Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Welcome.
You've been selected to give a TEDx Talk.
Yes, you. Congratulations.
You're doing great so far,
but now what?
We'll practice standing still,
land in front of me on stage in one spot.
Inhale. Exhale.
Do it like you practiced.
Before you give your talk, ask yourself,
Is my idea new?
Is it interesting?
It is factual and realistic?
Make sure your talk is no longer than 18 minutes.
Actually, your time limit is more like 8 minutes.
TEDx Talks are like casual conversations.
Don't bring a piece of paper on stage to read.
So, that was Flaky, my clown.
Excuse me.
So, that was Flaky, my clown,
and we've been together for the past 10 years,
but she wasn't always around.
In fact, when I was 20,
I was a very different person than I am today.
I was gripped by fear most days.
I had frequent panic attacks.
I was hyperventilating.
Sometimes, I was even afraid to leave my own apartment.
I was depressed,
I was overweight,
and I was afraid of even the simplest of tasks.
Now, how did I turn out that way?
Well, outside circumstances triggered me,
but the truth was
that I had given myself such a narrow definition of who I was
that I could barely breathe.
Now, there comes a tipping point in every person's life:
the desire to change
basically becomes greater than, you know, the need to change.
For me that tipping point basically came
when a therapist told me that I needed to go on antidepressants.
And I thought to myself,
"If I need medication to live,
you know, then I would rather re-create who I am."
So, I decided to make a phone call to my parents,
and I said, "Please send me as far away as possible,
to a place where nobody knows me
and where I can be free to reinvent my identity."
So the next thing I knew, I was on a plane,
going from Evanston, Illinois,
to Hong Kong.
And, well, what I learned is that you cannot take a break from your problems
because they'll be right there waiting for you
when you arrive at your destination.
So I reached Hong Kong,
and I was still depressed,
and I was still overweight
and I was still afraid.
And now I had no one around me -
none of my friends, none of my family.
But then I thought to myself, "This is not necessarily a bad thing."
Because, since nobody knew me,
it was a blank slate and a chance for reinvention.
So the first thing I decided to change was I decided to get a new body.
And I hired a personal trainer,
and I just did everything she told me to do,
until one day I was walking to work,
and my pants literally fell off my body.
And, you know, I decided,
well, with this new body, I needed a new wardrobe,
and with a new wardrobe, I might as well get a new haircut.
So I cut my hair short, dyed it blond,
and when my parents came to visit me three months later,
at the airport, they just walked straight by me.
They didn't recognize me.
So, basically, with this new body, I got all this new energy.
And with this new energy came a new mindset.
And the new mindset was
I'm going to say yes to everything that comes my way.
So, do you want to go camping with strangers?
Sure, yes.
Do you want to go trekking through China? Yes.
Do you want to live with a Filipino family for three months
and write for a local magazine? Yes.
Once I got used to saying yes, it became part of my identity.
And by the time I returned to college, I was a new version of myself.
Now, fast forward five years later.
I've graduated from college,
I'm working as a corporate copywriter for a fashion brand,
and I still think there's more creativity in me.
So the great thing about reinvention is
if you've done it once, you can do it twice.
So I thought about it,
and in 2003, in the summer of 2003,
I bundled all my corporate holidays into one,
and I decided to enter clown school.
Well, I can tell you, my parents were not thrilled at this point.
This is where we normally go on family vacation,
and this is where I decided to go instead.
So, that's Blue Lake, California.
Here are some pictures of Blue Lake.
The local bar.
The spa.
My house and my roommate who I stayed with at that time.
The Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre.
And some of my classmates.
So what did I learn in clown school?
Well, the first thing was about failing,
and that it's only funny if you risk everything you've got.
So after an entire day spent falling -
literally falling to the ground -
we were given an assignment
to perform something that we were guaranteed to fail at.
But we had to try to succeed at it with all our might.
So I took a small ball,
blindfolded myself,
and said, "I'm going to throw this ball backwards over my head
into a tiny little bucket all the way in the end of the classroom."
And what we found out is
failure isn't funny if you do it kind of half-heartedly.
You really have to go for it with everything you've got.
So, in the process of, like, "Okay, I'm going to throw this ball.
I'm going to do it and oh! -
okay, it didn't work, okay, okay, yeah,
blublublublubla."
In the midst of all that chaos, that was what was funny.
And in the middle of all that chaos, sometimes what happened was ...
I succeeded.
I was supposed to fail at this, and now it's successful.
Now what?
So one note about failure.
When you're willing to fail spectacularly, you might just succeed.
So the next thing we learned about was shaming,
and that it's only funny if it's true for you.
So we were given a closet where we could go in and choose our props,
and everything was in there,
from buckteeth to big wigs to big feet.
And there was a bodysuit there.
A bodysuit that gave you huge boobs and a huge butt.
And everybody thought it was hilarious,
and everybody tried it on.
But not me.
I avoided that suit like the plague because there was pain there for me -
things that I had left behind in Hong Kong,
things I had reinvented myself for.
But after several days
of trying and failing and falling and trying to be funny,
I just figured I had nothing left to lose.
So I put on that bodysuit,
and I let everybody look at me.
And an amazing thing happened,
which was that people started to smile,
and people started to laugh,
and a connection was made.
And the reason, I found out, is that you cannot fake shame,
because when you're vulnerable,
you give others permission to be vulnerable as well.
Anyway, even though I was wearing the bodysuit,
and I was really trying my best,
I still felt like I was the worst one in the class.
So, on the last day,
we had this new class come in to watch our performance.
And I thought, "Oh, this is going to suck because I'm the worst one, and, you know."
And then this thought struck me, which was, "But nobody knows that.
For all they know, I could be the best one."
So in that performance, I just risked everything I got.
I risked physically; I risked emotionally;
I made myself vulnerable;
I made mistakes; I allowed everyone to see them.
And an amazing thing happened.
People came up to me after the class and said,
"Wow, so how long have you been studying clown for?
Have you been doing this for a while?"
And I thought, "How did this happen?"
Basically, what had happened was
I had become the person that I would like to admire.
And what I realized was
that we had the power to reinvent our self in an instant,
by freeing ourselves from the perception of who we think we are.
If you can't erase it, embrace it.
In Hong Kong, I had reinvented myself physically and mentally,
but it wasn't until clown school that I fully began to accept all of me.
And I can truly only reinvent what I own.
So if I own shame, if I own fear, and if I own failure,
only then do I have the power to do something with it.
Now, reinvention has become part of my life.
I'm in the middle of one right now.
I've just become a new mother,
and I'm still figuring out what that means for me.
So if you were to reinvent your life right now,
and yourself,
what is it that you would do?
What is it that you would be?
Because one thing I can tell you
is that each one of us has this inner clown inside of us,
this little character of faults and foibles,
who just wants to come out and play.
And all I ask is don't hide that little clown.
Because that clown is asking us
to invite the fall, to risk it all,
to own our shame,
and to smile through pain.
And once we do that, we start to see clowns all around us.
Thank you.
(Applause)