Translator: Lidia Morales Olivares Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
(Harp music starts)
(Harp music ends)
Most people like listening to the harp. It's gentle and soothing.
Even magic.
When I was four, my parents took me to see the ballet Swan Lake.
While everybody's eyes were riveted on the stage to see the elegant dancers,
my attention was entirely taken up by a sound coming from the orchestra pit.
That was the sound of the waves on the swan lake
that allowed the ballerinas to twirl around and weave their magic.
It was what I thought was my destiny: the harp.
The beauty, the perfection, the bewitchment of that fragile sound.
I'd never heard the harp before, but I was hooked.
It took determination to get selected to go to music college in London.
It took artfulness to be accepted.
Polished, poised and perfect became my identity.
I'd taken on the label of a classical musician.
(Harp music starts)
(Harp music ends)
Being a musician, you fit in everywhere.
I mean, who wouldn't like to be close to an artist?
(Laughing)
Young people, old people,
people from business, politicians - in short, everybody.
They see you as somehow special.
This was my reality till it was shattered when I changed my polished audience
for a notoriously difficult one.
I left music and became a teacher.
(Laughing)
To teenage students.
(Laughing)
With a new challenge of having to adapt to how differently people would see me.
Here's how things went when I was a musician:
"Hi, I'm Katrina. I'm a harpist."
"Fantastic!
Where did you learn to play the harp? Can I come and listen to you?
Have you ever met my friend? He's single."
(Laughing)
This became, "Hi, I'm Katrina. I'm a teacher."
"Nice."
(Laughing)
What was going on here?
I was still the same person on the inside,
with the same personality, with the same talents.
Why were the same people reacting so differently?
At the root of trying to hide behind a label
is the feeling that we are not good enough as we are.
We think we have to be something much bigger than ourselves
to be worthy of attention.
Research has proven that taking on a label,
even a positive one, is detrimental.
Research-pshychologist and TED speaker Carol Dweck
has shown that giving children a positive label, such as "gifted,"
is really of no help at all.
What happens when this child fails?
Is he or she then no longer gifted?
Does that mean that they're no longer who they thought they were?
Being a teacher changed me forever.
Anyone here is a teacher?
(Laughing)
Even if you are not, can you be polished, poised and perfect
in front of a room full of screaming thirteen-year-olds?
(Laughing)
You can't.
Standing in front of a classroom is like having your photo taken
relentlessly, in extreme high-definition.
(Laughing)
No Photoshop.
(Laughing)
No mercy.
(Laughing)
What do you do
when your class refuses to do the work you spent your weekend preparing?
I don't know about you, but I started identifying with the label "failure."
Instead of saying, "This time I failed," I said, "I'm a failure."
There were days when I went home thinking, "How can this be so hard?
Why don't they like me?"
I was clinging on to my label of teacher,
fearful that if they caught a glimpse of who it was I really was
beyond polished, poised and perfect,
they would reject me.
In reality, I was the one who'd already rejected that whole part of myself:
the raw, the flawed, the imperfect me.
This is when I realized that it was only once I dropped my labels
and accepted to be vulnerable
that a real encounter could take place between my students and myself.
That's when they could start learning.
So could I.
Today, as a life coach, when my clients tell me
that they don't know who they are beyond their labels, I say,
"Right, let's find out."
(Laughing)
Why don't you allow yourself to be sometimes extremely hard-working
and at other times deliciously lazy?
(Laughing)
Caring for others in one situation, caring for yourself in another.
Once you stop limiting yourself to a label,
you can start exploring the full richness of your personality.
No censhorship, no limits, no judgement.
You see, much like the harp,
the point is not to play only one of the cords, but rather to play them all.
Sometimes being subtle and restrained,
at other times wild and creative,
but always expressing who you are.
(Harp music starts)
(Harp music ends)
(Applause)