Your WILL is the Key to Reinvention | Victoria Kennedy | TEDxTenayaPaseo
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKfLxVyrstc Video ID: WKfLxVyrstc ============================================================ [Music] what do you want no that's the wrong question what do you will the key to reinvention is daily reinvention let me explain well many of my friends were taking a lot of selfies and dreaming about their latest crush my dreams were a little different when i was 16 i wanted to devote my life to god so naturally i joined the convent and became a nun however it turns out hoisted life isn't all they make it out to be in hollywood i literally thought i'd be running through the hills singing my his are alive with a sound of music but it wasn't like that at all it definitely wasn't the sound of music and i felt nothing like mariabon trap far from spontaneously bursting out into joyful song i cried myself to sleep every night mother superiors angry admonitions ringing in my ears i ended up leaving the convent and returning home after only a couple of months i thought my life was over now what this experience taught me a powerful life lesson though see becoming a nun was my answer to what appeared to be the right question to ask what do i want what do i want seems like a really powerful question business owners executives and college grads have been asking themselves this question on repeat all throughout time however this question has no motion without an action plan what do i want is nothing more than a wish just think about how powerful this idea is you aren't defined by your past at any moment you can be something or someone else reinvention can become a daily practice that means if you want to change something about yourself you can do so right now if you want to make better choices about your finances start investing twenty dollars of your next paycheck when people finish a story by saying and the rest is history no it isn't history is written day by day through the individual choices we make and continue making events will happen outside of our control that's just life but by embracing reinvention we don't have to play into the narrative that someone else has written for us by conscious deliberate choices followed by massive action we can command full charge of our lives when i left the convent i discovered that living out my dreams is not about what i want it's about what i will myself to do as much as i wanted to be a devoted nun i couldn't will myself to stay at the convent any longer i had to reinvent myself my plan b was to become a professional opera singer only trouble was i didn't have any money to afford a top music conservatory what i did have though was the will to figure out my next move so what did i do i entered a local beauty pageant i know to win scholarship money so i could go to college to pursue my new dream of singing opera all around the world there i was a former nun fresh out of the convent strutting around on stage in a bikini talk about a 180 but i did it and do you know what i didn't have an identity crisis in fact i didn't think much at all about how different the two paths were i didn't think about whether i was being true to myself and okay at 16 i didn't even know who myself was all i knew for sure was that i had a new dream and i had to become someone different in order to get it so i did i changed i reinvented myself as john milton wrote the mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven i chose the former and it worked i won the scholarship i graduated with honors from my dream college the university of southern california and i spent years singing in castles and cathedrals all around the world i even had a number one hit single on the classical charts in europe by embracing reinvention i had built my dream life albeit slightly different than how i first imagined it but like all dreams it suddenly and painfully came to an end when the government refused to renew my visa my fairy tale life collapsed overnight i went from having it all to returning to america with nothing but a suitcase and 500 left in my bank account i was forced to reinvent myself once again and what would have happened if i would have accepted my fate in that moment and pined about how unjust the world is to poor starving artists like myself well thankfully we will never know but i can tell you what would have not happened i would not be standing here today on the tedx stage sharing my story with you and do i appear to you to be having an identity crisis now and yet we've been told don't reinvent the will in other words you can't have a life where you travel the world live your dreams and work for yourself don't question what has worked for us aha and suddenly they are revealing themselves and their true insecurities but let me ask you were there any wheels on that first rocket that landed on the moon no and are there any wheels on submarines which plunge thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean and open our minds to whole worlds that would otherwise remain completely unknown see those who are telling you not to reinvent yourself may be well-meaning but as long as they can keep you asking what do i want instead of what do i will they can keep you playing small when they offer platitudes like don't reinvent the will they make reinvention seem out of reach but it doesn't have to be all you have to do is re-size reinvention it's all a matter of perspective we don't have an identity crisis every morning when we wake up even though every day is a new day that's because we aren't seeing it as reinvention but we ought to how many of you look at your phone first thing in the morning when you wake up and start your day without giving it another thought you're letting outside events influence your behavior in essence you're giving someone else the power to decide what they want you to see which products they want you to buy and they get you to react to external situations they choose to present to you thus creating your identity for you but you can push back you can own your own perspective and resize the reinvention own that you get to decide how you want to live your life what you choose to care about and what kind of person you will be and if all of this seems overwhelming don't worry that's why the second part of this is to resize reinvention take it one day at a time make one conscious decision followed by another and then another perhaps start with setting up screen time on your phone so you don't see any notifications until 10 am if you don't start small you won't start at all resize the overwhelm into manageable steps you can do this i don't have an identity crisis every time i reinvent myself because i've been doing it since i was 16. so when my opera dream ended and i had to come back to las vegas i didn't think my life was over this wasn't my first rodeo i had traded my nuns habit for a pageant crown i traded my scholarship for a number one hit single and i knew i could trade my professional opera career for whatever came next what turned out to be next for me was starting my own company victorious pr now i didn't know anything about the marketing industry but that didn't matter i knew how to reinvent myself i knew i had to will myself to do whatever it takes to succeed and it worked i built my business to six figures in the first nine months now because of the state of the world a lot of us are feeling forced to reinvent ourselves right now in fact many are beginning to refer to this era as the great reset there seems to be a collective recognition that old platitudes like play it safe and color in the lines won't serve us moving forward this collective awakening is a sign of progress although change is eminent we have full control of our response to it we can reshape our perspective to the events that happen in our lives now let me clarify reinvention isn't a big hollywood epiphany moment no it's a daily choice you really can reinvent yourself every day so if you're ready to join me in resizing reinvention start with these steps step one recognize that each day you make the decision to keep being the person you think you are you choose to keep putting on the habits and personalities that you think make you you but you can decide something different your identity isn't fixed you can wake up tomorrow and make a different choice step two realize that change is gonna happen whether you wanted to or not but that's not a bad thing you can accept that change is here and then decide what that means to you all you have to do is own your own perspective to the events that life throws at you and step three embrace change make the decision to lead the change instead of feeling forced to change as shakespeare said there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so so choose to think that any change you encounter is just life giving you the opportunity to reinvent yourself into something greater than you currently are own your own perspective of the situations that life throws at you my life now as a ceo of my own business isn't that far from my life as a nun i still expect to spontaneously burst into joyful song it's just that now i see that as one of the many options that i have i'm reinventing myself daily who knows which adventure i'll will myself on next what about you what will you do [Applause] you