You Are Who You Need To Be
they said i should take a deep breath
so i can feel a little less anxious
um okay
okay i’m so i’m very used to speaking in
front of
a camera so this is really new for me
and this
is ugly the scariest thing i’m doing
this year
but um
[Applause]
thank you so much for being here and um
i’m your first speaker
all right okay
okay so here it goes
okay my name is val many of you would
know me better as
belliwali and the title of my sharing
today is
who you are who you need to be
so you are who you need to be basically
in this point in time
and where you are in life so the meaning
of you
if we are thinking about it that way it
means your identity
and it also means who you are so when i
talk about who i am
i think the best part for me to start is
childhood
so that’s me i still like stuffed toys a
lot
um and i was born into a very very
loving family
and i was the only child till right
about six years old
so then came along my brother so
when i was six i became a big sister so
basically i knew
who i should be and growing up in an
asian family
they tell you so many things about you
know
what it makes to be a good sister a
successful you know
daughter so i’m sure some of you can
relate
in order to be successful you should be
a doctor a lawyer take ballet excel
while in school
and just be a good example and be a good
sister
so that was exactly who i thought i
should be
so let’s move on to when i started work
so when i started work i started work as
a blogger
and an influencer and back then it was
not a proper job
so i decided okay if it’s not a proper
job
i would work full time so i’ll juggle
this at the side
so i work two full-time jobs and in
order to feel like you know i was
successful and i was the best version of
myself
i thought i should be someone that
excelled even further so i became an
entrepreneur
so working two full-time jobs i started
my own business
and i thought that i was well on my way
to becoming
the most perfect version of what
a successful human would be
and then came this
so i’ll call this part well in love
so i guess you know when you’re in love
there are couple of things that
can ruin someone’s life and one of that
happened to me
so when i was in love the person i loved
took my dignity and then desecrated it
across the whole
internet so this was what came next
so instead of you know trying so hard
and spending so much of my life trying
to fit into that mode
of who i thought i should be i was
instead told who i was
so basically who i was was a i
shouldn’t be alive
i should probably disappear from this
earth
and i guess you know they say that if
you work on social media and you have
like your career on social media
what you should be quite used to is just
being cyberbullied
and to be used to you know this love
like
hate comments i think this kind of took
it to another level
and after struggling so hard
to fit in into this perfect mode of what
i thought i should be and now i was told
who i was
and now i felt like i did not belong
anywhere
so instead what i did next
was who i needed to be for myself so who
i needed to be for myself
was to be there for me and to reach out
for help
so i reached out for help i leaned on my
friends and family
i unfollowed every single one on social
media and i stood
as far away from social media as i could
unless it’s for work
and it’s only with my friends and family
that i’m able to stand here today
and i’m able to speak to you guys years
on
and this
i would say was one of the darkest
periods of my life
um i didn’t know what to do but i knew
that i needed to survive and in order to
survive you need to feel safe and in
order to feel safe you need to reach out
for help
even if you don’t want to reach out for
help even if you really wanted to be
alone
so then a lot of messages came
in you know there were a lot of good
surrounding me across the years
there were people you know sending me
like written messages or messages online
so it’s not all that bad you know
through the darkness there’s
still a lot a lot of good
and so now i’m speaking to you three
years on
and what i want to say
is that when i look into the mirror i’m
still someone
that’s filled with a lot of joy
um a lot of potential a lot of tenacity
and there’s so much more i want to do
but a big part of me
is also shame fear and anxiety
but i think the important part is to
note
that all these friends of yours
shouldn’t coexist in harmony
and i think the truth about things is
that friends
don’t stay forever some friends stay
longer than the others
so i think that’s a heartening fact for
me to note and if there’s one thing
that i want you to take away from the
sharing is that
no one gets to define who you are except
you
and the meaning of you would constantly
change
but you are the one that’s in control of
that
and you are who you need to be at this
point in time
and that will change but as it changes
you are exactly where you have to be and
you gotta celebrate that
thank you
[Applause]
thank you that was very inspiring