[Music]
do you remember when you were 17 years
old
remember when you were at the end of
your high school career sitting in those
cramped little desks listening to your
teachers drone on and on did you have
any idea that a bridge existed between
you and that classroom
and the rest of your life did you have
any idea that you could actually build
that bridge I didn’t either
in fact when I was 17 I was pulled out
of high school and sent to a convent in
the middle of my senior year sounds
rather medieval doesn’t it but in the
small Christian commune where I grew up
it was actually fairly normal from the
time my friends and I were little girls
we were taught that becoming a nun was
the highest calling so even though I was
shocked to find myself in the middle of
this convent at such a young age I
wasn’t really that surprised now I was
one of the good girls and it never
occurred to me that I could actually do
anything about being sent to this
convent like say no my whole life it had
been drilled into me that if I didn’t
follow God’s will for my life I was
going straight to hell
on the streets addicted to drugs maybe
an alcoholic certainly a whore
so when mother Benny called me on
Christmas Eve to tell me that it was
God’s will that I entered the convent
that night it didn’t occur to me to say
no in my mind that would have been
saying yes to a life of unspeakable
horror and shame so the Communist
insisted on unquestioning obedience but
the convent took this idea of obedience
to a whole new level everything was
decided for me down to the food that I
put on my plate if I made the mistake of
skipping the kielbasa in the buffet line
several nuns would suddenly appear and
stand over me until I finish
every last bite so in order to survive I
had to be quiet and do what I was told
but from the very beginning my body was
sending me signals this isn’t going to
work I was assigned to work in the
kitchen and all day long I pulled these
sheet metal pans in and out of the ovens
and I was always forgetting to use the
pot holders so I had these burns on my
hands I’ve been done my arms and I was
constantly in pain I couldn’t figure out
what was going on why am I always
burning myself I was also responsible
for defrosting all of the food for the
next day’s meals 480 sisters this meant
walking into the walk-in freezer and
hauling out 20-pound logs of Turkey or
50-pound crate of chicken legs and I was
supposed to do this every night before I
went to bed but I’d forget no matter how
many post-it notes I stuck on my prayer
book I’d still forget so every night I
crawl into bed exhausted drifting off to
sleep and suddenly a jerk awake
oh no the freezer I’d leap out of my
bunk pull on my long beige skirt over my
flame on that gun and go tearing across
the lawn to see if I could make it to
the building before they locked it for
the night night after night this
happened and I couldn’t figure out what
was going on why can’t I remember
anything I seem to be in a daze even
tripping over my own feet the convent
had these four and a half foot window
wells all around the perimeter of the
building I can’t tell you how many times
I fell into one of these window wells
with my cello while I was walking to one
of these Orchestra rehearsals I was
never hurt and neither was my cello but
I couldn’t figure out what was going on
why am I always falling well my body was
sending me signals this isn’t working
this isn’t you wake up but I couldn’t
hear and the longer I stayed there the
more my body screamed by the end of four
years I was literally shaking with
pent-up rage
sitting in the sewing room bent over an
old singer machine or you know vacuuming
the green tiled stairwells I could
barely contain it and I didn’t know what
was going on with his shaking all I knew
is that it was getting harder and harder
to silence myself well as strange as it
may sound to you and to meet you frankly
it never occurred to me that I could
actually leave or really that I wanted
to but one day I was found myself
standing in the middle of France on a
mission trip and one of the nuns turned
to me and she said you know I see you at
a crossroads
you could either stay here and make you
know the convent your life or you could
leave and in that moment when she said
you could leave it was like a light bulb
went on I don’t have to do this anymore
so I went back home and I found the
courage to leave everything behind the
convent the commune my family my friends
everything I had ever known and risk
walking straight into hell but I had to
find out if it was possible to create a
life that didn’t require that I silenced
myself well despite all of the
predictions otherwise I didn’t end up on
the streets or addicted to heroin
instead I ended up graduating from
Wellesley College and then going on to
do my masters in writing and along the
way I discovered that I not only had a
gift for writing but I had a gift for
teaching writing so by the time I
graduated from college I had this huge
roster of students that I was working
with on their college applications
helping them express their very best
selves and really this is the key to
their applications this celebration of
who they were and what their unique
contributions were and right away these
students were getting amazing results
all of them getting into some of the
very best colleges in the nation so
looking at these results I figured wow I
found my calling helping students
recognize and express their unique self
so a number of years went by and I found
myself working with the largest class of
seniors that I’d ever worked with
all of these kids were incredible they
had top grades top SAT scores high level
extracurriculars accolades awards
captains of sports teams academic teams
everything everyone said that they
needed but something was wrong and it
started with the unbelievable levels of
stress that these kids were dealing with
they’d show up to their sessions
literally shaking their knees are
bouncing up and down they can’t look me
in the eye they’re terrified they’re not
going to get into a good enough college
that they’re not good enough
so I’m sitting next and I’m watching
this shaking and I start to have this
dawning recognition these students had
been given one path to success just the
way that I had been given one path when
I was sent to the convent
I started thinking no more the system
that takes these incredible kids and
shoves them down one path I’ve got to do
something about this but what so a few
months later it’s March and the flurry
of Admissions letters are coming out and
despite all of the stress I’m sure that
all of these amazing kids are going to
be getting into their top choice schools
they’ll be jumping for joy but it turns
out that only two students were accepted
into their very top choice schools
everybody else what got into a good
school but when it came to their very
top choice schools almost everyone was
sent to the waitlist which meant they
were in limbo now they’re accepted nor
rejected just waiting for a spot to open
up what was going on why was their
incredible academic performance their
impressive resumes their beautiful
essays why weren’t they getting accepted
what was going on with this waitlist
status and what was the point of all
this dress if it didn’t even work well I
started to look very closely at these
students and particularly the students
who had gotten into their top choice
schools what did they do differently and
that’s when I began to see that these
students had all created something of
their own something that
really lit them up and changed their
communities for the better suddenly it
was so clear to me why these other
students had all been wait-listed they
were too good on paper to reject but
they had nothing to distinguish them
from everybody else well it got me
thinking what if there were a way to
teach students to discover what lights
them up and then to create a project
that showcased this unique interest and
serves their communities in a really
meaningful way and as soon as that idea
took hold it was so easy to see that
creating a project like this would
radically change students high school
experience it would launch them out of
this old mode of passive obedience and
automatically just by having a purpose
and an excitement plummet their stress
and rock it their joy they’d start
thriving instead of surviving all
because of the pride that would come
from knowing what their gifts were and
how to bring them to the world and as a
result they’d also end up increasing
their chances of acceptance at their top
choice schools because they become so
compelling well the more I thought about
it the more obvious it was that every
student needed this to be completely lit
up with excitement at their own gifts
but the question was what exactly creep
created this excitement how could
students who’d never really felt much
excitement about anything before
suddenly wake up to their interests and
as I began to look closely at this I
began to see that the the excitement
really popped
when students began to ask two questions
what lights me up and what problems do I
want to solve and then the next step was
once they’d answer those questions was
to go out and build a bridge between the
thing that led them up Eiland the need
that they saw in their communities so
that’s exactly what I started doing and
the project’s these kids have built how
are incredible let me share some of the
results that I’ve seen I’ll start with
Bane she was an extraordinary young
woman that I met when she was a
sophomore in high school
and when I met her she was really
struggling because of severe dyslexia
but she did not want to let that define
her so she started to ask these two
questions what lights me up and what
problems do I want to solve now as a
freshman she had joined her high
school’s criminal justice program and
become incredibly passionate about it
she started to envision herself in a
career as an attorney but the fee to
join this program was out of reach for
many of her friends and she felt it was
unfair for them to be excluded from a
program that had lit her up so much and
given her so much hope about her future
so she decided that she would launch her
own nonprofit organization to raise
money for these kids and she went on to
pitch it to the Wharton School of
Business where she was the only teenager
out of 72 companies to be chosen to work
with them and shortly after that she
received $100,000 in her first
fundraising efforts and today she’s in
the process of bringing this program to
schools all over the US now this is a
student whose dyslexia was so
debilitating that one teacher told her
she had a 50% chance of graduating high
school she could have just given up but
now she’s thriving and in fact her
father called in tears to say he was now
at peace about his daughter’s future and
isn’t it this this discovery of who we
are and what lights us up and how to
bring our gifts to the world isn’t this
that gives us the greatest pride and
happiness that’s certainly the
experience that Alex had another high
school student over the past year just a
year ago alex was trudging home from
school every day and plopping himself
down in front of his computer to play
video games all afternoon
he was like so many high school students
great ow uninspired just going through
the motions but also stress because of
the immense academic pressures and the
looming college applications but Alex
was getting fed up with this situation
he knew that he had
much more to give than this so we
started asking these two questions what
lights me up and what problems do I want
to stop myself he started looking around
his high school and recognizing that
almost everyone was feeling the same way
that he was and he wanted to find a way
to help them celebrate who they were to
really focus on what was great about
them rather than just focusing on the
grades and test scores now he had heard
about humans of New York which is a
project where this photographer in New
York City goes around the streets and
takes pictures of whoever he sees and in
the process of taking pictures he’ll ask
his subjects about their lives and these
incredible stories come out well Alex
was so moved by these stories that he
decided he wanted to do something
similar so he started to go around his
high school in to ask students questions
like what’s the coolest thing you’ve
ever built what’s the best thing that’s
ever happened to you and just as he’d
hoped story after story came pouring out
by the end of the year he’d done dozens
of interviews and he’s had the
opportunity to listen to students really
open up and share stories he would
normally never get to hear but these
interviews didn’t just create a
connection for him they created a
connection for everyone involved the
students would say things like you have
no idea how much I needed that when he
was done so Alex decided to pull all of
these interviews together into a video
montage and he organized an end-of-year
celebration for his school where he
showcased all of these stories to a
standing ovation afterward Alex told me
that creating a project like this
changed him from someone who cared only
about pleasing others to everyday asking
himself how can I respect myself Wow now
that’s when we feel incredible isn’t it
when we respect ourselves now Alex was
17 years old when he created this
transformation so remember your 17 year
old self
what if back then you had asked yourself
these two question
what lights me up and what problems do I
want to solve do you think that your
life would be any different today well
what if you were to ask those questions
now what might you learn what would you
create what would you build and this
asking these kinds of questions and
helping students build their bridges
this has become my life’s work to help
students find their lights so they can
step out of those old tight constricted
places stop the shaking and gift
themselves the freedom to become their
very best selves and you know this can
feel frightening but it’s so worth it
I know because I did it I walked away
from everything that told me to obey
that told me to be quiet that told me I
had nothing to give and it was
frightening like walking straight into
hell but when that light bulb went on
and I realized there was another path it
didn’t just illuminate the way for me it
shone a light on how everyone of us can
create our own path because I believe
that every one every student every
individual every one of us has something
extraordinary to offer the world and in
this incredible innovation era we need
to rebell we need to teach our kids to
rebel against anything that would have
us believe otherwise so together let’s
rise up from our cramped desks and break
out of the old outdated pathways of
obedience so we can transform ourselves
and our communities with our incredible
gifts
[Applause]
[Music]
do you remember when you were 17 years
old
remember when you were at the end of
your high school career sitting in those
cramped little desks listening to your
teachers drone on and on did you have
any idea that a bridge existed between
you and that classroom
and the rest of your life did you have
any idea that you could actually build
that bridge I didn’t either
in fact when I was 17 I was pulled out
of high school and sent to a convent in
the middle of my senior year sounds
rather medieval doesn’t it but in the
small Christian commune where I grew up
it was actually fairly normal from the
time my friends and I were little girls
we were taught that becoming a nun was
the highest calling so even though I was
shocked to find myself in the middle of
this convent at such a young age I
wasn’t really that surprised now I was
one of the good girls and it never
occurred to me that I could actually do
anything about being sent to this
convent like say no my whole life it had
been drilled into me that if I didn’t
follow God’s will for my life I was
going straight to hell
on the streets addicted to drugs maybe
an alcoholic certainly a whore
so when mother Benny called me on
Christmas Eve to tell me that it was
God’s will that I entered the convent
that night it didn’t occur to me to say
no in my mind that would have been
saying yes to a life of unspeakable
horror and shame so the Communist
insisted on unquestioning obedience but
the convent took this idea of obedience
to a whole new level everything was
decided for me down to the food that I
put on my plate if I made the mistake of
skipping the kielbasa in the buffet line
several nuns would suddenly appear and
stand over me until I finish
every last bite so in order to survive I
had to be quiet and do what I was told
but from the very beginning my body was
sending me signals this isn’t going to
work I was assigned to work in the
kitchen and all day long I pulled these
sheet metal pans in and out of the ovens
and I was always forgetting to use the
pot holders so I had these burns on my
hands I’ve been done my arms and I was
constantly in pain I couldn’t figure out
what was going on why am I always
burning myself I was also responsible
for defrosting all of the food for the
next day’s meals 480 sisters this meant
walking into the walk-in freezer and
hauling out 20-pound logs of Turkey or
50-pound crate of chicken legs and I was
supposed to do this every night before I
went to bed but I’d forget no matter how
many post-it notes I stuck on my prayer
book I’d still forget so every night I
crawl into bed exhausted drifting off to
sleep and suddenly a jerk awake
oh no the freezer I’d leap out of my
bunk pull on my long beige skirt over my
flame on that gun and go tearing across
the lawn to see if I could make it to
the building before they locked it for
the night night after night this
happened and I couldn’t figure out what
was going on why can’t I remember
anything I seem to be in a daze even
tripping over my own feet the convent
had these four and a half foot window
wells all around the perimeter of the
building I can’t tell you how many times
I fell into one of these window wells
with my cello while I was walking to one
of these Orchestra rehearsals I was
never hurt and neither was my cello but
I couldn’t figure out what was going on
why am I always falling well my body was
sending me signals this isn’t working
this isn’t you wake up but I couldn’t
hear and the longer I stayed there the
more my body screamed by the end of four
years I was literally shaking with
pent-up rage
sitting in the sewing room bent over an
old singer machine or you know vacuuming
the green tiled stairwells I could
barely contain it and I didn’t know what
was going on with his shaking all I knew
is that it was getting harder and harder
to silence myself well as strange as it
may sound to you and to meet you frankly
it never occurred to me that I could
actually leave or really that I wanted
to but one day I was found myself
standing in the middle of France on a
mission trip and one of the nuns turned
to me and she said you know I see you at
a crossroads
you could either stay here and make you
know the convent your life or you could
leave and in that moment when she said
you could leave it was like a light bulb
went on I don’t have to do this anymore
so I went back home and I found the
courage to leave everything behind the
convent the commune my family my friends
everything I had ever known and risk
walking straight into hell but I had to
find out if it was possible to create a
life that didn’t require that I silenced
myself well despite all of the
predictions otherwise I didn’t end up on
the streets or addicted to heroin
instead I ended up graduating from
Wellesley College and then going on to
do my masters in writing and along the
way I discovered that I not only had a
gift for writing but I had a gift for
teaching writing so by the time I
graduated from college I had this huge
roster of students that I was working
with on their college applications
helping them express their very best
selves and really this is the key to
their applications this celebration of
who they were and what their unique
contributions were and right away these
students were getting amazing results
all of them getting into some of the
very best colleges in the nation so
looking at these results I figured wow I
found my calling helping students
recognize and express their unique self
so a number of years went by and I found
myself working with the largest class of
seniors that I’d ever worked with
all of these kids were incredible they
had top grades top SAT scores high level
extracurriculars accolades awards
captains of sports teams academic teams
everything everyone said that they
needed but something was wrong and it
started with the unbelievable levels of
stress that these kids were dealing with
they’d show up to their sessions
literally shaking their knees are
bouncing up and down they can’t look me
in the eye they’re terrified they’re not
going to get into a good enough college
that they’re not good enough
so I’m sitting next and I’m watching
this shaking and I start to have this
dawning recognition these students had
been given one path to success just the
way that I had been given one path when
I was sent to the convent
I started thinking no more the system
that takes these incredible kids and
shoves them down one path I’ve got to do
something about this but what so a few
months later it’s March and the flurry
of Admissions letters are coming out and
despite all of the stress I’m sure that
all of these amazing kids are going to
be getting into their top choice schools
they’ll be jumping for joy but it turns
out that only two students were accepted
into their very top choice schools
everybody else what got into a good
school but when it came to their very
top choice schools almost everyone was
sent to the waitlist which meant they
were in limbo now they’re accepted nor
rejected just waiting for a spot to open
up what was going on why was their
incredible academic performance their
impressive resumes their beautiful
essays why weren’t they getting accepted
what was going on with this waitlist
status and what was the point of all
this dress if it didn’t even work well I
started to look very closely at these
students and particularly the students
who had gotten into their top choice
schools what did they do differently and
that’s when I began to see that these
students had all created something of
their own something that
really lit them up and changed their
communities for the better suddenly it
was so clear to me why these other
students had all been wait-listed they
were too good on paper to reject but
they had nothing to distinguish them
from everybody else well it got me
thinking what if there were a way to
teach students to discover what lights
them up and then to create a project
that showcased this unique interest and
serves their communities in a really
meaningful way and as soon as that idea
took hold it was so easy to see that
creating a project like this would
radically change students high school
experience it would launch them out of
this old mode of passive obedience and
automatically just by having a purpose
and an excitement plummet their stress
and rock it their joy they’d start
thriving instead of surviving all
because of the pride that would come
from knowing what their gifts were and
how to bring them to the world and as a
result they’d also end up increasing
their chances of acceptance at their top
choice schools because they become so
compelling well the more I thought about
it the more obvious it was that every
student needed this to be completely lit
up with excitement at their own gifts
but the question was what exactly creep
created this excitement how could
students who’d never really felt much
excitement about anything before
suddenly wake up to their interests and
as I began to look closely at this I
began to see that the the excitement
really popped
when students began to ask two questions
what lights me up and what problems do I
want to solve and then the next step was
once they’d answer those questions was
to go out and build a bridge between the
thing that led them up Eiland the need
that they saw in their communities so
that’s exactly what I started doing and
the project’s these kids have built how
are incredible let me share some of the
results that I’ve seen I’ll start with
Bane she was an extraordinary young
woman that I met when she was a
sophomore in high school
and when I met her she was really
struggling because of severe dyslexia
but she did not want to let that define
her so she started to ask these two
questions what lights me up and what
problems do I want to solve now as a
freshman she had joined her high
school’s criminal justice program and
become incredibly passionate about it
she started to envision herself in a
career as an attorney but the fee to
join this program was out of reach for
many of her friends and she felt it was
unfair for them to be excluded from a
program that had lit her up so much and
given her so much hope about her future
so she decided that she would launch her
own nonprofit organization to raise
money for these kids and she went on to
pitch it to the Wharton School of
Business where she was the only teenager
out of 72 companies to be chosen to work
with them and shortly after that she
received $100,000 in her first
fundraising efforts and today she’s in
the process of bringing this program to
schools all over the US now this is a
student whose dyslexia was so
debilitating that one teacher told her
she had a 50% chance of graduating high
school she could have just given up but
now she’s thriving and in fact her
father called in tears to say he was now
at peace about his daughter’s future and
isn’t it this this discovery of who we
are and what lights us up and how to
bring our gifts to the world isn’t this
that gives us the greatest pride and
happiness that’s certainly the
experience that Alex had another high
school student over the past year just a
year ago alex was trudging home from
school every day and plopping himself
down in front of his computer to play
video games all afternoon
he was like so many high school students
great ow uninspired just going through
the motions but also stress because of
the immense academic pressures and the
looming college applications but Alex
was getting fed up with this situation
he knew that he had
much more to give than this so we
started asking these two questions what
lights me up and what problems do I want
to stop myself he started looking around
his high school and recognizing that
almost everyone was feeling the same way
that he was and he wanted to find a way
to help them celebrate who they were to
really focus on what was great about
them rather than just focusing on the
grades and test scores now he had heard
about humans of New York which is a
project where this photographer in New
York City goes around the streets and
takes pictures of whoever he sees and in
the process of taking pictures he’ll ask
his subjects about their lives and these
incredible stories come out well Alex
was so moved by these stories that he
decided he wanted to do something
similar so he started to go around his
high school in to ask students questions
like what’s the coolest thing you’ve
ever built what’s the best thing that’s
ever happened to you and just as he’d
hoped story after story came pouring out
by the end of the year he’d done dozens
of interviews and he’s had the
opportunity to listen to students really
open up and share stories he would
normally never get to hear but these
interviews didn’t just create a
connection for him they created a
connection for everyone involved the
students would say things like you have
no idea how much I needed that when he
was done so Alex decided to pull all of
these interviews together into a video
montage and he organized an end-of-year
celebration for his school where he
showcased all of these stories to a
standing ovation afterward Alex told me
that creating a project like this
changed him from someone who cared only
about pleasing others to everyday asking
himself how can I respect myself Wow now
that’s when we feel incredible isn’t it
when we respect ourselves now Alex was
17 years old when he created this
transformation so remember your 17 year
old self
what if back then you had asked yourself
these two question
what lights me up and what problems do I
want to solve do you think that your
life would be any different today well
what if you were to ask those questions
now what might you learn what would you
create what would you build and this
asking these kinds of questions and
helping students build their bridges
this has become my life’s work to help
students find their lights so they can
step out of those old tight constricted
places stop the shaking and gift
themselves the freedom to become their
very best selves and you know this can
feel frightening but it’s so worth it
I know because I did it I walked away
from everything that told me to obey
that told me to be quiet that told me I
had nothing to give and it was
frightening like walking straight into
hell but when that light bulb went on
and I realized there was another path it
didn’t just illuminate the way for me it
shone a light on how everyone of us can
create our own path because I believe
that every one every student every
individual every one of us has something
extraordinary to offer the world and in
this incredible innovation era we need
to rebell we need to teach our kids to
rebel against anything that would have
us believe otherwise so together let’s
rise up from our cramped desks and break
out of the old outdated pathways of
obedience so we can transform ourselves
and our communities with our incredible
gifts
[Applause]
[Music]
Please follow and like us: