Stories Define our Lives

I'm about to break a lot of Toastmaster rules. I'm going to use notes. I'm going to tell you about my fear of speaking. And, I'm going to tell you a speech that I haven't practiced.

I'm going to start with the fear. Standing right here makes my heart beat about twice as fast as it was when I was sitting back there. I'm really nervous. The story I tell myself is that I haven't prepared enough, and that by not preparing I'm disrespecting you as the audience. Not only that, but I came into a meeting where we had two fantastic speakers precede me, and now I'm shaking. Beautiful speeches Joris, Andrea. I really appreciated them.

If you don't remember anything else from my jumbled hot mess of a speech, I want you to remember just one thing: The stories that we tell ourselves, and that we tell other people, define our lives.

The first thing I ever remember anyone telling me is, my mother, she said to me (this is embarrassing): You're going to break a lot of girls hearts.

It's one of those things that you repeat to yourself and then it becomes true. Later people would tell me: You're smart. You're arrogant. You're lazy. You're not a good student. You're weird. You're a leader. You're ambitious. You're not a good speaker. You're very self-aware. You're inspiring. You're not a good student/ You’re' adventurous. You're impulsive. You're lucky. You are a good speaker. You're not very self-aware. You're incompetent. You never loved me.

Two years ago, I was living in switzerland. and I met a friend, a childhood friend. someone I hadn't met in 17 years. She said to me: Josh you're just as energetic and intense as when you were a little kid. I don't think of myself as energetic and intense. What she told me was a truth, that I had never heard before. That I didn't imagine about myself.

Let me take you back. In 1994 I was 6 years old. I was living in Germany. We lived on a dead-end street, a beautiful little road. With a big white house. Two cars parked in front. And inside the first floor was a large open space with two large white round columns. In the back there was a large grassy yard. In the winter we would go sledding on the nearby fields and build snowmen. In the summer we would run in the wheat fields, taller than us. We'd whizz around a bend and disappear. We'd create mud balls and throw them at each other. I had a dog called Sammy. He was a golden retriever. I would jump up "Ye-haw". He was my little horse. I was energetic and intense!

But when I was 9, we moved to New Zealand. And from being a lively kid. I went to sitting at the back of the classroom, and I didn't understand a word that the teacher was saying. I didn't speak any English. I started to learn and I started to feel smaller, even though I was getting bigger. Something changed inside me. I started to listen to the stories that other people told  about me and stopped listening to the story that was trying to speak out from inside me. So, when two years ago an old childhood friend told me that I was still as energetic and intense as I had been as a little kid, it was shocking, but it was also a huge relief. It was exciting to maybe become myself again.

We have to beleive our dreams before anyone else does. Otherwise we end up living other people's dreams.