I want to talk to you about authenticity
and it’s become important to me recently
for two reasons firstly because my
daughter is he who I adore 16 UI door
and he would be leaving home in just two
short years and started calling me
zombie mum and it’s because quite often
in conversations with her and other
people whether it’s everyday or
networking my mind can wander off to
think about other important stuff or to
evaluate the impression that I’m
creating to the person that I’m talking
to
I’m just not present and I’m embarrassed
to admit in quite a few conversations
really I haven’t got a clue about what
we talked about and I promise not a drop
of Prosecco has passed my lips now the
other reason that I wanted to talk about
authenticity was because I want my
business to grow and in all areas of
society whether it’s business the arts
politics or love authenticity
transparency and integrity are being
held up as virtues kite marks and
differentiators authenticity is in we
hate fake we want people to be real or
at least appear real I mean let’s face
it you can be odious a fantasy stand a
dum-dum but if you own it people were
still vote for you so I decided that to
become a better person in life and to
help my business grow I needed to work
out how to be more authentic but I
realized that had a problem
I wasn’t sure who the real me was so how
could I be authentic without knowing who
I am and my quest to find the answer to
that question is what I wanted to share
with you today now a few months ago I
was driving easy to work when she told
me that she probably gonna choose
philosophy to be her degree at
University and I Izzy philosophy is
pointless there are a bunch of naval
gazes there’s no hard
comes there’s no tangibles why not
choose something that will push the
world forward like history she said mum
you need to move on I said I’m not
old-fashioned the past can teach us
lessons for the future and she said no
you need to drive the light screen so
having some newfound animosity towards
philosophers and needing to answer this
question I thought I’d try history first
now a lot of our identity is tied up
with what we do for a living when I was
little we went to catholic church every
Sunday
and I did think that I wanted to become
a nun and then I found out two things
firstly the priest is the only one that
can do the weekly sermon and the mass
and I realized firstly that girls don’t
have the same opportunities as boys well
that’s a whole other talk and secondly
that probably my calling was more to do
with entertaining people than
administering the word of God now after
a few years I did find my passions which
were writing and performing so obviously
I spent over 20 years of my life working
in human resources now some people have
a vocation so strong they’re not willing
to compromise they could no more not be
a doctor or an artist or a musician or
an actor than breathe I really did want
to perform as desperate to do it but I
didn’t get into drama school when I was
18 and mum and dad said I should get a
job so I did but I wasn’t happy
eventually I found my way back to
performing and 16 years ago I started
doing comedy and since then I’ve left my
corporate job and I now coach people how
to speak and I write books and plays and
act so maybe that’s it
Who I am is a writer a performer and
coach but that doesn’t feel right
because I don’t believe that Who I am is
based solely on what I do for a
profession in the same way that being a
mother
a sister a daughter and a partner don’t
make me me
they are roles that I play that have
standards and expectations attached so I
was back to square one
but I’d realized one of the things that
really stops us showing our true selves
these standards and expectations
attached to the roles we play a
subjective my version of mother or
daughter may be different to yours or my
neighbors or my mother’s now I can’t
speak for the first two but I know my
mum doesn’t think I’m upholding my end
of the mother-daughter bargain and
that’s because fourteen years ago her
daughter me was married to a lawyer had
a good job as a HR manager and a new
family and now that same daughter me is
a writer slash performer slash coach in
a same-sex relationship living opposite
her ex-husband sharing care of her
granddaughter in some sort of liberal
modern sniffling sitcom one one of the
hardest things I’ve ever done is to tell
my mum that I had a girlfriend but it
probably wasn’t a great idea to tell her
in the restaurant at IKEA
I nearly choked on my Swedish meatball
because the first thing she asked is
which one of you is the man now although
who I love shouldn’t define me it does
affect my behavior because I know some
people think I’m different and it
impacts how I am with my partner in
public and also how open I am about my
sexuality in business although I guess
the cats out of the bag now
so having explored my profession the
roles I play in my sexuality I still
didn’t have the answer so I decided to
try an internet search and the best
result that came up was a promise that a
self-realization ceremony in India
lasting two hours would not only help me
discover my true self but will also give
me permanent happiness and destroy my
bad karma in the fire of knowledge I was
a bit skeptical because it had taken a
Catholic priest an hour to wash away my
sins when I was just three months old at
46 years old I don’t think two hours
even is going to cut it so I gave up on
Google and as it happens I was working
on Twitter when I saw as you all did and
I saw an article about Nietzsche and
finding your true self
now I’m paraphrasing slightly here but
Nietzsche said the journey of
self-discovery is a big bag of poop
you’ll only find yourself if you take
action do what you love and stop running
with the crowd
now I liked what he said but that was
about doing stuff again and I’d been
down that road still every cloud because
that same article led me to Seamus
Heaney to EE Cummings to James Baldwin
to Cahill Gibran and eventually to Alan
Watts
and through that bunch of philosophers
and poets I got two things the answer to
the question Who am I I’m my own
existential crisis I’m sure you’re
wondering why was
and I happy to have found the answer to
my question to have reached the summit
of the world’s greatest and most fertile
existential difficulties well I was but
I was also a bit sad because as it turns
out I’ve been missing what it means to
be alive but let me back up a bit like
many of us but maybe more say because of
my Catholic upbringing
I’ve always felt chased by my mortality
and it steered my behavior
I’ve always been driven ambitious and
wanting to make my mark on the world and
I’ll never forget someone telling me
when I was young that I should live my
life based on what I wanted people to
remember me for what I wanted people to
say about me in my eulogy and I
interpreted that to mean what I’d
achieved and as it turns out our
awareness of the fact that we’re gonna
perish could be one of our greatest
assets and also biggest failures um Alan
Watts said that human beings don’t feel
able to enjoy the present until the past
is cleared up and the future is full of
promise that means we’re so busy
worrying about what’s happened in the
past and who we’ve been or the future
that we want to get the where absent
from the present the trouble is the
future never comes and if we spend all
our time worrying about it we’ll die
never really having lived the moment we
detach ourselves from the present is
when we lose touch with the essence of
our being having been on this journey I
now believe that the answer to the
question Who am I is there is no I the
second we separate ourselves from now to
worry about the future or the past or
the I that we’re presenting to the world
is the second we cease to be we lose our
authenticity and we miss the magic
moments of life as they pass us by now I
want you to find some sort of metaphor
or analogy to share this revelation with
Izzi and it hit me all of a sudden like
a
in the face it’s the bloody game the
secret to the meaning of life and how to
be authentic was in a stupid pointless
game that I discovered five years ago
apparently two engineers had missed the
last train home from London and to avoid
thinking about their predicament they
invented the game now the game has just
got three rules everyone in the world is
playing you can’t choose not to play and
you can’t stop playing the moment you
think about the game you’ve lost the
game and number three if you lose the
game you have to tell people I’ve lost
the game the bottom line is that just
like in that game if we are not present
in the game of life we lose if we’re not
being then we’re on the sidelines
watching everyone else play it’s a head
scratcher isn’t it I was like what if I
can’t I can’t plan if I can’t think but
I think you can plan as long as you’re
not worrying about things that you can’t
control in the future and if it means
that if you are focused if you’re
working then be focused and present
doing that if you’re playing with your
kids be focused on that if it’s the last
day of your holiday enjoy the view don’t
be miserable in the sunshine thinking
about being back at work on Monday so
the lesson I’ve learned is that life is
about experiences and connections it’s
not about what we’ve achieved it’s about
how we’ve made people feel and how many
moments of the time allotted to us that
we’ve been so present that the memory is
seared into our brain and I know I’ve
had fewer of these than I’d like but
there’s a lot of the time it feels like
I’m on autopilot and the challenge for
the years ahead for me is to be as
authentic as I can by being as present
as I can I don’t want to miss a single
second and I know there’ll be plenty of
times that I fail and I lose the game
but from now on I’m going to forget
about it and enjoy the
while it lasts thank you very much
[Applause]
you
[Music]
and it’s become important to me recently
for two reasons firstly because my
daughter is he who I adore 16 UI door
and he would be leaving home in just two
short years and started calling me
zombie mum and it’s because quite often
in conversations with her and other
people whether it’s everyday or
networking my mind can wander off to
think about other important stuff or to
evaluate the impression that I’m
creating to the person that I’m talking
to
I’m just not present and I’m embarrassed
to admit in quite a few conversations
really I haven’t got a clue about what
we talked about and I promise not a drop
of Prosecco has passed my lips now the
other reason that I wanted to talk about
authenticity was because I want my
business to grow and in all areas of
society whether it’s business the arts
politics or love authenticity
transparency and integrity are being
held up as virtues kite marks and
differentiators authenticity is in we
hate fake we want people to be real or
at least appear real I mean let’s face
it you can be odious a fantasy stand a
dum-dum but if you own it people were
still vote for you so I decided that to
become a better person in life and to
help my business grow I needed to work
out how to be more authentic but I
realized that had a problem
I wasn’t sure who the real me was so how
could I be authentic without knowing who
I am and my quest to find the answer to
that question is what I wanted to share
with you today now a few months ago I
was driving easy to work when she told
me that she probably gonna choose
philosophy to be her degree at
University and I Izzy philosophy is
pointless there are a bunch of naval
gazes there’s no hard
comes there’s no tangibles why not
choose something that will push the
world forward like history she said mum
you need to move on I said I’m not
old-fashioned the past can teach us
lessons for the future and she said no
you need to drive the light screen so
having some newfound animosity towards
philosophers and needing to answer this
question I thought I’d try history first
now a lot of our identity is tied up
with what we do for a living when I was
little we went to catholic church every
Sunday
and I did think that I wanted to become
a nun and then I found out two things
firstly the priest is the only one that
can do the weekly sermon and the mass
and I realized firstly that girls don’t
have the same opportunities as boys well
that’s a whole other talk and secondly
that probably my calling was more to do
with entertaining people than
administering the word of God now after
a few years I did find my passions which
were writing and performing so obviously
I spent over 20 years of my life working
in human resources now some people have
a vocation so strong they’re not willing
to compromise they could no more not be
a doctor or an artist or a musician or
an actor than breathe I really did want
to perform as desperate to do it but I
didn’t get into drama school when I was
18 and mum and dad said I should get a
job so I did but I wasn’t happy
eventually I found my way back to
performing and 16 years ago I started
doing comedy and since then I’ve left my
corporate job and I now coach people how
to speak and I write books and plays and
act so maybe that’s it
Who I am is a writer a performer and
coach but that doesn’t feel right
because I don’t believe that Who I am is
based solely on what I do for a
profession in the same way that being a
mother
a sister a daughter and a partner don’t
make me me
they are roles that I play that have
standards and expectations attached so I
was back to square one
but I’d realized one of the things that
really stops us showing our true selves
these standards and expectations
attached to the roles we play a
subjective my version of mother or
daughter may be different to yours or my
neighbors or my mother’s now I can’t
speak for the first two but I know my
mum doesn’t think I’m upholding my end
of the mother-daughter bargain and
that’s because fourteen years ago her
daughter me was married to a lawyer had
a good job as a HR manager and a new
family and now that same daughter me is
a writer slash performer slash coach in
a same-sex relationship living opposite
her ex-husband sharing care of her
granddaughter in some sort of liberal
modern sniffling sitcom one one of the
hardest things I’ve ever done is to tell
my mum that I had a girlfriend but it
probably wasn’t a great idea to tell her
in the restaurant at IKEA
I nearly choked on my Swedish meatball
because the first thing she asked is
which one of you is the man now although
who I love shouldn’t define me it does
affect my behavior because I know some
people think I’m different and it
impacts how I am with my partner in
public and also how open I am about my
sexuality in business although I guess
the cats out of the bag now
so having explored my profession the
roles I play in my sexuality I still
didn’t have the answer so I decided to
try an internet search and the best
result that came up was a promise that a
self-realization ceremony in India
lasting two hours would not only help me
discover my true self but will also give
me permanent happiness and destroy my
bad karma in the fire of knowledge I was
a bit skeptical because it had taken a
Catholic priest an hour to wash away my
sins when I was just three months old at
46 years old I don’t think two hours
even is going to cut it so I gave up on
Google and as it happens I was working
on Twitter when I saw as you all did and
I saw an article about Nietzsche and
finding your true self
now I’m paraphrasing slightly here but
Nietzsche said the journey of
self-discovery is a big bag of poop
you’ll only find yourself if you take
action do what you love and stop running
with the crowd
now I liked what he said but that was
about doing stuff again and I’d been
down that road still every cloud because
that same article led me to Seamus
Heaney to EE Cummings to James Baldwin
to Cahill Gibran and eventually to Alan
Watts
and through that bunch of philosophers
and poets I got two things the answer to
the question Who am I I’m my own
existential crisis I’m sure you’re
wondering why was
and I happy to have found the answer to
my question to have reached the summit
of the world’s greatest and most fertile
existential difficulties well I was but
I was also a bit sad because as it turns
out I’ve been missing what it means to
be alive but let me back up a bit like
many of us but maybe more say because of
my Catholic upbringing
I’ve always felt chased by my mortality
and it steered my behavior
I’ve always been driven ambitious and
wanting to make my mark on the world and
I’ll never forget someone telling me
when I was young that I should live my
life based on what I wanted people to
remember me for what I wanted people to
say about me in my eulogy and I
interpreted that to mean what I’d
achieved and as it turns out our
awareness of the fact that we’re gonna
perish could be one of our greatest
assets and also biggest failures um Alan
Watts said that human beings don’t feel
able to enjoy the present until the past
is cleared up and the future is full of
promise that means we’re so busy
worrying about what’s happened in the
past and who we’ve been or the future
that we want to get the where absent
from the present the trouble is the
future never comes and if we spend all
our time worrying about it we’ll die
never really having lived the moment we
detach ourselves from the present is
when we lose touch with the essence of
our being having been on this journey I
now believe that the answer to the
question Who am I is there is no I the
second we separate ourselves from now to
worry about the future or the past or
the I that we’re presenting to the world
is the second we cease to be we lose our
authenticity and we miss the magic
moments of life as they pass us by now I
want you to find some sort of metaphor
or analogy to share this revelation with
Izzi and it hit me all of a sudden like
a
in the face it’s the bloody game the
secret to the meaning of life and how to
be authentic was in a stupid pointless
game that I discovered five years ago
apparently two engineers had missed the
last train home from London and to avoid
thinking about their predicament they
invented the game now the game has just
got three rules everyone in the world is
playing you can’t choose not to play and
you can’t stop playing the moment you
think about the game you’ve lost the
game and number three if you lose the
game you have to tell people I’ve lost
the game the bottom line is that just
like in that game if we are not present
in the game of life we lose if we’re not
being then we’re on the sidelines
watching everyone else play it’s a head
scratcher isn’t it I was like what if I
can’t I can’t plan if I can’t think but
I think you can plan as long as you’re
not worrying about things that you can’t
control in the future and if it means
that if you are focused if you’re
working then be focused and present
doing that if you’re playing with your
kids be focused on that if it’s the last
day of your holiday enjoy the view don’t
be miserable in the sunshine thinking
about being back at work on Monday so
the lesson I’ve learned is that life is
about experiences and connections it’s
not about what we’ve achieved it’s about
how we’ve made people feel and how many
moments of the time allotted to us that
we’ve been so present that the memory is
seared into our brain and I know I’ve
had fewer of these than I’d like but
there’s a lot of the time it feels like
I’m on autopilot and the challenge for
the years ahead for me is to be as
authentic as I can by being as present
as I can I don’t want to miss a single
second and I know there’ll be plenty of
times that I fail and I lose the game
but from now on I’m going to forget
about it and enjoy the
while it lasts thank you very much
[Applause]
you
[Music]
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