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I'm sixteen years old. My mom walks into my bedroom. She says that she's worried about me. She says that I need to start eating. And then she bursts into tears and starts crying uncontrollably. And the reason she's crying is because she's seeing her youngest girl, her youngest daughter, disappear in front of her. Now my mom never cries, and seeing my mom so upset, in that moment, something breaks open inside of me. I look at myself in the mirror and, all of a sudden, I can see that the white top I'm wearing, which is supposed to be very tight, is actually just hanging loose on my body. Now I have lost fifteen kilos in a very short time, and it all started because of one simple rule that I made up that I was going to stop eating after 6:00 p.m. in the evening even if I had not eaten during the whole day. Now, this just became one out of many rules that I made up so that I could control my weight so that I could look good. I start seeing a psychologist at the age of sixteen. I meet Christer every Thursday morning. And he shows me, he makes me understand the enormous power that my mind has over my reality. Not only how I perceive myself, but how I perceive others and my entire world. And I become probably the most dedicated sixteen-year-old girl ever that just wanted to learn and grow and heal from within. Looking back, I ask myself, "Why did that happen? How did that start?" And I realized that I started to pay a lot of attention to what others were doing, how I thought I should look, what I should do. And all that I really truly wanted was just to be loved, seen, and heard for who I truly was. So I'm five years old. It's Sunday morning. I'm with my parents in this huge furniture store, but I'm lost. I'm walking, trying to spot my parents, and this tall woman walks to me. She has a warm and friendly smile. She looks me in the eyes. She asks me what's my name? And I tell her. I look her in the eyes, and I say, "I'm Pippi." Now just to be clear, my name is Natalie. But in that moment, my mom and dad instantly knew that it was me because who I thought I was and who I wanted to be growing up was Pippi Longstocking. Some of you are smiling. So for those of you who don't know, Pippi Longstocking is the main fictional character of a series of children adventure stories that pretty much every young girl in Sweden either read or watched. Now Pippi Longstocking—she's different. She definitely does not fit in at all. She has this adventurous spirit. She even has a big bag of gold coins in her attic. So this little girl is financially free. She gets to live the life she wants. She can design the life that she truly wants. Growing up, this little girl—she was my hero. I believe that Pippi had a powerful connection to her heart's voice, which I believe is an energy that we all can tap into—a pulse of the universe—if we just decide to tune inwards and fully listen. And when I was sixteen years old, looking at myself in the mirror, I could see that I completely had lost my connection to my heart's voice. I'm twenty-nine years old. I wake up in panic. My heart is speeding like this. I'm drowned in sweat. And I look at the clock. It's 3:00 a.m. again. I'm having another anxiety attack. And this has been going on for weeks. I'm shit scared, and I don't know what to do. I walk to my bathroom. I flush cold water into my face. And the reflection of who I'm seeing—myself—makes me sad because I don't recognize myself. My skin is telling me that I'm not feeling well. I don't look healthy. I look quite sick. But instead of listening, I get myself together. Four hours later, I'm at work, suited and booted, showing up with my perfect smile. I'm a senior manager, and I'm greeting my staff with this big smile. At work, I'm performing excellently. Everything is great. Everything is really great. It's just that I feel like I'm slowly dying from within. I feel like I have no pulse. "I can, and I will. I can, and I will. I can, and I will." This becomes my mantra during a transition period where I finally decide to tune back into my heart's voice. I decide to quit my job. I decide to sell pretty much everything that I own so that I can put on my big backpack again and go travel the world because that's all my heart wants to do. Fast forward six months. I'm in Rishikesh, Northern India—the capital of yoga. Rishikesh is surrounded by the foothills of the Himalayas. Through the valley, we had the river Ganges flowing freely. Wild monkeys running freely. There's something magical and mystical and spiritual with the whole atmosphere of just being there. I love it. 6:00 a.m. I'm sitting on the cold stone floor in the yoga shala. It's freezing. I'm covered in layers, and layers, and layers of weird clothes I got at the market stands—elephants and crazy colors. I do not look like I would've done in the yoga studio back home for sure. But I feel like I'm belonging. I'm surrounded by yogis from all over the world. They're chanting in Sanskrit. Back then, I don't really understand what they're saying. I kind of sneak peek like this—kind of trying to understand what they're actually saying. It doesn't actually really matter because, sitting on that cold stone floor at 6:00 a.m. every morning, something peacefully begins to grow within me. So yoga and meditation completely change me. And my time in India brings me back to life. Not only am I traveling again, I am becoming Pippi. No rules, no restraints—just me out there feeling free. I'm not rich in money anymore, but I am oh so rich in spirit. I get to see the ancient temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I sit for hours to talk with the locals in the countryside. I get completely lost in the wild, lush jungle of rainforest of Borneo. I dance under the stars under the full moon on the beaches in Thailand. I get to connect with amazing people that I still call my best friends today. I get to have the ultimate Eat, Pray, Love romance in Bali. It was magical. My journey of following my heart's voice has been littered with ups and downs. I can't even begin to share all the mess that I've experienced. It's not a linear path. I've fallen down more times than I can even begin to tell, but I always brought myself back up. Things go sideways. During my travel adventures, I lost my luggage more than once. I got robbed. Of course, I got parasites in India a couple of times. And the amazing Eat, Pray, Love romance? Three years later, a painful, painful heartbreak. My heart cracks wide open. Now, I know that it takes something if I say that I want to be happy. And I've learned that my biggest battles in life, going through eating disorders, burnout, painful heartbreaks, among other things, that these battles have been gifts and blessings because they had me look deep into all the BS that I had living inside me for so many years. I had to learn not only how to love and accept myself, I had to learn how to fully love myself. And this is important—not only how to love the sunny side up of Natalie that I felt was actually quite easy to love. I had to learn how to fully actually love all those sides of me that I spent so many years running away from. The things that I didn't really want to identify myself with. The things that I felt were the dark sides that I didn't want anyone to know about. But because I've been committed to fully, fully, fully, not only face all of these sides of me, but to actually deal with it, and to make peace with it—that means that I'm no longer restrained by any rules. I get to decide and make up my own rules. I get to live my life free. I get to feel that I'm alive. I get to define success and happiness on my own terms. And I get to create my own golden coins. So what I really, really needed to do the whole time, as I understand now, was to give myself permission to just be who I am. And here I am today, standing in front of you, barefoot, living in Bali, which used to be such a big dream of mine for a lot of years. Standing here feeling free, feeling alive, and feeling very Pippified. Now I learned that my magic, that our magic, is to be found in the mess. And it turns out that my mess is my golden coins and that this is the currency that I get to use when I tap into my heart's voice and the pulse of the universe. Thank you.

When I was young, maybe up until eight years old, I was a girl full of fears, insecurities, extremely shy, and very sensitive. Sometimes I could cry easily, even though it was for a small reason. I was raised up by a conservative family in Central Java. My parents and I lived in Central Java, Yogyakarta, where my parents had a very strict disciplined lifestyle. So as a girl, sometimes I would like to say no if they asked me or commanded me to do something, but I always wanted to please my father and my mother. Finally, I only said, "Okay. Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes." Actually, sometimes I didn't agree with their advice or commands, but that's life. But actually, my father and mother were very careful caring for me, loved me so much and also always dressed me up nice like this—they were very happy but so strict. So, as a young girl, I was always like this. Well, actually, my father, my late father, was a master in silversmithing. So seven years before independence, Indonesia's Independence Day, he was sent by Indonesia—still a colony of Holland—to America, to San Francisco. So for him, it was very exciting going to Jakarta and then going to America, but then there were no planes at that time in 1938. Can you imagine? So going there and back, of course, by boat. Forty days, but he said it was a very beautiful experience, of course. Fourteen months in the United States. Well, he came back, and he managed maybe more than a hundred employees to do silversmithing. So making a teapot or coffee pot or tea strainer or cutlery and a little bit of jewelry. Sometimes my late father made jewelry for me. I didn't say no, but actually, I didn't like it. It wasn't of interest to me because it was too intricate. I like more simplicity, actually, but I never expressed this to my father. Again I always said, "Yes, thank you very much." But then I gave it to my friend, the jewelry, but I never let on. I was just okay, I'll just keep it, but actually, I gave it to my friend. At the time, I was also feeling strange because my father never involved me in this kind of field because Central Java is very conservative. So no ladies or noblemen doing this kind of thing. So for me, I felt like there was no place for me. I couldn't do anything. So I just hoped and hoped that maybe one day my father would make a special decision pleasing me. It comes through when I was nine years old. Finally, my late father said, "Runi, you are so shy and introverted." Then "I think you need to go to not only the elementary school, but you have to do something else. So on Sunday, no break. Sunday morning from nine to twelve, you have to learn classical dance." So I learned from an expert. The expert was the uncle of the King of Jogja. So a good source. So I said, "Okay." "And then in the afternoons at four till six-thirty, you have to join Scouts." "Scouts?" And then, "Okay." I cannot say no, only okay. So as a girl, I was forced to be like that, you know, no break at all, but I always said, "Okay." I did my best. And I tried to be more confident and focused. But I had to go there alone by bicycle then. So every Sunday I was so tired, you know, from morning until evening. But maybe because he gave me like spirit, so the spirits become energy. Energy becomes cheerful. I don't know. But finally, the reason becomes so fruitful. From those dance lessons, I became the best dancer at that time. And my favorite teacher was surprised that sometimes as a girl, I turned, showing my back, and my teacher said, "No, you have to show the front." "Okay." So I always showed my movements from inside and so fully focused. So he liked it so much. So that's why he gave me chances. Many chances to perform dance at many high-end occasions. And then also for Fifi IP guests who came from Jakarta because the Fifi IP guests from Jakarta after meeting with our president, usually their destination was Yogyakarta, then Bali. So in Yogyakarta, they should see the classical dance and also go sightseeing to the temples—Hindu temple, Buddhist temple, etc. So I was surprised I became so famous. And I was young for a classical dancer. So every time I got applause, or sometimes the audience gave me flowers. So I kept the flowers until they dried because, you know, it was so meaningful for me. And not only this. From the lessons as a scout, I became more open-minded. I was capable of conducting a choir. Like this, you know? And then also the drum band and the marching band. I was always at the front, and the marching band was mainly male and only two females—me and my friend. So I was surprised that I became so open and not only this, but I became brave and tough able to face difficulties. I would smile at difficulties. "Okay. Smile." So I become more tough. Not only that, I also started to like flowers, arranging flowers. So when people came to my house, I always showed them my flower arrangements, even though the flowers were just from the garden, you know. And then not only this—I became good with my hands. I liked to dress up my hair with many different styles. So I didn't go to a hair salon. And also with scarves, so many kinds of styles—making scarves elegant or sporty or anything else, I could do it. And then sarongs. Make sarongs sexy or . . . Okay! So I became a different woman . . . not yet married . . . so a different girl. At seventeen years old, I got a chance to go overseas because the last days of seventeen wasn't good in Central Java. So at seventeen years old, after finishing high school, "Okay. Let's go abroad." I got the chance of one month in the Philippines. So in the Philippines, of course, I could visit many cities because I had one month. And I also got a chance to perform at Malacañang. Have you been to Manila? Malacañang is the state palace in Manila—so I could meet the president and first lady. And then back to Indonesia. Only two months. And then I got a continuous journey. It's more exciting. New York. Wow. New York! Are you from New York? So New York for me. Wow. It's the city that never sleeps. Oh, I wanted to see this, you know. So, of course, I was so happy, and there was training before going to New York. I had to learn for one month at a training center in Jakarta how to sit down, how to be behave because I would be sent as like an ambassador—a cultural ambassador. So I had to learn many things. Do you know about the New York World's Fair in 1964? So fifty-seven years ago, I was there. I performed my dances in the Indonesia Pavilion at the New York World's Fair with my other friends from all over Indonesia. At that time I met eyes with somebody. Only this because you know my leader was so strict. So no dating or touching, no. Only this. Yeah, I met somebody, but he knew that I was shy, of course, and also scared of my leader. So we are staying on Long Island. You know Long Island, yeah? So there are four wings. The first wing was for the interior decorators' group and another one was for information aid group. And this was for dancers and also for musicians. So every morning, when I went to the Indonesia Pavilion, of course, I dressed up nicely with a sarong and everything. Within twenty minutes, I have to be dressed up. Only twenty minutes. This, and then this, and then this—twenty minutes. If not, the bus will just leave without me. So I was always passing on the lobby, one lobby only, and I saw that man. Always sitting there and reading a newspaper, and I don't know seriously, but every time I passed by, he was like this. For me it was a nice feeling, you know? But then I didn't see him anymore. It seemed that as an interior designer for Indonesia, he was an interior designer for the Indonesia Pavilion. So maybe because he was finished and then went back home. So I didn't see him anymore. And then, there was a competition among the pavilions from all over the world at the New York World's Fair. And, you know, the Indonesia Pavilion was second after the winner—Spain. Yes. So I was so excited, of course. And then, I performed in front of the very charming leading star Lucille Ball and also singers like Harry Belafonte. After that, my journey to Paris, and there I also performed at the Palais de Chaillot—an opera house in Trocadero. And got the chance to meet our president, the first president, President Sukarno, at the Indonesia Embassy. I was so grateful. And then from there to Amsterdam. I was in Amsterdam maybe ten days. I also performed in front of Queen Juliana. At that time, I met him again. I was surprised. What is he doing here? But okay, I didn't care. And then, I was back home. I had culture shock because in Yogyakarta I felt Amsterdam, Paris, New York, and Yogyakarta is so dark, you know, not too much light. I was stressful. And then I had a feeling. Oh, I have to go from Yogyakarta. And I talked to my late father. I had to continue my study at the advanced place at Bandung. Bandung is near Jakarta. So I entered the Bandung Institute of Textile. You know how it is when entering university. There they dressed me up like crazy, and then I had to ride a bicycle. And I was on the way to my dormitory, and then I met again this man. But he was driving with special sunglasses—trendy ones. Of course. I turned to the right into a small alley. You know, I didn't want to meet him because I was embarrassed, but he was clever. He caught me in the end and, since then, we became friends. And then he said, "I would like to see your parents." And that was in 1965. In 1967, I became his wife. And then, after one year, the first child was born. So he was like thinking, "Runi, maybe you miss something" because I was active, you know, dancing and then just being with the baby with the crying and everything. "What you want to do besides this?" "I want to be a choreographer." "A choreographer? You must be on the stage again. It means you need applause." "Oh." "So, what do you think? Why don't you continue in your father's footsteps?" And then again, I said, "Yes, yes." But actually, I didn't have any ideas. Zero, but because of again my energy and trial and error, and then twenty-five years, forty years later, I'm still doing it. And actually, why I love my husband and love Bali because at the time, 1978, Adrian got a job in the Hyatt Sanur—the renovation of the rooms. And I was appointed as dress designer for the uniforms. And after that, we were thinking, okay, maybe later—we have three children already married—then we have to go back to Bali and move to Bali for good. So that's why now I'm in Bali. And then, on the twenty-five-year anniversary of Runa Jewelry, Adrian gave me a special gift, a museum—officially opened by the governor. And praise the Lord for forty years, I'm okay. I got all the appreciation. A book from the craft council as appreciation. And then thanks. Thank God that I always say, "Yes, yes, yes" to my father and to my husband. And so I feel blessed that now I have been already fifty-three years married. I have three children, seven grandchildren, and maybe in another two months great-grandchildren coming. So I'm so cheerful to be here because this is the best season and the best time to know all of you. And thank you very much, Colleen, you are a very nice lady and also model my jewelry. Very nice. Thank you so much for your trust. Nice to meet you.

I'm about four years old. I remember that time. My grandfather woke me up very early every morning, and he'd tell me, "Gede, go and wash your face. We will go soon." After everything is ready, he took the equipment he had—hand knife, dirty rice bag. That was all our equipment every morning. We were going to the jungle and the rice field after that. He leaned down and told me, "Gede, jump on." As a four-year-old kid, he always put me on his back. Sometimes he put me on his shoulders to make me comfortable. As a kid, that's the only dream that kid has. We went into the jungle, played in the mud, played in the water. But that's not how the story will begin. Along the way, we passed many other farmers—young farmers and old farmers. Along the way, my grandfather always told me stories of his life, how he lived, how he struggled to keep the family alive with hard work—physical work. And at that time, I really wanted to know the purpose of him telling me these things. It seems like he wanted to tell me very early. He said I wouldn't always be on his back. And "Life will not be easy for you soon when you grow." And I realized quickly, too, that I will not always be there on his shoulder or on his back. I saw many people working and working at the age of seven years old, eight years old. I know I will be there soon doing those things. And the reason why my grandfather always told me about life, about being strong physically, about working with the hands, about putting everything on the head and being responsible for your family. Time flies so quickly. When I was six to seven years old, all changed. All things turned to me then. Seems like what I'd imagined a few years ago happened very soon. I saw myself needing to wake up every morning. So I realized something very important—why my grandfather always woke me up so early. He wanted to train me to not always depend on people to wake me up. So I got used to waking up every morning so early, taking my hand knife, taking my rice bag. Exactly the same as he did. So as a kid, I went to primary school, and every kid had a bicycle. I asked for the same to my father and my grandfather. The way they treat me is so different. "Gede, you will have that, but you need to do something. I will give you one cow to take care of. And then one day, when you keep and take care and treat this cow well, you can make this cow fat, and we will sell it. And some part will be used to buy your bicycle." So us kids were motivated, fully motivated every time, every morning before going to school—not going too far from home because we are living in the forest in the countryside of our village. So there's so many sources of cow food we can get. I got that cow food, gave the cow food, gave the cow a drink. Of course, speaking a little bit with the cow! I said, "Cow, grow quickly so I can ride my bike by your sacrifice. So now you are my boss because I'm sacrificing my time every morning for you. And one day I will sell you to get my bike, so I can go to school with it and save my uniform. So I don't use my feet and wear out my shoes because the time is coming." I have just one hour or forty-five minutes to get the food. You know why I must go that early in the morning? Because when I'm back from school, I'm not doing the same as many other kids in my village. There are two parts to the village. There is the center. And then the outside of the village or the countryside. I'm not one of the kids who lives in the center with a parent who can provide everything because tourism has come since the 1960s to our historical village. So I'm living behind the door, born from a low-class farmer. So that's how it goes. After I'm back from school, I need to take off my uniform very quickly. My mom says, "Gede, you know where your father's working?" "No. Where, Mom?" "In the corner of the village, two kilometers from here. Change your clothes. Run. Help your dad." I even didn't get lunch. You know what my father's job is? He's Spiderman. He's a coconut climber and harvester since a very early age, like me in my story. Every day of his life, he climbs many coconut trees on people's land and property. Drops the coconuts. And then my role is after school I bring some food for him. We have lunch together there. And then the new story begins. So my role is to collect all the coconuts he drops with his friend from the trees. Picking them up one by one and then putting them in a place where he orders. The job is not done yet. The place where we harvest the coconuts is almost three or four kilometers inside the jungle. And then in my village, there were no highways as we were an old village. So they parked four kilometers away. And then the next job is to collect those coconuts and carry them to the truck. Don't be shocked, guys. Now you realize why I'm not tall like you guys. I got pinched a lot by coconut grass in my head and on my shoulders. So night comes. In that time, I wasn't sleeping with my parents. Our house has a very small space, and we don't have so much room. We have several rooms and a kitchen with a fire stove, still using a wood fire. And it burns every night to keep us warm. I was sleeping with my grandfather in the kitchen. So we took the coffee wood every afternoon and burned it, as coffee wood gives constant fire and warmth for the room. And then, every night before we slept, he always put his right hand on my forehead and started the story to forget the big day we had—all the work we'd done. So he always told me about how to struggle in life, how to keep my spirits up, how to keep motivated. "Look straight, find what you want to reach in life." But in the same time, I always said to my grandfather, "I'm a young and small kid, seven years old to eight years old. I'm a normal kid." I'd compare myself to every other kid in the village. Some other kids had good bicycles. When they went back home, they played with marbles. They played other things. They played what we call Tactic or they used sticks made from wood. I'd ask my grandfather, "Why are you forcing me to work? Why are my parents forcing me to work?" I know that it's with a good purpose. But you know how he replied? He holds me by my forehead strongly, and he said, "Gede, don't blame anybody for what you feel now. Don't regret any of it and how life treats you hard today. It will impact you in your future. Maybe you are not as lucky as other kids today not having what they have got easily. You're doing hard work since an early age. And that will have a very good impact. You are the one who will carry on this family in the right way. You will be strong in your knees and carry all the problems of this family on your back. And you are the one who will be changing the family situation in the future." And that same conversation day by day, every night the same. When I'm complaining those words are coming. Until one day, I stopped complaining and just did it because I know that they're coming every time. And I know that's for the good of me. He always said, "Life is a mystery. When I'm gone, you will grow. And you will realize and say thanks when I'm in heaven." That he always said, every time we went to sleep. Time flies. 2011. I graduated from the Vocational School of Tourism—amazing for a kid living somewhere with no phone, nothing. Just playing with the cow, speaking with the cow every day. Sometimes I met my friend just for a few minutes before my grandfather called me. "Gede, take a shower in the river. Don't speak with your friend. We have something to do." So I had all those plans in my mind of how to escape from this situation and change my family life. By going to Denpasar. You know, it's not the USA. It's not Europe. But it was a big thing for me at that time. So I say, 'Denpasar.' It's my European version. You know why? Because the kids living in the forest, in the countryside of the village, in the same situation as me were thinking of going to Denpasar because it's the capital where all the money is, where all the hotels are, where we can get sources of living to change our family life. But new things are coming. I'm facing two big problems. How to go. And my mom's permission. Normally other parents will say, go, but in this case, I'm Balinese, and I don't have a brother or sister in this family. So I'm the only young guy. I have a cousin, but he married early and never went to school. Actually, he stopped going to school. So I am the one who graduated well in that time. And my mom always said, "There are so many fields to work in the village. Why do you need to go to Denpasar? There are so many people can get jobs around here. Why you need to go there?" I know the reason why my mom said those things. Not to hold me from going or stopping me from escaping from this village. She wanted me to stay with her. She had a big fear. That the only one son she has, who will be responsible for the family, will leave her and maybe a fear of the city because she never went. She was uneducated. And she was thinking I would lose my way in friendship. Maybe take drugs or have to get married early because of a mistake with a woman. That often happens now in Bali. But I said to my mom, "This is my dream. I want to chase my dream, changing our family situation." And then suddenly, a few days later, I get a call from my friend Made, which changed all the story. He called me in the morning. "Gede, you still want to go to Denpasar?" I said, "What?" "I will go in two days. Are you in?" Okay. Now the real challenge is coming. What I needed to say. And I said to Made, "I will use my gentle voice with her. I will go." And I said to Made immediately, "Yes, I will go." Stepping up to my mom's room, she sits in conversation with my dad. And I said, "Sorry, I'm interrupting. Mom, this is gonna be the last conversation we have about this argument. A friend called me, and I need to go to Denpasar in two days. All the papers required, all my clothes are ready. I will go." My mom looked me in tears, and she said, "Okay, I cannot hold you back anymore. If that's your dream, as long as you can keep yourself safe, you can go." And the tears story is coming. Everybody knows we are coming from the low-class of farmers, but the good thing is we are really good in family relations. I didn't have money to help my friend to buy the petrol. So my mom took her small savings from her candy box to give to me. My auntie gave money to me. My uncle came giving some money. And then my grandfather gave me some money. And the one who's strong and the tough guy in the family, my dad, which I never expected. He was crying. Yes. He always treated me hard, like, "Gede, don't let that go. Take that, do that." But in that time, he's crying. In that moment everybody gave me a big responsibility by giving that money. And I believe in their mind, "This guy will change the family and give that money back in a different amount." I carry that responsibility as I have all the basics; I'm strong after working, have good shoulders to carry any problem. A top childhood taught me to be strong in my personality, strong in mentality and physically, to hold any problem, to carry any problem. Finally, we went to Denpasar. Lively. Not that friendly yet. For a jungle kid, it's not easy to get a job in the city. We needed a connection, someone we knew. Trying from one hotel to the other hotel. The power of patience. They refused in many places. And I said, "No problem, Made. We will try." Made always complained like, "Oh Gede. This is so hard. Let's go back to the village." "Wait, we sacrificed so much to come here. We had so many arguments before we came here." And then one day a friend called me, another friend. "Gede, there is a big company opening recruitment for employees." And I said, "Where?" I wrote by hand and brought my papers. Then Quiksilver, in collaboration with Savrical Bali, built a big store in Nusa Dua and hired me in the warehouse for three months. I worked so hard, and a new recruitment came for a sales promotion boy. I'm climbing. I got that position. I worked so hard. And I got a quick promotion from my boss, but life is still a mystery. Four years seven months, or almost five years. After all those feelings I get in the city, I feel this is my life. I got friends. I got money. I paid off debts of my mom's from the lender by sending money every month. But June 2015, everything began. I think this is the reason why my mom never liked me going to Denpasar. I got a call from my dad. My mom had a big problem with her health. And I'm the only one guy. Like he said, I will be responsible. Like my grandfather said, I will be responsible for the family. In that time, I'm facing the biggest decision of my life. What do I need to do now? I'm happy with my life in the city. You can imagine for a young kid who went from jumping to seeing clubs, many women from other regions. I did not see them a lot in my jungle. Honestly! I saw so many Australian girls. I was even working with them. Listen to my language. You can imagine where I could find them in my jungle! So this is a big problem at that time. These are the people I love most is the problem. There is no other woman I love more than my mom with all that she sacrificed for me. I need five months to think. I don't sleep well. My work capacity is going down. My boss asked me "What happened, Gede?" I said, "My mom is sick. I love my job, but I love my mom." So finally, with the support of my friends, they said, "Anytime you want to come back, the door of this store is always open." So I decided to go back to my mom. And then I imagined since I've been in the city, I needed to prepare myself to go back to that jungle, but that's not hard for me. It will not be so hard. That's where I began my childhood. I went back to the village. Everybody looked at me with my new Quiksilver T-shirt, Ripco shorts, Havaianas sandals. And you know what? Some Balinese joke with us when we're back from Denpasar. "Hey, boss, when you go back?" "No, I'm not going back. I will stay. My mom is sick." The first week was so hard. What to do? I'm here. All my skills don't work here. I tried to find a job nearby. That's still hard. Everybody's got the same problem as me. So one day I'm standing in the big door to the village when a guy from Holland approached me. His name is Harold. "Hey, young man. Can you tell me what is behind this door? I see just a jungle. Is it a cemetery?" "No, that's where I live. If you think that's a cemetery, I'm a zombie. "You wanna come in to check?" "Yeah, I'm interested. I want to see." I said to him, "You will like this place. The center is just eight hectares, and the rest is nine hundred hectares, sir. We have rice fields. We have people weaving. We have people making baskets." And in that time, he told me, "You are doing a good explanation, and you have such good English. Where did you learn?" "I practice. I never did a course or anything. Even listening to something in bed is so hard." So I said to him, "What do you think?" "You can do something with it if, as you say, you don't have job." So this is what my grandfather said. Life is a mystery. So I started thinking about what Harold said and then created something, which I'm still doing today. So I built a trekking activity which explains all the history of my village, which is the oldest village in Bali. It exists since the eighth century, and then a new mystery appears. So the trek I'm using is the one I used to hold the coconuts, to bring grass on my head for my cow. I'm using that same track today for trekking. So since I was a kid, my grandfather always said, "Life is a mystery. We never know what will happen." So whatever I've done as a kid, I can use for something in the future. So for the trek, normally I'm climbing, I'm working hard, with a heavy weight on my head. Now I'm using it to earn something. I even teach some of the young community to do the same trekking as me, and then we do it. I train them to do the same to earn money, train them in English, build their confidence. And we can do it. We are not just kids in the jungle. We can do something. I'm therefore beekeeping with my cousin in the jungle, which I'm doing today as the next story. And then something happened really big for myself. I was elected to be the Youth Community Leader in my banjar because of all my ideas—everything. I'm not proud of myself for that, but the people are proud with what I'm doing. So I said to them, "I'm not leading you. We will share the direction, how to do everything. I am not a leader who gives you orders. Let's find direction together." So we created something. We created trekking activities speaking a lot about the equality between the outsider and the original who lives in the center. Not all people like me, honestly, because I speak a lot about that. I'm really happy with this thing going well. The honey is going well. I'm helping my cousin with marketing to people that start to come to the jungle, tasting our honey, buying our honey, doing basket workshops, got enough hours coming. And then we never imagined that would come, this big, epic story. For Bali. Everybody in this room knows we got a big hit. We hang on and depend a lot on tourism. I cannot lie about that. So at that moment, I start thinking again. What to do? A few weeks later, my friend from Canada—her name is Suzanne—she often comes to Bali and really loves Bali and been to my bee farm, which I'm developing with my cousin, calls me. Life is a mystery. She tells me, "Gede, I remember your honey has a medication purpose and an old historical Balinese medication with a natural base. Why don't you join with the things I'm creating together with my beautiful friend, Colin, with my inspiring friend, Made, and Steve—Stephen McCluff. And then I said, "Yes, I will join in with your purpose." I went back to my ancestors' village nearby Slove of Monagune, where my grandfather originally came from. Every time I go back there to pray in ceremonies, I see so many people have these hives, these black beehives. So I said to Suzanne, "Yes, I will be involved in this Togetherness Project with the spirit of togetherness and make an income sustain an income for my community in this village and my ancestors' village. I went to Ubud to speak with Steve and Colin and brought some product and put this beautiful stuff in Bags of Hope. The coffee from the north, the recycled bag from North Gianyar. There are some herbs from my friend Futu. They are beautiful weavings—the process of which had been laying down for twenty-five years and woke up because of COVID-19. So we are in the same team with the spirit of togetherness. And then, after a few months working, this thing goes well. Many people came to support and remembered all about our purpose. So this is what I say. Life is full of mystery. We never know when we are doing something hard in the past, it can create something beautiful for our future and supply strong knees, a strong back to hold everything, to show to people that we can. I can feel a togetherness spirit in this room. You are very kind to have me here, and I hope this pandemic will pass soon, and we will meet in a different situation—in a good situation. Let's keep the spirit of togetherness, and let's spread it. Hold each other's hand. The solution is there. Life is good when we are together. Thank you so much. I'm Gede.

You see, I love words. Words are powerful. And sometimes you hear some words from some friends and they will stay with you for quite a long time. Like these three words a friend shared with me, "Revealing is healing." So today, I would like to reveal to you the story of how I began my journey into this life. And to be quite honest with you, everything I'm gonna tell you I wish I didn't tell you, but I'm gonna do it. When I was six years old, I'm starting to journey into life and into school. I'm just like every other boy of my age except I've a strange name, my hair is very red, and I've got many freckles on my skin. No big deal, but I'm also the only one like this in the school. And one day in the playground, a group of boys come and they stand all around me. There are many, and I'm alone. And they start to scream at me some very intelligent stuff like "Carrot hair, carrot hair, you've got rusty skin." I'm six years old. The only thing I get is that I'm scared. They continue. And one comes and pushes me, and I'm falling. They are laughing, and I'm crying on the floor. To be honest, I hated it. So imagine this on repeat over many years quite a few times. I had to learn to live with this fear looking down. And I never know when the next treatment of humiliation would come around. At some point, I told myself that I need to talk about it and ask for help. So who's the first person you talk to? Your mother. "Mum, at school, there are boys. They always make fun of me. They call me names all the time, and they hurt me. Mom, please do something. Help me." "Listen, it's nothing. It's just words. They won't kill you. Get over it, okay, and stop it." Now you see those words—they felt like they were killing me. I felt unseen, and unmet, and unworthy. And I get it. My mother—she's a schoolteacher. And the only thing that matters to her is the good grades. And I can do that quite well but for the rest. The shaming, the humiliating, the bullying "doesn't matter" means to me I do not matter. So, as you can imagine, I had a poor level of self-esteem as I grew up, and I had to live like that because life goes on. So me and my good grades, we had a mission—destination; find a job. And eventually, I did. I ended up working and as an executive in a bank, and it's not exactly the dream job. I'm working far too much, and I'm burning out. My dad passed away, and my girlfriend at the time had a great idea. She disappeared overnight. Not happy. I'm depressed. One day I'm waking up, and everything feels blurry. My mind is foggy. I can't make sense of anything. And I can't recognize where I am. All I hear is beep beep beep, beep beep. Somebody comes. This man is a nurse, and he tells me, "You're in hospital, in the intensive care unit. You had a bad accident. You cannot move for the moment. Be patient. We're taking care of you." I don't understand. All I know is that I'm in this bed, and my body's plugged to many machines, and there's many pipes in my body, and I can't move. I'm just waking up from a coma that lasted fourteen days. And I'm on my way to the third of three surgeries—long, complex, and major surgeries. So days go by in this intensive care unit. And eventually, with time, things got a bit better, and I'm taken to a patient room, and one day a doctor comes, and he tells me, "We think that you intended to end your life when you drove that car into a tree." "What are you talking about?" I have zero memory of anything. Zero. But there's one thing I get is that to him, there's something wrong with me and I'm trouble. And again, here I am filled with shame and guilt. To be honest, I felt crap. And I start to understand that they have a plan for my life—a plan that I don't like—and I start to feel the trap. And there's no way I'm gonna let myself go there. So a few months later, as soon as I could, I found myself a place somewhere, anywhere. And I got myself out of hospital, and I left behind all the medical programs. I'm twenty-nine. I'm rather crippled. I'm alone, and I'm scared for my life. But I know I have to do something. I have to fix myself. And I have no idea how I'm gonna do that. Eventually, at some point, I managed to pick myself up, and one step at a time, day after day, I got there, and it wasn't like I go from there to there, more like this. I had to bring myself back up many times, and I received some very mysterious help along the way. And I learned a lot. So I embarked on this journey of self-healing and bodywork. And eventually, I got there. I spent the last seventeen years trying to fix this body so it can be functional. And this is now part of my daily life. And it will always be. And I kind of like it like that, in fact. But what happened to the other part of me? What happened to this scared boy, the part of me that was keeping me hiding, taking no risk, and playing little in life? I realized that instead of walking towards life, I was walking away from life. So I still had to fix that part. And something had to happen. Early this year, as I'm enjoying my morning routine, not the one you're thinking of—the French one, coffee, croissant in a café—I meet a very inspiring person, and I feel extremely motivated when she talks to me about her upcoming course starting in two days. Something inside feels this is right for me. So within five minutes of knowing her, I said, "Deal. Please sign me in. I'm coming." And I'm excited. I'm gonna start a course learning to do something I've been wanting to do for a long time—if not all of my life. So we are halfway into the training and my initial excitement changed a bit to slightly uncomfortable, embarrassment, and fear. I think I've made a mistake. This wasn't for me. I don't have what it takes. And naturally, I opened up to the teacher about it, and she listened. She said, "I get it. Why don't you go home and watch a few more videos of other students who did the course and try to find inspiration? See if it works for you. And we'll see how it goes from there." Sounded like a good idea. So I go home that night and get on my laptop and get online. I watch one video after the other, one video after the other. And as I'm watching, I can see there's one thing in me that says, "Oh yeah, me too. I'm gonna do that." And there's another part of me who says, "No way. I don't have what it takes. There's no chance I'm gonna do that." So you see, that night I'm split, and I can't sleep. I'm anxious, and I'm nervous, and I don't know what's going on. I'm in my bed. I'm tossing and turning, tossing and turning. And I'm trying to figure out what is this all about? And in the middle of this tossing and turning, I start to have flashbacks and some vague memories. And I start to connect the dots. I'm afraid that I can die from shame and humiliation. It's all about my initial trauma of public humiliation in school. That night there's a frightening monster just came out of the dark, and I'm scared. So at this point, I have two options. I go for it, and I face it. Or I quit. I resign, and I give up, which will feel like I'm driving my car into the tree one more time. And also, I would have to tell everybody, and I would have to face the shame of telling them one more time. And that's not me. That's the old me. So I consider that. "Trust me, trust the process. Use the framework I'm giving you, and you'll be just fine. Do as I tell you. Trust me. I know my stuff." Those were the words that we heard at the beginning of the training from our coach. And it sounded doable, and it sounded easy. So I had to remind myself of those words, but also of my intention that I had taken many years ago to transform myself and to overcome the hurdles that were in my way—my own limiting beliefs. So I took a firm decision that I'm gonna go for it. And eventually, with the practice with the team, I crafted my story. Not one time. God knows how many times I repeated over and over again. And I got there. I mean, I got here. I got here, and I didn't come here alone. I brought with me a six-year-old child. And me speaking in front of you here is him beating the beast from the past and taming the ghosts. When I was a child, I loved any kind of superhero. We do that, right? But I thought about it many, many times until I understood that it was just because I wanted to be like one of them—out of my wound of feeling unworthy, inadequate, or not enough. So I met a superhero, and he's six years old, and I know where he lives. You see, life has extremely mysterious ways and powerful ways to make whole again that which was once broken. And my mom was right. These words didn't kill me. Though they nearly did. And my friend was right that "Revealing is healing," but I found something else. That "Healing is also revealing." Let me explain. My journey of healing myself has revealed to me my strengths within my weaknesses. My termination within my fears. My capacities within my doubts and my beauty within my vulnerability and my many scars. Now, I am no different. I know that all of you, all of you here tonight, without exception, you all have many scars of many types, and they're beautiful. They make you beautiful. They can reveal your inner gems, your inner treasures, which I hope you'd see for yourself. But more importantly, they do not define who you are. Our scars do not define who we are because it's up to us to choose how we're gonna write the story. And in life, a real story never has an ending. It only has new beginnings. So my new story goes like this. I'm forty-five, and I'm a lucky man living on the gorgeous island of Bali surrounded by amazing inspirational people. I'm coming back, and I'm ready. I've got two powerful and amazing friends that will be always there for my life. Fear—hello, fear. Vulnerability—hello, vulnerability. With these two guys, I'm walking towards my life, and I'm willing to welcome what's coming my way. I know I might have to pick myself back up again more than one time because that's life. And I know also I will. My beautiful heart is now open and willing to share more of it. I'm ready. And now if you were to ask me, "How do I know I'm ready? How do we know when we are ready?" I think I would simply tell you that I was born ready for my life. Thank you.

I'm five years old. And I find myself wearing my first suit. It was a matching replica of what my dad was wearing. Just think classic Men in Black. We were in Las Vegas at one of the most iconic hotels in the entire world—the MGM Grand—at my father's company convention. While holding my dad's hand, walking through the casino, we saw it. Lit in bright lights, surrounded by people with their film roll cameras taking photos. As we got closer, my grip got tighter, and there it was—the grand prize that the casino was advertising—one million dollars in $20 bills in stacks of $10,000. Now gripping my dad's hand with all my might to get his attention. In his face, I can see the excitement that we shared. Smiling, I said next, "Dad, I'm gonna be a millionaire." Once we made it back home to the Boogie Down Bronx in New York City, where I was born and grew up, I started sharing my excitement of becoming rich without having a clue what that would entail. My excitement got so bad that my mom one day snapped at me and said, "Look, boy, shut up." After this experience, I felt it was no longer safe to express. I isolated myself. I couldn't relate to others. They just weren't interested in talking about the same things that made this heart beat a little bit faster, that consumed this mind day and night. You see, while the other kids were sitting up straight doing what they were told and getting high out of getting good grades, I was daydreaming. I was doodling. I was masterminding in my mind what I deemed to be a compelling future. When I got home from school while my sisters were doing homework, I was listening to my dad's personal development and business tapes in Spanish. Over the years, hundreds of them. What resonated about these tapes and what fueled my drive was that everyone that I listened to shared how they were just like me, often misunderstood, misfits, rebels, troublemakers, the ones who saw the world differently and who weren't fond of rules. Thanks to this habit and others that were later developed, before my nineteenth birthday, I made my first $100,000. Before my twenty-second birthday, I had broken the sales record at one of the most iconic brands in the entire world. Before my twenty-fifth birthday, I had helped my clients generate tens and tens of millions of dollars. And I was miserable. In fact, the moment I knew it was after leading a two-day, all-day and night business seminar, which I call a top lion, for over two hundred people who had traveled from all around the country to be there. It was the fifth time in a series that was supposed to be hundreds all around the country for thousands of entrepreneurs. And because it wasn't New York City this time, I invited my family cos I wanted them to share this experience with me. After two full days, it was the closing ceremony. And I asked everyone to stand in a massive circle around this grand ballroom with beautiful chandeliers. And I asked who would be willing to share what the last two days were like for them. Person after person after person said, "This experience changed my life. My life will never be the same. I've been to every event under the sun and this by far was the best." After everyone shared what they got out of this training, I looked at my dad, who was standing by the entrance of the ballroom to my right, and I see tears falling down his cheeks. In his eyes, I saw what I can only describe as proud. And I imagine if I can hear his inner dialogue, it would've said something like, "That's my boy." In that moment, I felt something I lost when I was nine years old. As I arrived home from school, out was walking my father suitcase and bags in hand. I knew. I immediately dropped my book bag and ran to my dad with all my might, and I dropped to my knees, and I grabbed my father's legs. As I looked into his eyes as I was crying, I said, "Pa, please don't go." I knew my parents were going through a hard time, but none of us expected this. My mother grabbed me, and without saying a word, he walked out. I blamed myself for my parents' divorce. And now here we were in this grand ballroom with tears falling down his cheeks. I finally felt I did it. Everything I ever wanted to do with my existence to make my father proud, to have him witness me having done it—the materialization of that moment we shared when I was just five years old. I felt the tears coming before I stopped them. And in that moment, an undeniable feeling of truth arose inside of me. And it was that I had been living my life to get my dad's love, to get my dad to come back. Every action surgically taken to show him that I am worthy, to show him that I am significant. And in that moment, I can clearly see that none of it mattered to me at all. And this was confirmed when I woke up the next day, feeling my entire body sore in every part of my body from giving my heart and soul on that stage for over thirty hours over the course of two days. And I remember the first thought that arose in my mind, and it was Now what? Now what? I had just done everything I thought I ever wanted to do with my existence. And I felt nothing. That's when I knew I couldn't do it anymore. That was the last time I facilitated that training. One week later, I find myself on a plane to a tiny island in Thailand. This is me walking away from it all. Everything felt like it was crumbling, including my identity and who I thought I was. I had to get away. Maybe this is how my dad felt when he walked away from me, my mother, and my three sisters. My experience in Thailand only intensified things. I literally could not focus and do basic tasks that my business required to thrive. I became a person I did not recognize and found myself in a love affair that broke me open in ways I now see were necessary but were so painful. One day I'm sitting at a busy cafe attempting to get some work done that my team had been waiting on for weeks. And it started to rain. And when it started to rain in walked this couple and they see two empty seats positioned directly in front of me and they say, "Can I sit?" Then the next words outta this guy's mouth whose name I would later find out was Chris was, "It looks like you're working on something important." "You could say that." And just like that, we went on to have a beautiful conversation. Now when I say we went on to have a beautiful conversation, what I mean is we spent all the time talking about me, which is something I would only realize much, much later. And somewhere in that conversation, I asked, "What's your story? What do you do?" I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of, "I help people who are ready to wake up wake up." Looking at the clueless look on my face, he went on and said, "Basically, it's the next step from where you are now." Now I was very intrigued. I asked him to tell me more. "Well, it's hard to explain, man. It's really something you have to have a direct experience of to understand. If you feel called, I can give you an introduction section." "I feel called. How do we connect?" And we exchanged contacts, and I walked out. The longer I stayed on the island, the more lost I felt. During a sunset walk on the beach, I remember hearing my inner voice say, "You need help. You need help." And in that moment, I remembered what Chris said. "When you're ready, just get in touch." Now I was ready. And what Chris put me through next, I cannot put into words. What I experienced that day was the beginning of discovering who I would be if my father was dead. I was confronted with questions I could no longer ignore. Who am I beyond my father's approval? What might I discover about myself? What would life demand of me? And how generous would I be with my one wild and precious life? What Chris started to teach me that day was a very simple practice to take total responsibility for my inner world. To let go of what no longer serves me by relaxing into my heart's truth, no matter what, no matter what over and over and over again, especially when I don't feel like it. Whenever I was lost in my mind wrestling with my ego to find the comfortable place to rest, Chris would have me repeat a simple mantra, which was, "I don't know. I don't know anything." Sitting there in the unknown. Empty with no desire to fix, prove, protect, fight, or even blame. That's when a drive infinitely more powerful than any other force I've ever experienced in my life arose. It whispered into my mind a question. "Do you or do you not want to know what's beyond yourself?" "Yes. Yes, I do." Now in life's infinite wisdom, she met me by showing me where my limits were, where my openness and presence stopped, where I was seeking certainty and significance rather than growth and contribution. Going through this was the hardest thing I've ever gone through my entire life. It was an ego's death, but I leaned into it despite the uncertainty of it all. And the more I did, through how I showed up moment to moment in my life, the more life showed me it's not about me. It revealed to me how, when I get out of the way, my presence can impact the web of life and my existence matters by itself. And how to the proportion I hold this presence, I can experience what it's like to feel free from the chains of suffering and how when I'm free of suffering, I can contribute to breaking down the walls of separation between myself, others, and how others relate to their mission— to create a more connected humanity and world through my God-given gifts, which is a whole new way to do business and build brands that matter for generations to come. Because what's business about at the end of the day? Is it about validating our own egos, or is it about creating a dream come true result for those we have the privilege to serve? After this realization, I wanted nothing to do with this stage until I knew it would be different. Until my clarity of purpose was so abundantly clear that it radiated out my presence so intensely that it could not be ignored. Until it was no longer about feeding this monster called my ego, which I created to meet my need for certainty and significance. Until I cared more about what the universe wanted from me than feeling safe in this fragile heart. Well, now here I am. Here I am. Was it easy? No. In full transparency, it still isn't at times. I had to give up the safety of the illusion of control, which means I had to master the terrifying act of being vulnerable—the one thing I wanted to avoid since I was five because it wasn't safe. To be different and to be generous. Shutdown after shutdown after shutdown. Rejection after rejection after rejection. It never felt safe to be me. And let me be clear. I don't want it to come across as if I have it all figured out or that everything always works out because it doesn't, but life is not here to be lived perfectly. It's here to be lived generously. And to me, what that means is what I give while I'm here matters. This is not a belief or a knowing. Through experience, it is my truth as I've seen the miracles. So here's my generous invitation to all of you. If you're anything like me, and you too know you're here to be generous with your existence and a vessel for other people's growth in some way, some shape, or some form, I say, let's do that. Let's not let our past or our current awareness of what's possible limit how generous we can be with our existence. I believe part of our destiny is to align and lean into the vastness of our future, especially when our mind says, "That's not a good idea!" But you know. You know. It's step by step, experience by experience, to become the person you've always wished to be. To get out of the way and let life be generous through you. My name is Pedro, and I believe in the power of being generous.

It's the morning of the big day. A festival to celebrate the anniversary of the new Innovation Lab, the greatest achievement of my career at the global economic powerhouse, the IMF. I've been in the auditorium since 6.00 a.m. setting everything up with my team. We're about to open the doors for the opening ceremony. And when we do, a flood of gray/black suits are gonna come in. I'm so enjoying the contrast that I've created, with the bright pink and yellow and teal balloons throughout this space. My vision has come to fruition, and I can't wait to see how people react. As the suits begin to walk in, my excitement builds. The managing director, one of the most powerful women in the world, takes the microphone. She says, "I want to recognize the person that made this all happen." I stand up a little bit straighter, and I'm ready to step forward. And then she says the name Travis Wagner. Now, just to be clear, that is not my name! As I graciously clap for Travis, my heart sinks. You see, two years ago, I had it made. I had the sexy red sports car with the sunroof and the Bose sound system, a walk-in closet overflowing with sheath dresses and heeled shoes, and other First World essentials, a UN-issued blue badge that whisked me past barricades and security guards and inside the headquarters of the global financial empire in Washington, D.C. A pretty much guaranteed paycheck for the rest of my life. Acquaintances, accessories, and assurances—I had it all. I'd always loved the world of business in the marketplace. My dad taught me the value of working hard, and he clued me in that the point of life was to stay busy. Turns out I was amazing at both of those. I remember one of my first summer jobs. I'm sixteen years old, driving in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic, but I don't care because I have a job, and I'm in love with the glamor of the nine-to-five routine. I'm listening to the morning radio, the windows down, drinking my French Vanilla Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and I can't wait to arrive in the office. As I walk in, I smell coffee. I hear the clicking of keyboards and the chatter of gossip from the odd cast of characters around me, and this warm feeling of familiarity rushes over me. I'm part of a community. I have a place. I belong. After that, I had a whole string of blue-collar jobs. I just loved the fact that I could walk in, get myself hired, and start getting a paycheck, whether it was at the gas station, fast-food restaurant, the clothing store at the mall. By the time I finished college, I had at least twenty jobs on my résumé. Soon I found myself in the capital of the United States at a fancy new job building my career. I worked hard. I had a title. I had an office. I had a reputation. And yet, despite having more than I'd ever had before, more success, more security, more opportunity, I couldn't help but notice that as time went on, something was missing. I wasn't happy. Somewhere along the way, I'd lost that spark. I remember talking to my dad one day, and he said, "Do you think you'd ever be able to go back to waiting tables?" He knew how much I'd loved working at this trendy Italian restaurant in downtown Santa Barbara at the end of college. And then I thought about it for a minute. And I realized that no. I'd become jaded and entitled. And the higher I climbed, the more my ego was all up in it. I didn't recognize the woman that I'd become. For more than a decade, I had been trading my time, my energy, and most importantly, my passion for someone else's idea of success. While I was playing this game of validation and acceptance and making money like everybody else around me, it was sapping my energy and suffocating my soul. Life was passing me by while I was languishing inside these polished concrete walls of compromise. I was living someone else's dream. So that morning, when I heard Travis's name announced on the microphone, it was both heartbreaking and the permission I needed to walk away. Three months and two tantra events later, I'm standing on the curb at Dulles International Airport, waving goodbye to my brother and sister. I've sold my car, packed my life into a storage unit, and handed over my responsibilities at the Innovation Lab. You see, what not everyone knew about me was that I had a double life. Part of me was Sensible Susan, who loved structure, followed the rules, and knew how to get the job done. The other part of me was this woo-woo wild woman, the insatiably curious seeker who wanted to taste and experience life fully. I'd been dipping my toe in that woo-woo river for many years, but now I had the freedom to jump in fully. And once I unlocked that door, there was no stopping me. Just like those jobs back in high school, college, I was taking it all in. I was traveling around the world, dancing at festivals, signing up for workshops, trying the latest tantra techniques, checking out all the spiritual hotspots. I was alive. You see, Sensible Susan had been delivering on someone else's dream and playing the game pretty well, but it wasn't until I gave myself to that wild woman fully that I started really living my own life. I started discovering what abundance means to me. Who am I? And what do I value when the old identity and everything familiar has been stripped away? What's left? What is worthy of my time and my energy? Earlier this year, I moved to Bali. I traded my high heels for flip-flops, those concrete walls for the jungle canopy, and the crush of bureaucracy for the cushion of heart-centered community. I found freedom. I found connection. I found incredible beauty and celebration and that magic I'd been craving. And most of all, I've been dreaming whole new dreams about what's possible for myself and the planet and starting to build that new paradigm from my own vision, weaving a new world into existence in every moment and living life on my own terms. I'm part of a project team that's about to launch something epic. It's gonna change the world, and I'm supposed to be sitting down talking about strategy. And instead, I'm stirring this huge pot of cacao and making sure that it's just the right blend of sweet and spicy. And just like those balloons at the party back then, I'm putting my own special magic into this place. This is how I wanna show up right now. The difference between then and now is that I don't need validation for my cacao and for my wild woman. She's fully present, fully accepted, fully integrated. And at that moment, I realize that I've broken free. Free from that constraint of societal programming and free from living someone else's life because, let's face it, if I was listening to that programming, I should be married by now. I should have full-grown kids. I should have a car, and a mortgage, and a pile of debt that I'm working my way out of. And guess what? I'm not. I'm not even wearing a bra.

I'm sitting in a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro. Across the table is Sarah. We've been traveling around South America for the last six weeks. It's meant to be one of the most amazing romantic journeys. I mean the most romantic city in the world, but I feel nothing. I thought I'd be falling madly in love, but we are falling and drifting apart. The next day I wake up in a hotel room in Rio, and I know it's over. I feel this knot of dread. I know I've gotta break up with her. I don't how to tell her. I'm just baffled, and I'm confused. My mind has been hijacked. All I can do is frantically panic. And I can only think All I've gotta do is just get outta this hotel room. I freeze and I start packing up my bags and I start packing up my suitcase. And all of a sudden, Sarah wakes up, and she's like, "What are you doing, Chris? What's going on?" And all I can say in my panicked state is, "I-I'm sorry. It's not meant to be. This isn't gonna work. I need to break up with you. I'm sorry." Twenty-four hours later, she's booked a flight back to Australia. We don't even hug goodbye. And like that, the girl that I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with . . . it's over. Two months later, I'm back in Australia, and I'm taking a look at my life. And on the outside, my life looks amazing. Looks really successful. But on the inside, I'm empty. I've been in an engineering career for the last ten years that I'm bored with. I'm now single. I'm lonely. I'm thirty years old. What am I doing? I think Did I even want to break up with Sarah? Maybe I made a mistake. I sent her a message, and I say, "Sarah, I'm so sorry. I think I messed up. I wanna get back with you." I don't know if she's ever gonna respond back to me. She doesn't respond. So I book a flight to Tasmania to spend some time with my family over Christmas. And as the plane hits the tarmac, I check my phone, and there it is. There's a message from Sarah. She wants to speak with me. And now I'm like the guy outta that romcom, that guy that messed it up. And I've got this one chance to make amends, to win back the girl. What do I do? I book a flight straight back to see her. And this time, when we're sitting across from each other, she's the one that feels nothing. I'm gutted. She says she could never ever trust me again after what I did to her. I'm devastated. I send her one last message to let her know I'm so sorry for the pain that I caused—I had no idea. And she replies. She says that sorry isn't good enough. And she proceeds to tell me every last little flaw about my character. She tells me I'm passive-aggressive. I don't even know what that is. I've gotta Google it. She says that I'm judgmental. I'm egotistical—I gotta Google that too. She says that I'm disconnected to my feelings. Like, wow, this is intense. This is the most criticism I've ever got from anyone. And then I reflected back to that day in Rio. I didn't even know myself. And I thought maybe, maybe she's right. What if I don't even know myself? What if I'm blind to this? The next morning I wake up, and I've got a very specific recommendation from my sister for a very specific book from a very specific guy, Tony Robbins—the self-help guru. Right now, I'm thinking I can do with some help. Anyway, I go straight to the bookstore, and I grab the book, and it's called Awaken the Giant Within. I take. I read it. Holy moly! I'm hanging off every word—every page. This guy's deconstructed my whole entire reality. Oh, this all makes sense now. I get it. I really get it. I am the giant. It's me. I'm the giant. I get it. It transforms my life. Everything changes. I go from being oblivious to being obsessed. I got the source code to my reality now. I learn more in the next thirty days than I have in the last thirty years. Wow. This is big. This changes me. I start showing up so much differently. I'm telling my mates that I really care about them. And instead of shaking their hand, I'm hugging them. I'm looking people in the eye when I'm chatting to them. I feel connected to people. I even ring my dad, and I tell my dad that I love him for the first time in my life. I'm changing at a rapid pace. I don't know what's going on, but this is good. This is so good. I really feel alive. And that's just the beginning. I realize I'm changing from a boy into a man. And I've just activated beast mode. All of that criticism became my fuel. It activated this hunger, this deep yearning inside of me to know who I really am. And I go on the next six-month journey of awakening. I truly awaken this new man inside of me. I get back into my life, and I'm going to seminars on weekends. I'm going to all these workshops—learning about myself. My friends think I've joined a cult. My dad's confused cos he thinks I'm into all this weird fluffy duck hippy stuff. But it's okay. He knows I love him. And I'm even sitting at my desk during the day in my engineering job, pretending to work on spreadsheets while I'm listening to podcasts and TEDx talks and audiobooks, feverously just documenting and writing and capturing all this wisdom. It all shifts. One day I'm scrolling through my Facebook feed, and an ad pops up. "Ever thought about becoming a life coach?" I don't even know what life coaching is, but there's something about it that resonates with me. I click it. And before you know it, I'm on the phone to some guy, and I've signed up to a year-long life coaching training course. But on the first three-day training of that course, holy moly, this is what I've been looking for my whole entire life. I found it. I knew there was more. I knew there was more. And I found it. And I didn't even know what coaching was, but I knew that was something for me to explore, something to expand into. So the next six months, the beast mode goes up a notch. I put everything I got into this coaching stuff and I'm actually pretty good at it. I helped one guy get off crystal meth. I helped a girl pretty much recover from the same crap that I went through. And it's not even the most important part. The most important part is I feel alive. I know why I'm here. I got a reason for being here, and it's incredible, but I have no idea how this is gonna work out. I don't know anything about business. I don't know anything about coaching, really, but I realize I need to make a decision. I've spent ten years climbing the ladder of success, leaning against the wrong wall. And I can see a path in front of me. I don't even know what it is, but it feels right. On that day on the drive home, I asked myself, Why? Why am I still in this job? And in that moment, I decide to take my decade-long engineering career, and I walk away, and it's liberating. It's also the most scary, crazy thing I've ever done in my life. What's my dad gonna say? But it feels right. And what I've realized to be true is that life is the ultimate contact sport, and I'm not here to play a safe game. And life—she's a tough teacher. She gives you the test first and then the lesson afterward. But bless it because all the adversity, all the chaos, all the suffering, all the confusion—it all exists. And it's there because it contains the seed of wisdom for the awakening and for the expansion of who you are meant to be. And I realize this whole time through the chaos, through the confusion, through the suffering, through the joy, through the love, through the adventure, through the whole lot, life has been conspiring in my favor, even when I didn't know it. Thank you.

I wanna share a little story about my growth with the connection to the spirit of nature. Actually, I grew up just a few kilometers away from here in the village of Nyuh Kuning, and my beautiful, amazing late mother, Linda Garland, the queen of bamboo (We love you, Boo.) taught me that to embrace the world, to embrace the spirit of everyone around us, we must surrender. We must surrender to the universe. We must surrender to everything and just let the universal energy come in. And from there we get power. And growing up in Nyuh Kuning, in beautiful valleys like here, I would run around like a little Mowgli boy and climb coconut trees, fall off coconut trees, jump into rivers, fall over rocks, and learn how the spirit of nature worked, how the ecosystems and the people of Bali respected nature. And I wanna bring you to a time in 1988, when a holy man named Daaji, Gus Daaji, some of you may know, came to my home in Sangingan, the home of my father, and he blessed us on the full moon. And Daaji was an amazing, powerful balian, as they call it. And, you know, in the middle of his mantras with the offerings five meters away, he would throw up a flower, and it would land right in the glass of the holy water. I mean, Michael Jordan had nothing on Daaji. I tell you, it's amazing. And this power and this connection with nature and the spirit of nature was so strong in Daaji. I grew up alone a lot when I was young because my parents were overseas building houses for the rich and famous. So a lot of the time, I was with amazing people like Daaji, and we would go around Bali and pray in the different phases of the moon, no moon, full moon, and basically find every excuse to go and dress up in pakaian nadat and hang out in the temples and eat lots of yummy food and and watch the wayang kulit. It was an amazing childhood. But then, ten and a half years of age, I found myself extracted from Bali and plopped into a British boarding school in Singapore. No idea what to do. My brother had gone there, so of course, I had to follow suit. I remember a few weeks after arriving at the boarding school, I was in the cafeteria, big smile, like, Hey, how you? You know, full Bali style. And this guy, this Singaporean guy, I remember he came up to me. He's like, "Dude, why are you so happy?" and I was confused. And then I was like, "Oh no, no, no, I'm-I'm not happy." And I stopped smiling, and I got more and more of these weird kind of interactions. And, unfortunately, I slowly learned to kind of like fit in to this energy that was in this urban environment of a very strict regimented boardinghouse. And I learned to lie to fit in. I learned to be part of the pack, Lord of the Flies kind of stuff, and luckily I had some good friends, good people around me, friends and family who challenged me slowly. They kind of whispered it at first cos I was trying so hard to fit in. "Why are you trying to be someone you are not?" I had completely disconnected with who I was with this amazing spirit and really a core compassion that was free to express in Bali, and there it was all protected. And I got horrible grades in school, and it was just very hard to connect with people, and slowly I adapted, and I learned how to listen to people and just kind of go from their high frequency to help them calm down. And I would just be a listener and a few very good friends actually helped me to do this and stay calm because I would be very kind of nervous about the condition of everybody around me. So I was always checking is everyone okay? Does everyone like me? And it was really this seeking of a kind of love that my self-love was conditioned on whether those around me were loving me. And slowly, I learned that love comes from the inside. I had to be like my mother—surrender, just let the energy flow. If the energy is a high energy, slowly it will calm down. This too will pass. And I was bullied a lot, beaten to buggery. Even though I went to a boarding school, they fought the small kids, and they even bet on us. It was pretty hardcore. I got smashed in sports, bashed my knee, broke a patellar tendon, da da da. When I was in medical care, they burnt my guitar. So kids in boarding school . . .! But I slowly learned that if we do not connect with the spirit in ourselves, with the spirit around us, and the spirit in those around us, we can never be happy. And Daaji would always talk about Tri Hita Karana—this amazing philosophy here in Bali, and the way he said it to me as a child was very simple. He said, "It's three definitions of happiness, human to human—happy, human to environment—happy, human to God, to the divine—happy, and you must have all three happiness to truly be happy. And growing up in Bali, it was like by osmosis, you kind of followed this way. But to then be extracted out of it and actually to try to kind of intellectually comprehend it and then go past the intellectual orgasms and whatever of it and actually go back to a place of the authentic real feeling of it was a slow long hard process for me. And I guess, in the end, I had my mother, who was this amazing beam of light compassion for the planet and for the people around her, and my father, who was this kind of eclectic traditionalist. He was very into Hindu rituals and animistic rituals, and antiques, and the plural lineage of Indonesia's amazing religious past and giving me all the routines. I then put this together to understand for the first time how I could connect with the spirit of nature around me. And it took me about, I think, twenty-two years to figure it out and really be in a place of resolve and be okay with what Daaji had told me when I was seven, eight years old. This energy when I'm working, when I'm in a city, I can now go and escape and just try to connect with either a tree or maybe just some bushes, or maybe it's just some grass and soil. And I can put my hand to the ground and give my connection, my frequency. And I can try to release all the crap in my head and all the emotion, everything, and just reconnect. And this is something that I've been learning to do, and it's still a long journey, of course. I guess if I had one thing to share, it's that a lifelong learning of connecting with the spirit of nature is something that we all need to invest in every single day of our lives. And especially for the future generations, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, Gen whatever. If they do not have this connection with nature, they will not have the spiritual and heart tools to create this sustainable future that we all are praying will come to be. So may we all learn together every day to connect with the spirit of nature and help to spread that to everyone around us. Thank you.

I'm in an open-aired villa in Bali, standing in the garden with my feet on the grass, looking up at the full moon. My left ear is being penetrated by the sound of someone moaning. Almost like someone is about to orgasm. In my right ear, I hear this screaming, slapping sound. Someone is being spanked and REALLY enjoying it. Basically, around me is this sound of laughter, joy, and pleasure. In that moment, I put my hands on my ears, and I'm thinking, Just please make it stop—the sound. Just make it stop. What am I even doing here? And so this moment marks the end of a two and a half, three-week phase in my life a few years ago back here in Bali that changed my life completely. A year prior to that, I finished my master in innovation management and left traveling because I was inspiring to become this tough-ass businesswoman and career lady. So I thought it was time for an adventure first. At the time, I was doing yin yoga teacher training with Tina Nance, and she kept asking this annoying question, "How much can you feel? How much can you feel? How much can you feel?" In those classes, I was thinking, Seriously, lady, shut up. I can't feel anymore. Meanwhile, I kept on being invited to all these places I didn't know about. And so I ended up at my very first ecstatic dance where you dance barefoot, no alcohol, no talking. And within five minutes, I was going crazy. I was having the best time of my life. And I felt something just unlocking. And that led me to my very first contact dance, where I ended up rolling around on the floor with a bunch of strangers sweating all over them. And that led me to my very first sacred sexuality temple party. In other words, a sex party. And so, in that moment, under the full moon, I found myself being triggered by the sound of other people's pleasure. It was in that moment that I realized Tina made an impact. "How much can you feel?" Well, in that moment, I was feeling a lot. I was feeling how deeply blocked I'd been. I didn't voice myself. I didn't moan during sex. I didn't communicate my desires. I was taught to stay quiet and to stay silent. And so that's why during my five-year relationship, I never had an orgasm with him, and he never knew. That's why I thought I was broken. Because I didn't speak up for myself, not only in the bedroom but basically also not anywhere else in my life. And so, in that moment, I realized that could be different. There was a different world out there, but I was scared shitless because that meant that I had to feel. I had to feel how I've been lying to myself. How I've been pressing away and disregarding this part of me that had been screaming for attention for years. And so, in that moment, under the full moon, tears started rolling down my face in a seemingly endless stream. Now, the next morning I woke up with what seemed like the biggest hangover I've ever had in my entire life, and not from alcohol but from all the lies I'd been telling myself. But stuff started shifting after that moment, after those few weeks. And I suddenly felt the pull to stop with the birth control pill I had been on for over a decade. And then I ended up going to all these workshops, trainings, online courses around my menstruation cycle, my body, my intuition, contrast, sexuality. And during that time, I got the idea to teach and host naked yoga workshops. Yes, you heard that right. People without any clothes, bending forwards touching their toes. So how did I end up from studying innovation management to now suddenly wanting to teach naked yoga? What are people going to think? What are my parents going to say? And am I seriously gonna throw away everything that I worked for over the past years? And so, I found myself back in the Netherlands talking to my mom about this decision that I was about to make. Am I just forgetting about these past three weeks and this past year and just go down the corporate career path? Or am I letting those three weeks in Bali take me onto a whole different path? And in that moment, my mom asked me a question, and it's probably a question you've heard before. "What would you do if money wasn't the issue?" And so that night, I booked my ticket back to Bali. Two months later, I packed up all the courage I had into a suitcase with no plan, no certainty, no savings. I was feeling scared. I was feeling confused. My friends and family were confused, but I knew I had to go back. And so I got on that plane, and I moved to the other side of the world. I ended up starting my own business. And from there, step by step, I got onto the path and doing the work and the mission that I'm on today. In those three weeks, what happened is that I got really curious on what made me ME, and it made me realize that I was taught to hide, to blame, and to shame basically everything that was at the core of who I was, that was at the core of being a woman—my menstruation cycle, my body's wisdom, my intuition, and my sexuality. And so me going off traveling and exploring the world was actually me looking for an initiation into womanhood, for an initiation into being human. And so those three weeks basically blew apart every single structure and belief system that I was taught. Those weeks showed me that there is nothing wrong with me. Like there's nothing wrong with me! It's amazing. And they showed me that freedom exists. And so ever since that moment, I've been following my intuition, picking up breadcrumb after breadcrumb. Ended up from teaching naked yoga to guiding women closer to their bodies, into their intuition, helping them connect to their cycle, and now helping them unlock their sexuality, their core feminine, creative power—the power of their pussy. So did everything suddenly become easy? Hell no. I still crumble. I've been falling down and getting back up more times than I can count. And still, sometimes I wonder, Wouldn't it just be so much easier to get a normal job? And in those moments, when that happens, I come back to my body, and I ask her, "What is it that you desire?" And every single time, she guides me back on the path that I'm meant to walk. So world, watch out because I'm on a mission to help every woman ignite the power of her pussy. Because when I did that, I started to radiate and shine and follow my desires. I started to follow that which makes my soul go wild from excitement. I became my most juicy, sexy, authentic self. And I take actions from that place instead of a place of shame and blame. And so now I have the absolute honor to gift that to other women. So women remember this, the core of your power lies in between your legs. So will you meet me there?

So let's go ahead and address the elephant in the room. I know what the burning question is and, yes, I do give fifty percent off all manicures. And I think that's worth it. It's fine. Okay, now that the mood is a little bit light, let's go ahead and get down to the brass tacks. On August 28th, 2011, I opened my eyes to white fluorescent lights—confused, dazed. I can't move my mouth. I can't talk. My eyes are darting from side to side. What is going on? A nurse walks into the room—her eyes just as surprised as mine. She looks at me. I look at her. She darts out of the room. The next thing, a man walks in wearing a white lab coat. Comes in. Pulls a breathing tube out of me. He says, "You're gonna be all right, son. Welcome back." Moments later, I pass out. Next time I wake up, it's not a doctor I see. It's my family. It's my mom. I'm still confused. I have no idea what's happened. "What's going on?" I say with a raspy voice. "Where am I? What's going on?" My mom leans in, gives me a kiss on the forehead, and says, "Sweetheart, it's gonna be okay. You're gonna be all right." The extent of my injuries was very, very severe. And I had a long, arduous task of recovery ahead of me. I went from being this very independent, successful military man to someone who was completely now dependent on the people around me. And so this transition that happened so fast, it was very jarring, to say the least. And I was very angry. And when I say angry, I mean, I was an asshole. To this day, I still feel sorry for those nurses that had to deal with me and my grumpiness because it'd be 3:00 a.m. I still hadn't had the strength to lift my arms up and scratch my head. 3:00 a.m. in a medical ward, "Nurse, nurse, nurse." I got other military guys telling me, "Casio, shut up." I'm like, "Man, my head itches. Please, nurse, please come scratch my head." Months would go on, and slowly I would regain functionality in my legs. And then the day came when this one big heavyset black African American man and another African American woman stood me up for the first time in six months. And I'm screaming at them. "I can't do this. I cannot do this. This hurts. Put me back." And they yelled back at me, "You're gonna do it, man. You're gonna do it, sweetheart." And this repeats itself for the next three months every day until eventually, I'm walking back. One step, two steps, three steps. “Okay, that's enough for today. I'm gonna go sit down, back in bed, and go back to sleep. Maybe tomorrow we'll double that.” I went from being this really independent man to relying on people. And that was a very hard transition. And at the time, I kind of criticized and, I guess, tortured myself mentally for asking for help. But eventually, after months, I could walk out of that hospital on my own. And then I got a piece of myself back, which was nice because once I could finally walk back into that hospital, find those nurses that put up with all my bullshit. I went up to this one woman who was there the whole time when I was there. I was like, "Ma'am, I'm so sorry for being such an asshole." She's like, "Hey, sweetheart." She's from southern Florida. She's got a nice thick Southern accent. She's like, "Sweetheart, you don't have to apologize for anything. You were one of the good ones." We embraced. Finally, said our final goodbyes, and that was it. And here I am today, standing in front of you all. Thank you.