Translator: Mohand Habchi Reviewer: Queenie Lee
When I was four years old, I decided to go to an Ivy League college
because I'd heard somewhere that they were the best.
I remember this because my family moved into a new house in Denver,
and the locks on the door said "Yale," and I knew this was a sign.
(Laughter)
So for the next 13 years, I got all the A's.
I joined all the teams. I joined all the clubs.
I ran for all the positions.
My best friend and I, we were president and vice president
of a French club with only one other member,
(Laughter)
that's all that was needed to put it on our resumes.
(Laughter)
I took SAT practice tests every weekend,
and I took the real thing three times until I got a perfect score in math.
My mom was often telling me to slow down, but I was doing everything right, right?
Well, I didn't get into Yale, after all,
although technically, I think I'm still on the wait list.
(Laughter)
But I did get into Brown, which was my second choice.
Okay, so, secretly, I had actually fallen in love with Colorado College
when I was visiting a friend there,
but I always had this fantasy of flying off on an airplane
to my prestigious new East Coast life,
wearing a hoodie with a logo that impressed people.
(Laughter)
"Whoa. You go to Brown? You must be really smart."
So I went.
At Brown, I kept working
although I wasn't even exactly sure what I was working for anymore,
it's just, that's what you do.
I got a degree in computer science,
and I went to work at Microsoft when I graduated.
And I was there for two years before I went for a job
at another company few people had heard of,
although the ones who had often said,
"Why are you going to work at Facebook? MySpace has already won."
(Laughter)
It wasn't long before I'd walk around in my Facebook hoodie,
and people would say "Whoa. You work at Facebook? You must be really smart."
While I was at Facebook, I came up with an idea to solve a problem.
Here was the problem.
Let's say, I posted this awesome photo.
I might get five or ten comments, and that would feel great.
If I'd gotten a job promotion or changed my relationship status,
I might get 50 comments
although most of them would say the same thing,
"Congratulations! Congratulations! Congrats!"
I started to notice
that if people didn't have something new or clever to say,
they wouldn't say anything at all.
They might come up to me in the hallway
and tell me they liked something I'd shared.
OK, wait a minute.
How much more validation might I be missing out on?
(Laughter)
So I proposed the idea for the awesome button.
It's a button that would live on every Facebook status,
every photo, every note, every link;
people could click it without having to think of anything to say.
Friends could validate each other with that much more frequency and ease.
(Laughter)
We actually worked on this project for nine months
until we got it exactly right,
finally launching the Facebook Like Button.
(Applause)
I read that as of August this year,
there have been 1.13 trillion instances of Facebook Like.
1.13 trillion. Does anyone even know what that means?
I looked it up on the internet
and apparently, there are 1 trillion seconds in 30,000 years.
That's 30,000 years of one person telling another person,
"I like that. Good job. Keep going."
(Laughter)
As Elizabeth Gilbert said in her TED talk,
"It's exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me."
(Laughter)
So wait, what do I do now?
I did all the things right.
You tell me what success looks like, and I'll do it.
You tell me it's a good school, I'll go there.
You tell me it's a good job and I'll do that.
You tell me it's leadership and management and trainings and certifications.
You tell me it's leverage and scale and impacting and changing the world,
and I'll do all of that.
You tell me it's saving for retirement and drinking filtered water
and eating kale.
It's being healthy enough, active enough, and spiritual enough,
and conscious enough, and compassionate enough, and humble enough -
(Laughter)
And I'll do all of that.
I will do whatever it takes to feel like enough.
There is nothing wrong with any of those things
in and of themselves.
But in my case, they gave me a validation that I depended on it.
I needed it.
From the first time I got that first A and the teacher said "Good job!"
I was hooked. I understood the game, and I was going to win.
The problem was the more approval I got, the more I need it.
It's kind of like that first time your photo gets 50 likes,
and now everything less feels like kind of a failure.
(Laughter)
Why didn't they like it?
(Laughter)
Don't they like me?
It must be Newsfeed. They changed something.
(Laughter)
I finally reached a breaking point.
I finally realized that the way that I had always been making decisions,
it wasn't sustainable,
and the reason I knew that
was because of how hard I had become on myself.
I was always pushing, always striving, always evaluating, always comparing,
and yet, I was always coming up short.
So, I knew something had to change,
and I decided to start asking some better questions.
What do I care about?
What actually matters to me?
If wasn't worried about what other people thought,
what might I be doing?
What actually lights me up?
As I explored these questions,
I started drawing these little stick-figure illustrations
about what I was discovering and posting them on Facebook,
obviously.
(Laughter)
It was a way for me to make sense of what I was learning
and share it with my friends.
Eventually, I left Facebook.
Since then, I've started and ended two business.
I've become and unbecome a life coach about three different times.
(Laughter)
I've lived in five houses and four neighborhoods.
I've had six-ish relationships.
I've traveled to eight countries.
I've tried on about 12 different spiritual traditions.
And yet, through all of that searching and change,
I kept finding that each week,
I had something new I wanted to draw about.
People often ask me how I made the crazy leap from tech to art,
and the best answer I can give is there was no leap.
I never planned to be an artist, it's just what I've found myself doing
when I wasn't telling myself I should be doing something else.
For me, there is no push in it.
No plan. No agenda. It's just what I'm drawn to do.
(Laughter)
As it turns out, following my heart hasn't meant some grand act of faith.
It hasn't meant coming up with some big future vision
and then constantly compromising the present in order to get there;
although, I've tried that several times and have fallen flat on my face.
Now I practice following my heart
by gentle, honest, in-the-moment listening.
Sometimes the listening tells me to take a nap.
Sometimes it tells me to draw. Sometimes it tells me to cry.
The listening tells me when to take a job or not take a job.
To visit my mom or the ocean.
The listening will tell me when to take a chance
or when to dance.
(Laughter)
The listening tells me when to say yes, when to say no, and everything in between.
Now this, what I'm talking about, it is simple but it's not easy.
It requires assiduous, dedicated attention.
It often asks for ruthless
and sometimes incredibly uncomfortable honesty with myself and with others.
And it needs endless compassion
for the difficulty of learning to trust the validation that comes from within.
I found it nearly impossible to find my inner knowing
when I'm constantly calibrating my preferences, my passions, my purpose,
based primarily on what I think others are thinking of me.
It is awesome to create and share things that people love.
It's what I do!
It's also awesome to appreciate, celebrate and validate one another.
I just like to pay attention
to when I start to depend on that feedback,
that becomes my notification to switch the focus.
So now, I draw comics for my job.
My new A+ stands for alignment.
And this is my favorite sweatshirt.
(Laughter)
I can't tell you where any of this is going.
I can't tell you my plans because I really don't have many.
All I know is that when I let go
of the need for external validation,
and when I finally allow myself to just do what I do, and be who I am,
and like what I like,
I finally feel ...
I finally know I'm enough.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)