Your WILL is the Key to Reinvention

[Music]

what

do you want no

that’s the wrong question what

do you will the key to reinvention

is daily reinvention let me explain

well many of my friends were taking a

lot of selfies and dreaming about their

latest crush

my dreams were a little different when i

was 16

i wanted to devote my life to god

so naturally i joined the convent

and became a nun however it turns out

hoisted life isn’t all they make it out

to be in hollywood

i literally thought i’d be running

through the hills singing

my his are alive

with a sound of music

but it wasn’t like that at all it

definitely

wasn’t the sound of music and i felt

nothing like mariabon trap

far from spontaneously bursting out into

joyful song

i cried myself to sleep every night

mother superiors angry admonitions

ringing in my ears

i ended up leaving the convent and

returning home after only a couple of

months

i thought my life was over now what

this experience taught me a powerful

life lesson though

see becoming a nun was my answer to what

appeared to be the right question to ask

what do i want what do i want

seems like a really powerful question

business owners executives and college

grads have been asking themselves this

question on repeat all throughout time

however this question has no motion

without an action plan

what do i want is nothing more than a

wish

just think about how powerful this idea

is you aren’t defined

by your past at any moment you can be

something or someone else

reinvention can become a daily practice

that means if you want to change

something about yourself

you can do so right now if you want to

make better choices about your finances

start investing twenty dollars of your

next paycheck

when people finish a story by saying and

the rest is history

no it isn’t history is written

day by day through the individual

choices we make and continue

making events will happen outside of our

control that’s just life

but by embracing reinvention we don’t

have to play into the narrative that

someone else has written for us

by conscious deliberate choices followed

by massive action

we can command full charge of our lives

when i left the convent i discovered

that living out my dreams

is not about what i want it’s about what

i will

myself to do as much as i wanted to be a

devoted nun

i couldn’t will myself to stay at the

convent any longer

i had to reinvent myself my plan b

was to become a professional opera

singer

only trouble was i didn’t have any money

to afford a top music conservatory

what i did have though was the will to

figure out my next move

so what did i do i entered a local

beauty pageant

i know to win scholarship money so i

could go to college to pursue my new

dream

of singing opera all around the world

there i was

a former nun fresh out of the convent

strutting around on stage in a bikini

talk about a 180 but i did it

and do you know what i didn’t have an

identity crisis in fact

i didn’t think much at all about how

different the two paths were

i didn’t think about whether i was being

true to myself

and okay at 16 i didn’t even know who

myself was

all i knew for sure was that i had a new

dream

and i had to become someone different in

order to get it

so i did i changed i reinvented myself

as john milton wrote the mind is its own

place

and in itself can make a heaven of hell

or a hell of heaven

i chose the former and it worked

i won the scholarship i graduated with

honors

from my dream college the university of

southern california

and i spent years singing in castles and

cathedrals all around the world

i even had a number one hit single on

the classical charts in europe

by embracing reinvention i had built my

dream life

albeit slightly different than how i

first imagined it

but like all dreams it suddenly and

painfully

came to an end when the government

refused to renew my visa

my fairy tale life collapsed overnight i

went from having it all

to returning to america with nothing but

a suitcase and 500

left in my bank account i was forced to

reinvent myself once again

and what would have happened if i would

have accepted my fate in that moment

and pined about how unjust the world is

to poor starving artists like myself

well thankfully we will never know but i

can tell you

what would have not happened

i would not be standing here today

on the tedx stage sharing my story with

you

and do i appear to you to be having an

identity crisis now

and yet we’ve been told don’t reinvent

the will

in other words you can’t have a life

where you travel the world live your

dreams and work for yourself

don’t question what has worked for us

aha

and suddenly they are revealing

themselves and their true insecurities

but let me ask you were there any wheels

on that first rocket that landed on the

moon

no and are there any wheels on

submarines which plunge

thousands of feet below the surface of

the ocean and open our minds to whole

worlds that would otherwise remain

completely unknown

see those who are telling you not to

reinvent yourself may be well-meaning

but as long as they can keep you asking

what do i want

instead of what do i will they can keep

you playing small

when they offer platitudes like don’t

reinvent the will

they make reinvention seem out of reach

but it doesn’t have to be all you have

to do

is re-size reinvention it’s all a matter

of perspective

we don’t have an identity crisis every

morning when we wake up

even though every day is a new day

that’s because we aren’t seeing it as

reinvention

but we ought to how many of you look at

your phone first thing in the morning

when you wake up and start your day

without giving it another thought

you’re letting outside events influence

your behavior

in essence you’re giving someone else

the power to decide

what they want you to see which products

they want you to

buy and they get you to react to

external situations

they choose to present to you thus

creating your identity for you

but you can push back you can own

your own perspective and resize the

reinvention

own that you get to decide how you want

to live your life

what you choose to care about and what

kind of person you will be

and if all of this seems overwhelming

don’t worry

that’s why the second part of this is to

resize reinvention

take it one day at a time make

one conscious decision followed by

another and then another

perhaps start with setting up screen

time on your phone so you don’t see any

notifications until 10 am

if you don’t start small you won’t start

at all

resize the overwhelm into manageable

steps you can do this

i don’t have an identity crisis every

time i reinvent myself because i’ve been

doing it since i was 16.

so when my opera dream ended and i had

to come back to las vegas

i didn’t think my life was over this

wasn’t my first rodeo

i had traded my nuns habit for a pageant

crown

i traded my scholarship for a number one

hit single

and i knew i could trade my professional

opera career

for whatever came next what turned out

to be next for me

was starting my own company victorious

pr

now i didn’t know anything about the

marketing industry but that didn’t

matter

i knew how to reinvent myself i knew i

had to will myself to do whatever it

takes to succeed

and it worked i built my business to six

figures in the first nine months

now because of the state of the world a

lot of us are feeling forced to reinvent

ourselves right now in fact many are

beginning to refer to this era as the

great reset

there seems to be a collective

recognition that old platitudes like

play it safe and color in the lines

won’t serve us moving forward this

collective awakening

is a sign of progress although change is

eminent

we have full control of our response to

it

we can reshape our perspective to the

events that happen in our lives

now let me clarify reinvention isn’t a

big hollywood epiphany moment

no it’s a daily choice

you really can reinvent yourself every

day

so if you’re ready to join me in

resizing reinvention

start with these steps step one

recognize that each day you make the

decision to keep being the person you

think you are

you choose to keep putting on the habits

and personalities that you think make

you

you but you can decide something

different

your identity isn’t fixed you can wake

up tomorrow

and make a different choice step two

realize that change is gonna happen

whether you wanted to or not

but that’s not a bad thing you can

accept that change is here

and then decide what that means to you

all you have to do is own your own

perspective to the events that life

throws at you

and step three embrace change

make the decision to lead the change

instead of feeling forced to change

as shakespeare said there is nothing

good or bad

but thinking makes it so so choose to

think

that any change you encounter is just

life

giving you the opportunity to reinvent

yourself into something greater than you

currently

are own your own perspective of the

situations that life throws at you

my life now as a ceo of my own business

isn’t that far from my life as a nun i

still expect to spontaneously burst into

joyful song

it’s just that now i see that as one of

the many options that i have

i’m reinventing myself daily who knows

which adventure i’ll will myself on next

what about you what will

you do

[Applause]

you