The Secret To Starting Over

[Music]

[Applause]

i was the first in my family

to graduate from college and i did what

any college graduate would do

i ran off and joined the circus

i was the kid who liked to climb to the

top of a tree and put on a grocery bag

over my shoulder and jump out i wanted

to fly

so becoming an acrobat at sea world

was a dream come true cirque

de lemare circus of the sea

i was an acrobat that would climb these

poles chinese poles and i would get

launched off a giant swing set 30 feet

in the air before i landed in the water

it was amazing

adrenaline rush every day i lived in san

diego the

sun beach beautiful and i was living my

dream

i was getting paid to fly

so everything was going wonderfully

until one morning i got out of bed and

fell

i felt like my legs were like how your

foot falls asleep that tingly feeling

and soon it became excruciating and i

wasn’t able to move

so i was taken to the hospital and after

three days in the icu

a doctor came in and said um danny

you’re not going to perform again we’re

not sure you’re gonna walk again

and you’re lucky to be alive

i found out that i had three

gram-negative bacterial infection

in my bloodstream and it lodged into my

sacroiliac joint

and made me paralyzed and these were all

bacteria

you would typically find in sewage

that came from the water at my shell

so i had really wished honestly

that if i couldn’t perform anymore that

the bacteria had just killed me

i was able to slightly move my right leg

before i left the hospital

also i could use a walker and

i can kind of scoot along and honestly i

spent most of the time lying on my

parents couch taking

tons of pain pills i was in pain but

mostly

just to sleep the day away i felt like

everything was taken from me

my apartment at san diego was gone my

job was gone

my degree was in physical education like

what was the point i wish this stupid

bacteria had just

killed me i felt so useless

but a year prior a dear friend of mine

kelly

was diagnosed with terminal stage four

colon cancer

she came to see me at the show and

a month after i got out of the hospital

she came to see me at my house

i was bent over i opened the door with

my walker

and she stood there and was like danny

i can’t believe this happened to you

it’s so unfair

my friend who had a death sentence was

telling me that it was unfair that i

couldn’t walk

i felt like such a jerk

i realized that while my situation

wasn’t ideal at least i had a chance to

do something

to do something different to have a

do-over at my life

so i decided to get moving i asked my

mom to drive me to the gym every day

with my walker i’d sit on the recumbent

bikes and i would just push my legs

around and within a year

i had the strength to walk again and two

years later i ran my first

and probably last marathon

i officially made the most of my do-over

so i’d like to know how many of you have

ever had to start over

moving to a new state a job breakup

and how many maybe more than once

according to my scientific poll which i

did on instagram

65 65 of people who responded said

they’ve had to start over

three or more times and i know there’s

not a whole lot of guarantees in life

but i know that there are these three

death taxes

and starting over

life is a lot like the game of shoots

and ladders remember this game

you spin the wheel leave it all the

chance and you land on a square and if

you’re lucky you get to take a ladder up

to the top

and if you’re not so lucky you got to

take one of those slides all the way

back down

now have you ever played a game with a

kid not just this game any game

if they land like on the bad one they’re

like let me get a do-over let me get a

do-over

they don’t want to go back to the

beginning they know that starting over

feels like a punishment it sucks you

have to go back to the beginning you’re

at the start

everyone’s getting so far ahead you’ll

never catch up but if you

get a do-over then you have a chance

to maybe get something better now we all

have things that don’t go according to

plan in life a teenage pregnancy

a bacterial infection that leaves you

paralyzed a bankruptcy

moving to a new state a breakup with

your business partner

your husband having an affair moving to

a state again

going through another bankruptcy going

through a divorce

having your dogs die two of them eight

months apart

pets with their heads falling off and

everything in 2020 being cancelled and

then

your mom having a brain tumor and you

becoming her caretaker

just one of those things could be a

setback for any one of us

you put that all together you have my

life

i’ve had to start over so many times my

friends started to call me do over danny

everyone loves a good comeback story

except when you’re the one in it

but i’ve had many people tell me that

i’m one of the most resilient people

they know

and i appreciate that but i know it’s

not resilience

i just see setbacks as a secret gift

to get a do-over

and i know it might be the kind of gift

that feels like it’s in a brown paper

bag that someone left on your doorstep

that’s about to burn your house down

but it’s a different kind of gift so

i’ve come up with

a framework to help me overcome

life’s shoots and ladders because i know

that none of us are immune to what life

has to throw at us

and we need to be prepared so the first

step

in the gift of a do-over is to grieve

now i know we all know about grief when

we lose someone and there’s the five

stages of grief

but sometimes the loss of a dream can

actually cut deeper

than the loss of a person and these

things my friend christina rasmussen

calls invisible losses these are things

like dreams

miscarriages losing a business the

10-year anniversary that you never had

and it is important to move on to grieve

in order to move on the next is

insight with insight this is where you

look for clarity you’re looking for the

lessons and the pain and the lessons and

what happened so this is where you can

ask yourself questions like

who do i want to be now where do i want

to go

maybe if you lost a job or you’re

looking at like what skills i have so i

can move forward and do something

different

and then it’s forgiveness often people

think forgiveness

means you’re letting someone off the

hook or what they did was okay

forgiveness doesn’t mean like what

someone did was okay it simply means

that you’re no longer letting it control

you anymore and forgiveness also

includes yourself

to have compassion for yourself

and last is truth tony robbins says

to see reality as it is but not worse

than it is

we tend to catastrophize as humans you

like lose your job and suddenly you’re

going i’m going to be homeless

yes i’m going to have to live out of my

car my kids aren’t going to no

just you lost your job you might have to

cut back on your starbucks you can

figure it out

you have friends they can help you

well it sounds really easy now but it

wasn’t always that way

when i was 15 years old i was suicidal

and i ended up in a mental institution

and they do regular labs and my

psychiatrist called me back into his

office and he said

your pregnancy test came back positive

and i immediately blurted out well i’m

gonna have an abortion

i mean i was gonna kill myself anyway so

what did it matter

and the day before my scheduled abortion

i had a change of heart

i met a woman who shared with me her

desire to have children

and her inability due to an eating

disorder

and without even thinking i said i want

you to have my baby and she said what

and my brain went what and i said i want

you to have my baby

and for whatever reason i stuck to that

and i went forward with the pregnancy

and four months in i found out i was

having a little girl

and the woman called me crying saying

she couldn’t come up with the fifty

thousand dollars

to do a private adoption so i was left

with trying to figure out what to do but

i still had this plan to end my life

after she was born

so i found another way to do an adoption

i read through hundreds and hundreds of

profiles until i found the perfect one

for her

and then just a wednesday in the summer

she was born

i was told not to hold her not to look

at her they wanted to whisk her away but

i needed to

and i remember holding her

and thinking she was so perfect

and i thought what if she grows up and

asks what happened to her birth mother

and she finds out i killed myself and

thinks it was her fault

i could not put that on someone

so i made the decision right then that i

was going to live and not only was i

going to live but i was going to live in

a way that would make her proud if she

ever looked for me

and that was my first real

second chance my first real do-over

so for 18 years every year on her

birthday i wondered

if i made the right decision i wondered

if she’d hate me i wondered if she’d

look for me

and because of the rules of the adoption

after she was 18 she would be able to if

she wanted to

right before her 19th birthday i was

going to be in her city

and i decided to reach out or i said hey

maybe we should meet

and she said sure

so we decided to meet an ihop in the

middle of the day nothing at all like

the fantasies i had my whole life of

like the airport and the balloons

and i was so nervous i didn’t want to

get out of the car i asked my husband

do i hug her and he’s like yeah just

don’t make it a creepy hug

what is a creepy hug oh my gosh so so

i went to the ihop i sat on the corner

and i waited i was looking down at my

phone

and i heard hey there and i looked up

i had seen pictures of her but i had

never heard her voice

i stood up and i hugged her really

careful not to make it creepy

and she hugged me back it was the best

feeling in the world

and i felt so good

and she told me that she had an amazing

life that she was so grateful

and that she was with the exact parents

that she needed to be with

and i realized too in that moment that

as much as i wanted her to be proud of

me

i was proud of me so how i used

the gift framework in this situation

the first was grieve

interestingly enough

this was one where i was not allowed to

grieve i was told when i had her it was

my decision

my consequence i needed to suck it up so

anything that made it look like made me

look like i was sad

i was told to knock it off and i

realized that our bodies need that time

degree a couple of years

ago i went to the jungle to experience

ayahuasca

and if you don’t know what that is it’s

a plant medicine used in traditional

ceremonies

and they use it a lot for ptsd and

trauma

and i experienced this moment of seeing

my 16 year old self in the hospital

delivery room

and being able to hold my younger self

and let her cry

and grieve for having to give up that

baby

and grief is so important and i think

sometimes we think that we can skip that

part but it’s so important to

get through it with insight my social

worker at the time made me read the book

man search for meaning by viktor frankl

he’s a holocaust survivor

and he said everything can be taken from

a man but one thing

the last of the human freedoms to choose

one’s attitude in any given set of

circumstances

to choose one’s own way

and this was such a lesson for me

because i realized at that time

i had a choice in my attitude of what

was happening

and i had a choice to see instead of my

daughter’s life being the end of the

world

it was a new life for me as well

and then forgiveness this one was tough

i was angry at my parents angry at the

church angry at people at school

and i had to let that go but the person

that was hardest to forgive was myself

i had to have compassion for myself for

just being young and not knowing better

and doing my best and then truth

truth was teen pregnancy is not the end

of the world

sometimes we have hard choices i had

become a teen mom have an abortion

give your baby away it kind of felt like

do you want us to stab you in the foot

punch you in the stomach or kick you in

the face

but you have to make the best of the

decisions you have and you make your

choice

and hopefully you’re able to get a

do-over out of it

so sometimes we’re forced to start over

and sometimes we choose to and some

people

don’t get a do-over like my friend kelly

so i hope you remember

that should you ever get the chance to

start over

that you remember that there’s a gift

and a do-over

should you choose to take it thank you

[Music]

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