Dont Worry About Finding Yourself Youre Already Found

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

we are

all born whole

we’re born confident in who we are and

we’re born knowing

we belong here from the first

breath we take our parents celebrate us

they celebrate our first step our first

word

our first face plant into the mud

they tell us that we’re special because

we’re different and we’re individual

and we’re nuanced when we’re little

the thing that makes us the most

important thing in the world

is that there’s only one of us a single

one of us we learn about the world

and we carry the weight of the world as

we move through it but when we’re small

the only weight we carry is hunger every

once in a while or maybe a dirty diaper

in fact if anybody was going to go for a

nudie run on a beach

in the middle of summer it’s a toddler

right or

maybe my ex-husband

rugby boys right

reason that we can walk through the

world knowing ourselves as small people

is because we are born whole

and imperfect when i was four years old

my mom and dad signed me up to play

softball in our local softball league

with five-year-olds

not only because i was taller but i

should tell you all that my dad played

professional baseball for the los

angeles dodgers

so before i could even put one foot in

front of the other i could throw a ball

catch a pop fly

and swing a bat like nobody’s business

throughout the first season i can

remember how scared i was before it

started

and that fear dissipated because i

wasn’t afraid of learning the rules of

the game of softball

i didn’t know the rules of the game of

life yet and how to interact with people

what i found was pretty darn cool i was

amazed

i was just stuck in curiosity and

wonderment

in watching my friends play some of my

friends were so fast it was ridiculous

me i would stand up to the plate and

every single time regardless of whether

i made contact or not

there were a lot of whiffs i would just

swing for the back i would swing for the

fences

and after an entire season i won an

award i won the entire

league’s award as the youngest person as

the little slugger

long live the little slugger hi socks

short shorts

really bad california tan really bad

california dan

bruce shins skinned knees and i could

outpace most of the boys

man i was comfortable in my own skin

the world was my oyster it was fantastic

through school primary middle school

high school

i started to dig into what it was that i

was

so fascinated with in this world about

others and it always came back to that

sense it was our confidence it was our

inbuilt light me personally

beyond sports i learned to love music

and in fact i fell in love with elton

john

it’s crazy it’s crazy but it’s true

and i learned to play a lot of different

instruments because of it i learned to

write lyrics

and i learned to dive deep into who i

was

when i left high school i left the home

i’d spent every single night of my

childhood and

my parents threw all of my stuff in a

car they drove me four hours north to

santa barbara

they dropped me in a dorm room that was

empty

and bare and they said have attic kid

the world’s your oyster for four years

i learned from nobel laureates and

tenured professors

and i doubt i go very deep into the

things

that really really captured my attention

and so did the people around me

even at 18 19 20 years old

we were curiously confident we walked

through the world as if we knew

who we were fast forward to graduation

my mom’s family from missouri flew out

to california to celebrate

and my dad’s family from l.a drove up

the two hours to santa barbara and i

remember

two parts of graduation day

first of all one thing you should know

about me i remember my entire life

through the food i ate

so the first thing i remember is we were

at a sushi restaurant

called something’s fishy

none of us had the sashimi

[Music]

the second thing i remember is that

instead of people

coming up to me and saying

congratulations kid the world’s your

oyster

it was a different conversation this

time it was as if the world had stopped

and pivoted and the door had opened

instead of congratulations the world

your oyster kid it was hey

welcome to adulthood i didn’t know what

that meant

when i was told when we’re all told when

we’re young that the world is our oyster

we go out we think if we work hard

enough and we do the mahi

we’ll be able to reap the rewards but

what i found out

very very quickly was that to be

successful in the adult world

meant we had to be somebody that wasn’t

the person we were

we had to live up to ideals and

expectations

of other people’s building we had to

play by rules that we didn’t write

we all play by rules we didn’t write

i was told that if i was going to be

successful i needed to eye up

a few milestones i needed to put a foot

on the rung of the proverbial ladder and

i needed to climb

no faster than anyone else no skipping a

rung

this is how we did it this is how our

grandparents did it

this is how their parents did it before

then it’s just how things are done

that is not what i wanted to do my plan

with life

was to get a really good job to have a

career

i wanted to play tambourine for elton

john

i mean rocking with the rocket man

shaking what my mama gave me

and shaking the tambourine it’s a thing

but instead i got married very young 23

i got married at 24 i had a baby and at

25 i moved to new

zealand we had rent to pay and we had a

mouth to feed

so i played the game i played that game

i straightened my curly hair

i left my doc martens at home

i put on heels

instead of going out into the world

without makeup i started to put on

a little bit of war paint and when i was

told to be quiet

i waited until i was spoken to and i was

told there was a boys night out

i quietly went back as the girl to the

office

and i played the game for 10 years and i

climbed that ladder the way i was

supposed to i

ticked all the bloody boxes

but i wasn’t happy i wasn’t happy at all

after building my career for 10 years

and kind of cultivating a pretty cool

little personal brand

while this thing called social media

grew and was born and bubbled away

i landed my dream job my dream job if

there was a pinnacle

i’d reached it at least in my own head

what i’d become in my own head was an

inextricable version of my title

i couldn’t separate who i was from words

on a piece of paper that someone else

had written

i see that now but i didn’t then when i

walked into said dream job it only took

a week for me to be hauled into

somebody’s office

a senior leader who sat across from the

table from me and said so

this personal brand this public speaking

this

twittering it’s a risk

you are a risk holy

everything i’d done ever in my life was

built on a foundation of kindness

and of giving and i’m at my my this is

the echelon for me

and i’m a risk so i said okay what do i

need to do

and they said stop stop tweeting

stop writing stop having any kind of

creative outlet in public

stop talking to people who could be in

the media stop

so i stopped i stopped all of it and in

the intervening

year and a half or so i stopped being

myself

my first marriage fell apart it crumbled

14 years down the drain i can’t just

blame the job but it was hard and it was

stressful

i got sick my kid got sick we were

stressed

and in the end there’s a few corporate

folks in here i’m sure

we had one of those lovely lovely things

where we restructured

at the time i was restructured out and

my soul was crushed

i spent two days i am a tea total i

spent two days

drinking one percent beer in fear and

solid fearing feeling sorry for myself

i don’t think i was drunk but i was

really sorry at the bottom

my now wife picked me up and she said

i think we need to go see somebody if it

wasn’t for her

the game that i’d played the game that

i’d been a willing participant in

would have won but instead i went and

spent almost

all of my next paycheck for the next

year

on therapy long-lived millennial

breakdowns

and i worked through who i was

and who i wanted to be

when i started to find purpose for

myself and i started to find beauty in

the world again

i started to see purpose and i started

to see beauty

i started to realize that there were big

gigantor

global companies out there that were

doing the right thing they weren’t

putting people in boxes

they weren’t counting head counts they

were counting heart

counts i looked at businesses like nike

and patagonia

and the way that their people from all

different places

could share and talk and create

and curate information any way they

wanted to

i felt like i know the beating i felt

like i knew the beating heart

of these businesses more than i knew the

beating heart of small businesses

right here in new zealand

as i moved on and started to find other

people

that really really inspired me i met a

woman called mary rodriguez

i don’t know if you guys know mario

rodriguez she speaks all over the world

she’s a human ray of sunshine she’s a

storyteller

she is a digital evangelist she’s a mama

she’s a feminist she is everything that

most of us

would love to be and love to be friends

with

mary also happens to work for microsoft

microsoft i mean i left california 17

years ago but when i think microsoft

today

i think of a big you know boating

business for boating business i don’t

think of humans and that was until i met

mary because through getting to know her

and through

her stories i’ve seen firsthand how

microsoft

invests in her she’s written a book

she’s gone back to school

and at every part of her journey

microsoft was there

the people of the business were there

saying hey

the better a person miri is the more

comfortable she is in her skin and let

me tell you

this woman will dance on tables she

doesn’t even need tequila

the better she is and the more

comfortable she is and the more

the more at home she is being vulnerable

the better microsoft is

so i have a much different view of that

business

another business in portland

called wild fang so the fang of a wolf

and the wildness of our souls kind of

put together

is co-founded and ceoed led by a woman

called emma mcelroy

if you don’t know who she is after

tonight look her up she is a badass

in a word a badass she and a friend were

out shopping one day and realized that

there weren’t

any clothes for women and non-binary

people

who wanted to dress in a more kind of

masculine

formal buttoned up way so she created

wild fang

but at the heart of her brand wasn’t

just the insight that women wanted to

walk through the world

comfortably but that activism mattered

more now than ever

so whether somebody in her business is a

cashier

or they sit next to her in a boardroom

table she extrapolates out

kindness and activism at scale

she allows people to shout and holler

when they need to or

whisper and cry and i just think that’s

the most beautiful

way of doing business we must change the

way we do business

the world has never been more connected

we can’t log

off yet we’re so disconnected from who

we are

who’s booked a trip to bali to go find

their inner

chakras i have not but i’d

love to there’s nothing more satisfying

than not having wi-fi but then

oh my god there’s no wi-fi

the fear of 10 minutes away from your

phone and 80 new emails

is real we are stressed we’re

dying from the stress we’re medicated

because we’re depressed

it’s hard to be alive and to be positive

right now in the working culture we have

which is why i wanted to talk about

work-life balance

i’m not gonna sit here and tell you what

it means because i think we all know

we’ve read the six million google hits

and we understand

it’s something that we’re told we need

to aspire to

i think work life balance in and of

itself is at

best an illusion and at worst it’s it’s

a

bad fallacy i call on work-life

balance

i believe in something and i hope you do

too that’s more like life life balance

we could probably just call it life or

balance but

let’s call it life life balance

i don’t know about you but i’ve got 24

hours in the day

and that’s it i don’t start and end at

the threshold

of my office building i don’t drop my

kid off

at school singing at the top of our

lungs

to park in a parking lot and walk

through doors

and become staid and quiet and shrinking

and small i’m really lucky that i work

in a business right now where i can walk

in

rocking double denim a backwards ball

cap big superman socks

and have rainbows blaring and people

still let me sit at the table

they make space and they say cass tell

me

more it’s on all of us these days

not just to find who we want to be but

to go back

to who we were in the beginning when an

old

annuity run on the beach wasn’t anything

we worried about we just wanted the sun

on our skin and to fill the salt water

on our toes

it’s time for all of us to take

to take note and to take stock and to

really understand who

who it is that you are and who you’ve

always been

i know with me right here the little

slugger

man i put her aside for 20 years i can

remember my mom and i we got pretty

drunk in california the last time we

were together

it’s a story for another ted talk

but mom after her seventh tequila said

to me

cass i lost you for 18 years

i lost you but you’re back

and i hope and pray for all of us in

this room that there’ll be a time

where if you feel like you’ve lost

yourself if you feel you can’t be who

you are

you come back i hope you find your

little slugger

i hope she swings for the goddamn fences

and i know you’ll connect

thank you

[Applause]

you