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99U A Behance Conference
"Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration." (Thomas Alva Edison)
Brené Brown, author and vulnerability researcher
Ok, so...this past weekend a really good friend of mine who lives in NY called
and said, "How are you feeling about the 99 conference?"
And my answer was, "What do you think is the least invasive way
to extract eyeball juice from a first-grader?"
And his response was, "Oh god! Are you in that place?"
And I said, "No, really, here's the idea: there's total pinkeye epidemic
in my son's class and if I can get some of juice I can get myself pinkeye
which would be a legitimate excuse not to go".
And I can even do a selfie with a big eye and then it would be legit.
And he said, "I thought you're excited." And I said, "I was excited, but as I was
working on my keynote, I realized that I have kind of tricked myself into
believing that this was my tribe. And then I realized my obsession
with fonts doesn't really make me one of you.
And he said, "Well, what was going on when you thought you were one of them?"
And I said, "I don't know, I have to think about it..."
And he said, "You're an researcher, it doesn't necessarily mean
that you're not a creative". I said, "No, these are The Creatives!
These are the people that no one sat with in high school
and that everybody wants to be when they grow up."
I'm a researcher. No one sat with us in a high school, no one still sits with us.
So I thought about it. I thought, "OK, so I'm a researcher, I study connection,
I study vulnerability, I study love, and then I realized...
why I thought you were my tribe. I think it's because...
design is a function of connection.
There's nothing more vulnerable than creativity...
and what is art if it's not love?"
So it made sense to me to be here.
And then I thought, "OK, 99 percent perspiration...
they said: don't talk about inspirational stuff, talk about the how-to's".
My name... sometimes I name my keynote presentations... things that
will make me feel better about being here. So this one is called sweaty creatives.
Because I know what it means to be a sweaty creative.
Because I create all the time, when I write,
the way I translate my research... when I talk...
And I know what the perspiration feels like.
And so what I want to talk about today is the perspiration that no one talks about
very often, and that's not the perspiration from the hard work
and the laborious part of creating, it's the perspiration from fear.
From the cold sweat. The stuff that pops up on our eyebrows
when it's not supposed to be there, because we're presenting an idea
or talking about something that we care about, and when we're begging
our body not to sweat, like when they said, "We're filming you agains black,
can you wear something else?" I'm like "Uhm, no."
That 99 percent perspiration thing, I'm down with that, I got that,
my option will be "Maybe".
So I know about sweaty creatives. I want to tell you about
something that changed my life as a creative person. And it's a quote
from Theodore Roosevelt and it is completely... I know that it sounds cheezy
and cliché to think that quote can change your life but sometimes when you hear
something when you need to hear it and you're ready to hear it,
something shifts inside of you, and so my story is that I'm a researcher and
I never thought I would have a big public career, and so I did a TED talk
that went very viral and in the wake of that I was kind of everywhere
for a couple of months, on every CNN.com, NPR, it was everywhere...
and something I wasn't used to.
And the marching orders from my therapist and my husband were:
"Do not read the comments online." So I read all of the comments online.
And so one morning I woke up and there were two or three new articles out
and I started reading the comments. And they were devastating.
They weren't about my work. They were about me. They were super-personal.
And they were the things that creative people play in their mind
and then give up doing what they really want to do.
If I asked every single one of you, "What would you try if you knew people
would never say this about you, what would this be?"
Those were the comments that morning. "Of course she embraces imperfection,
what choice does she have? Look how she looks!"
"I feel sorry for her kids" "Less research, more botox"
Just mean personal attacks. The things that really up until that moment
had inspired me to stay very small in my life and my career.
Just so I could avoid these things. So that morning Steve and the kids leave,
I stay home, I get on the couch and I watch 8 hours of Downton Abbey.
And when it's over, I don't want to turn off Downton Abbey because
the minute you turn off the Downton Abbey
it's soccer practice and dinner... and back to the mean people.
Should I get botox? Maybe if I stand still when I talk...
So I get my laptop and I do a search for who was president of US during the
Downton Abbey era. Have you ever done like you're numbing your TV or movie
and so when it's over you just stay in that space by learning more about the actors,
what's going on... I've been doing this long enough to know this means
you're laughing with me, not at me! So I put it in, and Theodore Rousevelt
comes up, and the quote comes up. And I read it. And this is what it says,
it's a quote from a speech that he gave in the early 1900 of the Sorbonne
and a lot of people call it "The man in the arena" speech, and this is
the passage that changes my life.
"It is not the critic who counts; it is not the man who points out
how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds
could have done it better. The credit belongs to the person
who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with
blood and sweat and dust. Who at the best in the end
knows the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst,
if he fails, he fails daring greatly".
So the moment that I read that
I closed my laptop and this is what shifted in me: 3 huge things.
First, I spent the last 12 years studying vulnerability and that quote was everything
I know about vulnerability. It is not about winning, it's not about losing,
it's about showing up and being seen.
The second thing, "This is who I want to be."
I want to create. I want to make things that didn't exist before I touched them.
I want to show up and be seen in my work and in my life. And if you're going to show up
and be seen, there's only one guarantee. And that is, you'll get your *** kicked.
That is the guarantee! That's the only certainty you have.
If you're going to go into the arena and spend any time in there...
whatsoever, especially if you're committed to creating in your life,
you'll get your *** kicked. So you have to decide at that moment, I think for all of us,
if courage is a value that we hold, this is a consequence. You can't avoid it.
The third thing which really set me free (and I think Steve, my husband,
would argue has made me someone dangerous)
is kind of the new philosophy about criticism which is this:
if you're not in the arena also getting you *** kicked,
I'm not interested in your feedback. That's it.
(applauds)
If you have constructive information, feedback to give me - I want it.
I'm an academic, I'm hard-wired for wrestling around with stuff like that.
"Hey! You forgot all this literature! You should have done this...
Terrible sentence construction over here..." Let's do it! I love that.
But if you're in the cheap seats not pulling yourself on the line
and just talking about how can I do it better...
I'm in no way interested in your feedback.
So I know about the sweaty creative. What I want to do today is I want to talk
very specifically about the arena.
This is where we sweat.
How many of you know this feeling by just looking at the picture?
Yes? Show of hands! How many of you know this feeling?
So this is what we do down here. I don't know what you do down here,
but I've set up camp down here. I stringed up twinkle lights,
I order take-out food, I live down here sometimes
just dreaming about the day that I come up
and how awesome it's going to be. But I stay down here a lot.
Here's what we do:
the arena is right there, you can see it, the light is there
and the fear is this: I'm scared, lot of self-doubt, comparison, anxiety, uncertainty.
And so what the most people do when they're walking into the arena
and those things are going to greet them at top, what do you do?
You armor up, right? This is where I would imagine the old days
when they've got all the stuff on.
But god that stuff is heavy! And that stuff is suffocating.
And the problem is when you armor up against vulnerability, you shut yourself off.
And I've said this to audiences before but I've never said it to an audience
where it is more true than today, this second.
When you armor up in this hallway,
you shut yourself off from everything that you do and that you love
because vulnerability is certainly a part of fear and self-doubt and grief
and uncertainty and shame... but it's also the birthplace of these.
It's the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, trust, empathy, creativity, innovation.
Without vulnerability you cannot create. So what I think you're asked to do
as a creative on a daily basis is walk through this hall,
get to the top of the stairs and get naked.
(laughter)
Of course!
Get naked. Get really real. Put yourself out there and walk out there.
So people can see you and see what you've made and see what you're doing.
So when we walk out... this is what we see.
Lots of seats. Lots of people. But we focus in... on this: the critics.
I used to think the best way to put your work out into the world
is to make sure that critics are not in the arena.
But you have no control over who's in the arena.
And the best way I have found is to know that they're there
and to know exactly what they're going to say to you.
Because each of you know.
The three seats will always be taken when you walk into the arena,
when you share your work with someone. Three seats: shame, scarcity and comparison.
Shame, completely universal human emotion. We all have it. It's that gremlin
that whispers: "You're not enough." or, if you're feeling pretty confident,
like when Scott was talking I went back and forth from like on a ping-pong table
with gremlins, back from "OMG I'm not enough" to "I can do this"...
"Oh, who do you think you are?" - that's the other gremlin. That's how it works.
"Look at you, big for your britches."
I clearly have Texas gremlins. not everyone says this but they do.
So shame always has a seat. The other seat that's always taken is scarcity.
"What am I doing that's original? Everyone else is doing this."
"A hundred and fifty people are doing it who are better trained than I am."
"What am I contributing?", "Does this really mater?"
The third seat - always comparison. How many do struggle with comparison?
OMG, comparison is a nightmare. I made a pact to not to talk with anyone
in The Green Room because I was afraid that I would end up doing...
"So what are you talking about?" "That's interesting... because I'm going FIRST."
(laughter)
So if it'd sound super good and I think I suck comparatively... I may say that.
And then I'm catching a flight to Dallas.
Comparison is always there. The fourth seat I left open for you.
You've got to know who is in the forth seat. Is it a teacher? Is it a parent?
Is it a *** ex-coworker? Might everyone had one of those?
The thing is, if I don't care what people think, I don't worry about the critics
it the arena... it's huge red flag for me. We're hard-wired for connection.
When we stop caring what people think we lose our capacity for connection.
When we've become defined by what people think, we lose our capacity
to be vulnerable. Not caring what people think is its own kind of hustle.
Trust me. So rather than locking these folks out from the arena,
what I'm going to invite you to do... this way maybe... Reserve seats for them.
Which doesn't seem like a good thing to do but I've 13000 pieces of data and I've done
this work for 12 years and what I've found or what I've learned from these folks
and then try to apply at my own life that has changed my life...
is to reserve a seat, to take the critics to lunch and to simply say
when I'm trying to do something new and hard and original and
I'm trying to be creative and I try to innovate... to say "I see you, I hear you,
but I'm going to show up and do this anyway.
And I've got a seat for you and you're welcome to come but I'm not
interested in your feedback." The other piece that's tough is
to me, if you're going to spend your life in the arena, if you're going
to spend your life showing up, really showing up,
there's a couple of things that you need. The first, the clarity of values.
You have to... When I came out here, I knew I could screw this completely up,
I can get booed off stage, bad things could happen... but I don't have a choice!
Because of courage is my value. I have to do this. Whether it's successful or not.
It's irrelevant. So a real clarity of values is important, the other thing is...
you've got to have at least one person in your life who's willing to pick you up
and dust you off and look at you when you fail which hopefully you will
because if you're not failing you're not really showing up,
but who's willing to look at you when you fail and say: "Man, that sucked!
(laughter)
Yeah, it was totally as bad as you thought. But you were brave.
Let's get you cleaned up because you're going to go back in."
And this is someone who loves you
not despite your imperfections and vulnerabilities but because of them.
And they should have great seats in the arena. I forgot for decade
to invite these people into my arena! Because, you know, it's the old,
I wanted to say Karl Marx, but it's Groucho Marx... difference!
(laughter)
I'm a social worker, we read a lot more about Karl than Groucho.
I didn't want to belong to a club that would let me in, I forgot to invite
people because I thought: "If you're my fan, if you're here supporting me,
how important could you be? I'm trying to win over the people who hate me!
You simply love me. You simply hold my hair back when I'm puking.
You pay bills with me, raise kids with me. How important could you be?
I'm looking for the stranger in the mall that's who I'm trying to win over."
Yes or no? Okay.
The last part is... so I guess that real specific how-to's are these:
The world keeps going whether you know it or not.
The critics are in the arena whether you identify them and think about
their messages that keep us small... they're there whether you do that or not.
What I have found in my life and what I have found in my research
which fueled what I did to my life is that the people who have
the most courage, who are willing to show up and be the most vulnerable
are the ones who are very clear about who the critics are.
The ones who reserve seats for them and say "I hear you, I get it,
I know where the messaging is coming from, I'm not buying it anymore."
So they get very clear.
The last thing which I think is the hardest is this:
one of these seats needs to be reserved for you.
One of these seats needs to be reserved for me.
I need, when we look up, and we're putting an idea,
our piece of art, our design forward, who do you think the biggest critic
in the arena normally is? Yourself.
And so definitely me.
I have never watched either of those TED talks.
Because it's not in service of the work for me, and I try to do things
that are only in service of my work because what would it serve for me to watch it?
I would sit there and go, "OMG, that sucks, that's not what you were going to say..."
You know? We're so self-critical.
And one of the things that I think happens (and I think this happens a lot)
it happens in different professions but I think I see it a lot with creatives
is there's an ideal of what you're supposed to be
and what a lot of us end up doing is we orphan the parts of ourselves
that don't fit with that ideal "is supposed to be".
And what it leaves when we orphan all of those parts of us
is it just leaves the critic and so reserved in the seat is this...
Where we came from, how we started, our families (that's me the oldest of course)
(laughter)
the lost years,
(laughter)
the years where I was so lost and confused and hurt and disillusioned
that I thought the only path to freedom was a flock of Sybil's haircut.
(laughter)
"The higher the hair, the closer to God", we say in Texas.
The people who love us, the moments that make us who we are...
And in that share should be this person: the person who believes in what we're doing
and why we're doing it, and the person who says:
"Yeah, it's so scary to show up, it feels dangerous to be seen,
it's terrifying. But if it not as scary, dangerous or terrifying
as getting to the end of our lives and thinking, "What if I would have shown up?"
"What would have been different?"
So here's to sweaty creatives. Thank y'all for having me here today...
(applauds)
It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen.
99U A Behance Conference