Tucking your weirdness back in

you don’t have to be validated

to be the most perfect version of

yourself so

i see weirdness as an asset and it

really only becomes

a problem for me whenever i try to hide

it

i’m normally asked to come along and

talk about things from a business an

inspirational angle about

creating a product and selling millions

of them around the world

but very rarely does anybody actually

ask about the characteristics behind

that person that make that possible

and in fact sometimes impossible i do

have

quite a lot of weird tendencies and

really this is one of the tip of the

iceberg but

so when i’m in work if somebody hangs

their coat on the back of the chair

that for me is a real problem because it

creates anxiety for me for the whole day

nobody can drink out of my glass and

when i say nobody can drink out of my

glass my initials are text on the bottom

of the glass

and for complete transparency it is the

skankiest glass in the office there’s

nothing

fantastic about my glass when i go to

the hairdressers and they wash my hair

i’m absolutely fine

with the washing part then they do the

conditioner and they start the scalp

massage

but the noise of my hair against my

scalp is like nails going down a

blackboard for me

and it’s a total sensory overload

but what is great is weirdness attracts

weirdness and i had a guy in for an

interview

and it was for a finance role and

finance rules are always really boring i

hate doing finance interviews but

there were three of us on the panel and

we got past all the boring essential

criteria and got to my favorite part

and my favorite part was so what does

steven like to do

and stephen said oh i have sausage dogs

and the minute they’d said it that was

the end of me

and i started to laugh but it wasn’t

normal laughter it was laughter where

when you’re in mass and you’re laughing

and you know that your mom is going to

hit you clip along the ear

and you’re trying so hard not to and

stephen carried on talking

so animated and so excited about the

sausage dogs and the more he got the

worse i got and the other two in the

panel

are giving me the evil eye trying to

shut me up but when stephen left the

interview

and i had spontaneously combusted from

laughing of course

i said i want him on the team i want

them on the team he has got to be on our

team

and the other two were like well we need

to look at the skills here

uh other people might have more skills

and i said

they might have more skills but he has

all the essential criteria

and they said yeah but somebody else

might have more skills and i said we can

teach him other skills we can’t teach

him to be a weirdo

he’s a weirdo like us like he’s weird

like me i want him on the team and i got

him on the team just by the way

but weird doesn’t mean the same thing to

everybody so weird for me

is not a feeling or a sensation

as a matter of fact i don’t even know

that i’m being weird a lot of the time

until other people to see how they are

reacting around me and there would have

been a time in my life

where that would have really troubled me

and i would have thought oh your

weirdness is hanging out you need to

tuck that back in again but

i actually made a conscious effort

not to do that anymore and i decided one

day

i’m just going to be a weirdo because i

am a weirdo there’s no point in trying

not to be

and i felt so empowered for having made

that decision

and it lifted such a huge weight off of

my shoulders

what a lot of people really don’t know

about that on any given day

i have maybe 12 tv screens playing in my

head

and on every screen will be a different

channel and they’re all the same volume

so in order for me to talk to you i have

to have like a notepad and a pen

and i will typically be writing down

something so that i can focus on you

writing down something is very often

about you

and i’m so glad nobody ever asks to see

the things that i’m writing down because

it might be

something like nice nasal hair and i’m

writing down

nice nasal hair because if i don’t write

it down my filter will make me say

something else and it’s going to

manifest to something else

and it’s more likely to be something

like i may ask the question

of do you use a device to tame that or

is that a scissors job

or how do you keep that under control

and as you can imagine that becomes

pretty problematic not only from a

personal

standpoint but also from a professional

standpoint so i went to the doctor and i

explained it all to him and i said so

what is it

and he said oh you’re definitely on a

spectrum their death and your adhd or

asperger’s or something

and i said what are we going to do about

it they said i’ll refer you to the

mental health team

so i didn’t hear anything for the best

part of two years until

i’m standing on tesco’s one day in the

coffee aisle

and there’s a man beside me huge big

furry moustache

i could actually smell the coffee

telling you this and my phone rings

and i answer the phone uh hello this is

the mental health team and grant you

here we’re calling you about your

appointment

but i didn’t hear this on my phone like

a normal person would

i’m hearing it on the tannoy in tesco

and i’m looking really

like apologetically at the man with a

mustache beside me and apologizing to

him

for him hearing my phone call and i have

from my waist to the top of my head i am

putrid red and my response was

uh no thank you very much that won’t be

necessary and i hung up

but the truth of the matter is i

actually didn’t need a diagnosis

what i needed was a coping strategy and

i had already started at that stage

taking

a homeopathic oil remedy that was

working really very very well for me

i’ve got a problem conforming as you can

imagine

and that’s because i’m a creative person

and when you’re creative you don’t think

in straight lines and

boy i am so glad that we’re living in

this world of neurodiversity

and i’ve just discovered and i really

actually only discovered this fairly

recently that

and maybe you know this already a lot of

people have a dial

for their attention span they actually

have a dial

to dial it up and dial it down but i

actually only have two switches

and the first switch is there’s 12 tv

screens and the best of luck to you and

getting my attention

and the second switch is i can hear you

i can hear every breath you take i can

hear your heart beat

but i won’t hear if a bomb goes off

beside me and i won’t hear that because

i have a filtering issue and the

filtering issue is

both filtering in of information and the

filtering out of information so

let’s imagine you sent me an email and

the email is in paragraph form and this

is one of the reasons why i don’t do a

lot of reading

no reading actually audio books instead

when i receive an email in paragraph

form i can’t process the information

because i can’t filter out the fluff

how did i get to where i am and i can’t

even filter out the fluff so i actually

have

to process that information by bullet

pointing everything

and i also in order to retain focus

i’ll have to have something on my hand

as you can see all the time and i don’t

even need to refer to notes but i need

to have something in my hand should it

be a stone or a little bottle or

something in my hand and there’s only

one thing really that exacerbates that

totally out of my control and that one

thing is tiredness

and i’m not talking about tiredness as

in or a bad night’s sleep last night

i am talking about the tiredness that

you get from eight years of persistent

jet lag

trans-atlantic jet lag where i would

have been in america at least

maybe every week between china america

europe i was jet lagged constantly there

was no break from it on a fly and

it makes me totally really badly

intolerant i flew in from

san francisco to belfast an economy

class of course because i’m paying for

it myself

and land under belfast after this

long-haul flight exhausted

highly intolerant as you can imagine and

i’m being driven to a meeting

and i’m getting changed in the car on

the way to the meeting

and i just smell like airplane seat you

know that horrible smell and i’m

feeling sticky and hor it was just

horrible i arrived at the meeting anyhow

sitting in the meeting and as you know

when i

have no filtering capacity at all at

this point

and the lady and man are talking and i

just said

look i’m really sorry i can’t hear what

you’re saying like i can’t even

concentrate because your chair is

squeaking because all i could hear was

and the lady said oh i’m so sorry i am

so sorry

that’s actually not my chair that’s my

wooden leg

and if i wasn’t socially awkward by that

point i would have been socially awkward

afterwards no doubt but the truth is i’m

always socially awkward and

well i can stand in front of a thousand

people and talk i actually

could not sit in a room of a thousand

people and make small talk

that is a skill and it’s a skill that i

just don’t possess unfortunately

but a skill that i do possess and i get

this through weirdness is bravery

and bravery and that i’m not afraid and

i’m not afraid to be laughed that i mean

nobody invents an inflatable seat and

thinks they’re not going to be laughed

at right

but that bravery also gives me

it encourages me to really challenge

myself

and so i went for an interview for

a board position with a public body

now i know nothing about the public

sector as you can imagine

and my very dear friend sinead coached

me for this interview because she knows

everything about

public sector now she can coach me for

an interview but she can’t

coach the granite out of me so i arrived

to the interview

i arrived at the interview and there

were four men and a lady on the panel

and the lady said how are you

and i said i am so excited to be here

like i’ve never actually done

a real proper job interview before like

not what the

panel know like it’s on tv and radio and

stuff but i’ve never done

and i could tell by their reaction that

clearly nobody had arrived that day with

the same energy for the interview

and shinee had taught me of course that

i was being scored on the criteria so

don’t like don’t put me in a competition

scenario here because i have to one

and the the man asked me the question i

answered the question and then i

followed it up with did i give you

everything you needed for that have i

given you everything you needed for that

question because i know that i’m getting

scored on it right

and he said yeah that was fine

and i said fine and he said

yeah fine and i said no i didn’t get out

of my bed this morning to be fine i got

out of my bed this morning to be

excellent

so can you tell me where the gaps are so

that i can help you fill those gaps so

that i can get top marks on this

question

so don’t anybody please take any

interview techniques from me it’s

clearly not my forte

although although shakespeare would say

no one or sorry nothing is either right

or wrong

but thinking makes it so right

shakespeare kelly here would say no one

is

either normal or weird but thinking

makes it so

i think we are in the middle of

we’re in the middle of the emperor’s new

clothes syndrome in this world where

everybody believes they have to be

validated by society fit in well i’m

going to let you into a secret today

and i want you to take note this is this

is a revelation

take time nobody else has a clue what

they’re doing either

everybody’s winging it and if anybody

tells you any differently they are lying

okay what if

what if you didn’t have to be normal if

i didn’t

and what if you didn’t have to be

perfectly fine

what if you didn’t have to fit in what

if you didn’t have to fit in

i would encourage you today to show up

as the most perfect weirdest version of

yourself

embrace your weirdness folks because

weirdness

is an asset