translator: queenie leereviewer: peter van de ven i want to talk about anxiety. i have anxiety. i've always had anxiety. i was a born worrier. if i have nothing to worry about,i'll worry about that. so you can imaginewhen the good people of tedx reached out and invited meto be a guest speaker here today, truth be told, i thought it was a joke, and then i freaked out.
my thought processwent a little like this: [1] wow! this is amazing; [2] is this a joke?they can't be serious; [3] i can't do this. there is no way. i hate public speaking.doesn't everybody hate public speaking? [4] actually, maybe i can do this;and [5] wow! this is amazing. this is amazing, being up here,doing this talk, it is great. but you can see my thought process here. it went from really excited, to fearful,back to excited again.
and i think a lot of usgo through this thought process when we are presented with opportunitiesthat are outside our comfort zone. being here on this stage,on the other side of the world, is definitely outside my comfort zone. but i'm not just herebecause i have anxiety. i'm here because the waythat i view my anxiety has changed. i now view my fears, my worries,and my anxiety as a good thing, and i use it to my advantage. when anxiety is at its peak for me,it can mean a number of things.
mostly, it can meana difficulty in sleeping; it can mean difficulty in eating; and it can mean sitting up in bedat two, three, four a.m. in the morning, obsessing about the tiniest of details and role-playing different situationsor scenarios in my head about how the futuremay or may not play out. now, the ironic thing with meis that in my professional life, i own and run a pr agencyback home in australia. and when i put my work head on,my professional head on,
my anxiety and my fear,it completely vanishes. i feel very strong and confidentin the work that i do, and so i have this struggle. i feel like i havethis dual personality thing going on because the waythat i am in my professional life is very different to how i amin my personal life. and to be honest, i feel likei've probably hidden behind my career for such a long time because if i'm working -and i am a workaholic -
if i'm working, it can mean i can avoidgoing out to different social events, or i can avoid going out in general. and so i startedmy own pr agency when i was 27, and many people told me that i couldn't. it couldn't be done,and that i didn't have enough experience. and for me, i thinkthere is a lot of power in "no." and i live my life like this;i get told "no" a lot. i remember being at school,
and my teachers told methat i probably wouldn't amount to much, and i would certainlystruggle to go on to university. let's just say i was no scholar,i was shit at school. (laughter) when the teachers would tell methese negative comments, it drove me to work harderto not only prove them wrong but to get to where iactually wanted to be. i did go on to universityand i graduated with honors. and then i went outand scored my absolute dream job,
which was working for the biggestrecord company in the world. it was an incredible job, and i was the nationalpublicity manager there. i was working with all sortsof bands and artists, anyone from the foo fighters -one of my favorite bands - to people like celine dion. so it was very diverse,and it was an incredible job. i was there for eight years, and then i started my own pr company.
i've had my own pr companyfor the last five years, and we're going from strength to strength. just recently i realized that my whole lifei've been fighting "no," and i realized that i haven't actuallybeen fighting my fears. and maybe this has somethingto do with my anxiety. and so, i want to lookat fear for a moment. now, research has shown that 40% of the things that we worry about
never actually happen; 30% are in the pastand they can't be helped; 12% involve the affairs of others, so it's not even our businessto worry about them; 10% relate to sickness,either real or imagined; so, that means that only 8%of the things that we worry about are only ever likely to happen. there are two ways of looking at fear. one is to do absolutely nothingand just remain in that bubble of comfort,
and this is how i approached my fear:i didn't approach my fear. i rarely stepped outside that comfort zone and looked at the issuesthat i was having in my personal life. all i did was work - i was a workaholic. i was comfortable working,working, working, and i was comfortablewhen i was in the office. but now, the way that iapproach fear is different. i take on fear like a warrior, and for me, this has given meunlimited opportunities
and also unlimited happiness, as well. so speaking of happiness, i want to speakabout my husband for a moment. this is my husband; his name is phil. he is a professional musician,and he's a great guitarist, and he plays to thousandsof people in his professional life. but outside his work life,he's like a professional hobbyist as well. he has so much stuff going on in his life, from surfing, to cooking,to gardening, to fishing.
this guy has it all going on. my husband is the happiest personthat i have ever met, and it can't just bebecause he married me. i'm sure that playsa really big role in his happiness, but that can't just be it. so when i looked at my husband's life, i realized that, hang on a minute, he's conquering fearon a pretty big level almost every day in his professional life.
he goes out there, and he plays guitarto thousands and thousands of people. but in his personal lifehe is also attacking fear, too. i mean, the thingsthat he does would freak me out, i mean, he'd go surfing,and he's a karate expert. and so, i took inspirationfrom my husband, and i thought, "ok, i'm goingto get myself a hobby, and i want my hobbyto address some of the fears that i'm having in my own life as well." so i refer to this as my fear project.
i created a hobby,and it addressed one of my fears. so what was my fear? what was i scared of? well, one of the things - there are lots of things i'm scared of - but just one of the thingsthat i was scared of was being in front of the camera. and for me, again, this is funny because in my professional lifethat's what i do for a living.
i put other people in front of the camera; i put the spotlight on everybody elsethat i'm working with. but when it came to me, well, that was a whole other thing. so, i created a youtube channel,and i created a youtube channel because it would address my fear because i physically have to bein front of the camera. i'm my own host on my youtube channel. and secondly,
it would give me this creative outletto get outside of my work head - because i was very much within my own head and very much focusedon work, work, work - and so it would give me a creative outlet to talk about something elsethat i was passionate about. so what was i passionate about outside pr? well, one of the thingsthat i'm passionate about - and i must admit i'm a little bit nervousto talk about this at a tedx talk, but it's all about addressing your fears -
so one of the thingsthat i'm passionate about is designer handbags. yes ... you did not see that comingat a tedx talk, did you? no, but it is materialistic, absolutely, and it's superficial, i agree with you. it is, i'm guilty of it. some people go skiing in aspen for fun. i don't have time for that.
so, i buy designer handbags, and to me, they're likelittle pieces of art, and i love them. so on my youtube channel, i talk about designer handbags,talk about other things as well. i talk about fashion and travel,and i do these really fun q&a videos, where my viewers write inand ask me questions, like: what is it like to be a girl boss? how can you afford a 3,000 dollar handbag?
and how do you justify thatto your husband? so as you can see i'm really tackling the big issueson my youtube channel. but the greatest thingin having this fear project is that it's actually conqueredone of my fears in addressing them. and this is really the ideathat i want to get across today is thinking about the things that you worry aboutor that make you anxious and creating a projectto tackle those fears head on.
now, my youtube channelhas had hundreds of thousands of views, and that's awesome. but in stepping outside my comfort zone and attacking one of my fears head on, like a warrior, has actually presenteda lot of amazing opportunities. in fact, the reason i'm here todayis because one of the tedx organizers was a viewer on my youtube channel. so being here was somethingthat i could never have imagined
prior to tackling my fear. so now the greatest thing isn't that i have thousandsof subscribers on youtube channel, the greatest thing is thatin conquering one of my fears, my anxiety levels have actually decreased, and my happinesshas increased across the board, not only in my professional lifebut also in my personal life, as well. i now like to refer to myselfas a fear fighter. this is really the ideathat i want to share today.
it's all about creating a fear project, the things that worry you,make you anxious in your life, taking them head onand becoming a fear fighter. when i stopped worryingabout everything in my life, my life got so much easier,and my life got more productive. you'll see in this photo,i'm jumping up and down on a beach looking very happy and looking very free, and this is how i feelwhen i'm conquering my fears. i don't always look like this.
i certainly did not look like thisbefore this tedx talk today. i guess you could say that this tedx talkhas been like a fear project for me because it's certainlyoutside my comfort zone. and when i feel anxiousor when i feel worried, i go ahead and i createanother fear project, and i will probably haveanother 200 fear projects to go. my call to action is this: take on fear. don't always take "no" for an answer.
create fear projectsand become a fear fighter, and use fear to motivate youand energize you to actually get on and do the thingsthat you want to do in your life. be the warrior, not the worrier. thank you. (applause)