The Brave Leap Sideways
i gave up a full-ride scholarship to a
top 25 u.s law school so that i could
speak with you today
sort of
of course the real dig in deep situation
that took me from dean’s list law
student to owning a copywriting business
and giving this talk today is much more
complicated than that
it involved personal relationships
mental health
and a rediscovery of my own values
but in very real terms i would not be
here in this room with you today if i
hadn’t decided after two years of prep
and seven months of classes
to drop out of law school
instead i’d be spending my saturday in
my apartment surrounded by highlighters
and six pound case books and i wouldn’t
even be thinking about the possibility
of giving a tedx talk
i want everyone to close your eyes
and if you’re someone who can picture
images in your head go ahead and imagine
yourself stepping onto a quiet treadmill
and if you’re someone like me who can’t
see pictures in my mind just one of my
neurodivergencies
go ahead and close your eyes
and relax as you follow along with the
story
so you’re stepping
onto a quiet
motionless treadmill
you begin to stroll
and the treadmill naturally matches your
pace warming up with a quiet hum the
treadmill’s track turns at a nice rate
and you’re feeling good
but
little by little you notice the
treadmill picking up speed it moves
faster and faster and after a while your
arms are swinging and you’re panting
you’re struggling to catch your breath
you’re not sure how much longer you can
go at this breakneck speed but you know
if you slow your pace you’ll get sucked
under so you frantically look around for
an off button or at least one that says
for pete’s sake slow this thing down
but
you’ve stepped onto the treadmill of
life
and there is no off button
go ahead and open your eyes
shake that off
take a deep breath
it’s not a great feeling being stuck
there just desperately trying to keep
going right
most of us find ourselves on this kind
of life treadmill at some point
we realize a relationship is no longer
fulfilling us but we’re afraid of what’s
next
or we’re afraid of hurting the people
around us so we keep sprinting
or we find ourselves years into the
college to post grad track and discover
that our education isn’t propelling us
toward the life we want
but we spent so much money and time
already that it’s hard to let go
so we keep sprinting
or we struggle to jump from promotion to
promotion at work and wind up in a
career that’s just not the right fit for
our values or our dreams
but we’re making money the benefits are
good and the grass is always greener
right
so we keep sprinting
our treadmill keeps turning keeps
pushing us faster and with no off button
it can feel impossible to let that
relationship that schooling that career
let it all go
and
i believe this mindset this experience
of feeling stuck goes back to a lesson i
think most of us learn early on when we
join a club or a sports team
and that lesson is that the most
important thing when we start a thing is
to finish it
we’re told just push through
you’ll look back and be glad you stuck
with it when the going gets tough
even dory said it right
just keep swimming
[Music]
but
i
don’t believe that the most important
thing is finishing what we start now i
don’t want anyone walking out of here
saying you know i saw this tedx talk and
the speaker kathleen melvin she said we
should quit stuff as soon as things get
hard
that’s not what i’m saying
what i am saying is that we need to
reframe that mindset that the end goal
of a thing shouldn’t necessarily be
getting to the end it shouldn’t be
simply surviving through it
i’m saying what’s important is knowing
who we want to be
what world we want to create and making
choices that move us in that direction
but we can’t move in the right direction
toward values dreams and outcomes if
we’re stuck on a treadmill facing the
same
same
if we’re going to achieve our goals if
we’re going to live the life we want we
have to get off that treadmill
and i know a secret way
now it’s not easy
it can be complicated and it can be
scary
but it’s worth it
and you can make it happen
in order to get off the treadmill of
life what you need to do is take a brave
leap sideways and here’s what i mean by
that
on the treadmill of life as it goes and
goes without slowing or stopping you
have two choices you can keep sprinting
forward gasping for air and yearning for
relief or
you can vault yourself over that
handrail and land on the ground next to
it leaving you the freedom to find your
own path
and your own pace
that jump
that moment when you decide to stop
sprinting and instead hurdle the
handrail
that is your brave leap sideways
taking a brave leap sideways can be
painful
you might
roll an ankle or tweak a shoulder as you
dismount you might land on uneven or
rocky ground
you might have to limp
you might have to crawl
but those injuries are temporary and you
will be limping crawling in the
direction of your values and dreams
instead of sprinting towards something
you may not even want in the first place
my background is in classical theater
performance for 10 years after undergrad
i worked as an actor and i loved it
it fulfilled me in so many ways
but as i got older my values changed i
decided to go to law school
i studied for a year
then took the entrance exam
and
then i lost someone important to me
suddenly everything shifted again
i wasn’t sure if i
wanted to go to law school anymore but
what else was i going to do
in the midst of the worst depression of
my life dealing with this tremendous
loss
it was all i could do to keep trudging
forward on the treadmill i had placed
myself on over a year earlier
so i managed to submit my school
applications
and the university of gainesville
offered me a full ride under their
governor’s scholarship so i moved to
gainesville
and i
started classes
my treadmill
kept rolling
did you know that one out of every three
law students leaves law school with an
addiction they didn’t have when they
started
law school sucks
even for a dedicated detail-oriented
academia-loving student like me
i
thought that being in school might help
distract me from my grief
but instead i felt worse
and worse
and as i pushed through i justified my
efforts i told myself i had already
invested so much time so much energy so
much money
surely it was worth two and a half more
years of suck to walk out with a degree
that might mean something
to someone
i told myself
i had no marketable skills
i had no other opportunities in front of
me i had to get a degree in order to
take care of myself
i told myself my friends and my family
all seemed to think that law school was
just the right fit for me so i must be
overthinking things
besides if i quit they’d all feel like
i never really appreciated their support
and
there were some little truths in there
yes i had invested time energy money yes
i had previously worked jobs that were
super unhealthy for my
introverted highly sensitive quiet
selves
yes my community really was supportive
and when i told them i had dropped out
of law school and was focusing on my
writing business
they kept right on supporting me
and
that’s what i mean when i say we need to
reframe this mindset that the end goal
of a thing shouldn’t just be getting to
the end
the end of law school is taking the bar
exam it’s becoming an attorney
but i realized i didn’t want to be
an attorney
if i had hated law school but still
wanted to practice law i would have had
to decide if the pain of school was
worth the experience of being an
attorney and maybe i would have decided
to push through those next two and a
half years
but that’s not what i
wanted when
i took a hard look at my values how i
wanted to show up in the world
when i thought about the world i wanted
to create i knew i couldn’t live that
life if i chose to practice law
now law school does lead some people to
their perfect missions and they do great
things
but for me
it was a treadmill
and i needed to get off
so i had some hard conversations
cried a lot
took a deep breath and took my brave
leap sideways
and honestly i haven’t had even a
fraction of a portion of a slice of a
percentage of a moment of regret
that brave leap sideways
was exactly what i needed
and i want to put it out there that
every situation is different
i was not brave enough to drop out of
law school on my own my best friend who
happens to be a business coach
when i talked with her over winter break
she said
you need to leave
you need to be writing
we will figure out how to make this work
for you
and i know not everybody has a support
system like that
i am incredibly fortunate
and because not everyone has that
privilege
we all have that responsibility
if you’re feeling stuck
if you’re feeling like you may need to
take your brave leap sideways but you’re
not sure if you can land
i believe in you
i believe you are strong enough to make
that leap to land safely and get going
on the path that takes you where you
want to go even if you’re not sure where
that is yet
this is me
holding out my hands to you
and
you may not feel like you’re stuck right
now you might feel like you are going in
the direction you want to be headed at a
pace that feels comfortable to you and
if that’s you
i want you to notice the people around
you
not just here in the seats in this room
with us today but the people around you
in your everyday life your co-workers
your children your friends
i want you to hold your hands out to
them
and tell them you have a secret for them
it’s the brave leap sideways
[Applause]
[Music]