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