you know, I'm never going to be able to act or be a singer like some other dyslexics. But a lot of the similarity — the way my brain works and how I jump around different things — tend to be some of the commonalities, you know?

"Yeah, any other thoughts, questions, concern? We figured it out, we're all good?"

All right, well thank you everybody.