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November 2018. I'm sitting in couples therapy with my boyfriend, and the therapist says, "Megan, look, he is afraid of you." And I get defensive. I'm like, "Why is HE afraid of ME? He's the one that won't be loyal. He's the one that's not committing. He's the one that's sleeping around." And she says, "Stop, Megan, you're punishing him." And I pause, and I look in his eyes, and I can see it's true. He is afraid of me cos I've been mean. And you know why I've been mean? Because I've been denying my desire in order to please him. In all these little spots, he said, "I want an open relationship." I said, "Okay, I'll try it." He wanted to live and work at the retreat center. And I said, "Okay, I'll leave LA." In all these little spots, I went with what he wanted to try to please him, keep our relationship. But meanwhile, I was punishing him under the radar. Has anyone ever done that? Okay. I'm glad I'm not alone. In that moment, though, I realized it was a wake-up call for me. I was like, "Where else in my life am I doing this?" I started to see all these little places where I wasn't being honest with myself or others. For example, my job was to sell corporate training at the retreat center. I hadn't sold any because I didn't think that they were ready for it. My other job: I was there to give insights at the retreat center, but I just judged people cos I didn't want to risk my reputation by saying what I actually thought. I felt stagnant and stuck cos I didn't want to admit that I really wanted to travel. Seeing the fear in my boyfriend's eyes was a wake-up call. I didn't like the woman I was becoming. I was being mean, so every day I sat, and I meditated, and I asked, "What do I really want? And what do I need to admit to myself?" For days nothing happened, and then a very clear vision began to form. A few weeks later, I was talking to my friend, Rev. Jo, who is probably the wisest woman I have ever met. She is a native American medicine woman, a shaman, a preacher to Agape, where thousands come to see her every week. Basically, there's no bs-ing in front of this woman. She's been a desire doula for thousands of people, and I was pregnant with a very big, very secret desire. I sat down with her, and I started going into my story as we do. I was saying, "Ugh, I just keep fighting with my partner, and I feel ineffective at the retreat center. Everything feels stuck. Oh, and every time I think about Bali, I cry. And as I said that, tears streamed down my face - my whole body covered in goosebumps. She turned and looked at me, and in her Southern drawl, she said, "Baby, ain't nothing gonna feel right until you follow that. Bali is a calling on your life." It hit me with that thud of incontrovertible truth, something that was undeniable and really uncomfortable. Has anyone had a moment like that? Yeah. I knew she was right, but my mind had a lot of things to say about it. I said, "But Rev. Jo, what about my job and my partner and my community, and what are they gonna do without me?" And da da da. "Megan, do you teach about desire, or do you teach about obligation?" Fair enough. Right? But still I was scared. I was really scared because if I left and went to Bali, it would mean giving up everything I had created - my friends, my spiritual community, my job, my relationship, my financial security, my family - for some vague vision I had seen in meditation. It felt insane. But with Rev. Jo next to me, I realized maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe this is not insane. So, that night with the little bit of courage I had, I went home, I opened my laptop, and I quickly bought a ticket to Bali. I knew if I sat and thought about it, I wouldn't do it. The fear voices would get far too loud, and I would lose all my courage, and I wouldn't do it. So I bought my ticket and then over the next few weeks, I sat with people as I told them my decision. My boss was angry because I was leaving my new job. I broke up with my boyfriend, and I held him as he cried. I said goodbye to my friends and my family who questioned my decision, cos no one understood. "Why are you going to Bali? You don't know anyone there." And I didn't have a good reason. It was really hard to say goodbye. This is why people don't follow their desire because we can feel intuitively in the short term, people will be hurt. People will be upset. They will be ashamed. They will be angry at you. You'll feel disappointed. And so, it is far easier in the short term to pretend. But what's the alternative? I had seen in myself when I was pushing down my desire and denying it, I was eroding into a lesser version of myself. And then I was blaming people for my unhappiness. So I said my goodbyes over the next few weeks. And then I found myself in Bali, and I felt this little tingling sense of aliveness all over my body. I felt hopeful. I didn't know what was coming. All I saw was 'Do Women's Retreats in Bali.' That was what I saw in my head. It's been magic since. I've had two amazing women's retreats exactly as I had seen in my meditation. I met my husband-to-be at an exotic dance - very Bali! I adopted two dogs. I grew my coaching business past six figures. It has been so beautiful. But beyond any of this external is how I feel inside. I feel more connected to myself, more aligned, more centered than I ever have. But it's not like a one-and-done decision. Following my desire is something I have to practice every single day because the fear voices are there. And the fear voices are really tempting, and the desire is quiet. And it's still. Just this week, for example, we were buying our first home - it's a big desire of mine - and all of a sudden, my fear voices were so loud. It's like, "What are you doing? You're insane to commit to staying in Bali, and everything is uncertain, and there's coronavirus. Why would you do that?" So I called up one of the other wisest people I know, my mom, and she said, "Megan, I have never seen you so happy. You're thriving. You look like you." And in that moment I realized, that's why I cried when I thought about Bali those two years ago. Cos I thought I was just going halfway around the world, but I was really just coming home to myself. There's a few things I know about desire that I wanna leave you with. The first one is there are a million reasons not to follow it. And there's a million voices. Your shoulds, your pros, your cons, your fears, other people's opinions, external influences. And there's only one quiet voice, and it's inside your body. The second thing is I have to admit that I heard it. This is actually the most important. When I'm working with women, I often hear, "I don't know what I want. I just don't know." But when we get down to it, most of the time, they really know what they want. They just know it has consequences. The third one ask for help. I would not be here if it was not for that coach, for Rev. Jo, for my mom, for Colleen. It's like none of us can do this alone, nor are we meant to. We need each other to live into our desires. The fourth one is I have to be willing to feel all of the feelings because when I follow desire, like when I came to Bali, it didn't necessarily feel good. It felt scary and uncertain and nerve-racking, and oh my gosh. And like heartbreaking and difficult, but it felt honest. So my willingness to be with all of the feelings is important. And then the last one I know is my desire is my blueprint to living my soul. And your desire is a hundred percent unique to you. It's how you know what you're here to be and how you know what you're here to do. So, your desire will take you on a totally unique journey. I don't know where your desire is taking you, but I do know that she's a persistent mistress, and she will be knocking on that door asking, "Are you ready to wake up and trust me and in doing so trust yourself?" The question is, will you answer it? Thank you so much.

I will take you on a magical journey into the womb of creation. After this, you might start hanging out with your unicorn, have your spirit team make you breakfast, swim with mermaids, or ride your golden and silver dragon into the sunset. Would you join me? And even if not, you can plug in your ears and listen in. It will do the trick anyway. It was the day of my birthday, and I was in Australia, and my womb said "Adventures." The womb is the part of the lower belly where the ovaries are, where women bleed from, where babies grow, and believe it or not, even you men here have a womb - not physical but energetic. So she said, "Adventures." I was like, "Okay." I knew something powerful, and fun, and mystical was about to happen. A few minutes later, I set on a mission to find a tea tree lake. This lake is said to be an ancient sacred Aboriginal site where women would give birth. Aboriginals are the native Australians. And one of my dear friends, who is also an Aboriginal, she said, "It's women's business there." And my womb was like a puppy's ears when you say a treat. I'm like, "Yeah. Okay!" And like this, I learned to follow her to the most amazing places all around the world, and like this, I followed her to meet the most incredible people on this planet. Some are sitting right here. So there I went. That day a soft drizzle was touching my skin as I 'Lara Croft' my way through the Aussie bush. It was beautiful. The whole space was silent. It was a vacuum silence. I could only hear my steps through the mud and stepping on the branches. Otherwise, deep, deep silence. I followed the path of the ancient trees that I could smell. And then I saw the lake, and I was like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's here." I also was really well aware that this was a sacred site and that I was not there alone. I dropped down on my knees, and I put my hand barely touching the surface of the water. And I asked, "Can I come in?" Do you know what I heard back? "No!" "Hey, like what do you mean, no? I'm so wet. I have leaves in my hair. I have branches in my hair, and I came here for my birthing ritual, and what?" Well, I did my next favorite thing. I got butt naked. I sat down by the bank of the lake by a tree, my root chakra tickled, and I started to take deep breaths. I took a breath into my vagina. If I was in a male body, I would take a breath into my testicles. Then I took a breath into my womb, into my belly, into my heart, into my throat, into my forehead, and my crown and back. And slowly, little by little, my body started to soften. I felt the support of the tree, and then I felt vibration rising up my body, bubbling up. "Ooh, ooh," I sounded, and it was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in my life. Waves of joy started to flood my body. Bliss and love. And every cell of my body was remembering. I was in these waves, receiving the song of my soul. And as I was enjoying myself, I heard the lake whisper, "Thank you for your offering. Now you can come in." So I did. I'm like, "Okay. Yes." Well, I jumped right in. It was this deep, so it wasn't much of a swimming party, but it definitely was a pleasure party. I dropped down. I covered myself in blood . . . blood too different time . . . with mud, blood only when bleeding, mud when I'm in the lake. And I danced, and then as I was leaving, just gently touching the surface of the water, I felt so much gratitude. I walked out, and I was born again. On the way home, I remembered a story from Africa, from tribes in Africa, where women, when they are three months pregnant, they go and sit by a tree. And it is said that at that moment, the soul enters the body, the baby, and the woman sits by the tree until she receives the song of this baby of the soul. How amazing is that? And then she teaches that song to her husband, and together then they teach that song to the whole village. And when the baby is born, they sing that song to the baby. And whenever there's a celebration, they all together sing that song. And when that human, if ever steers off the path, they take him or her, with her in the middle or him human, and create a circle. And they sing that song for that human to remember again where they came from, where the home is. Yeah. I was not born knowing or remembering my song. And the chances are, if you were born in any of the Western countries to a muggle family or into a muggle family, you were not reminded of your song either. I spent years searching. I have been to over seventy countries all around the world, searching for what? Love, freedom to fill in the holes of insecurities. For some, it might look like being in a job that they don't like or in a relationship, or it might simply feel like an imaginary eggshell that's around you. Right? Little did I know until then that I was searching for the orgasmic sound of my soul. And when I say orgasmic, what do I mean? Most of us were conceived by at least one orgasm. Hopefully, it was two. Yeah, exactly. So this vibration that we were conceived in, the orgasmic sound, is the sound that we can hear. And it carries with us along our life and along our journey. And it is very, very quiet deep within. Today I wonder what is the song that you want to sing?

There I was, sitting in my new apartment, and I start shouting out loud. "I am free. I am free. I am free." Rewind. I'm twenty-one years old. And I wanna find the man of my dreams. And my friend at the spa that I'm working at, she looks at me, and she says, "I have the perfect man for you." I get really excited. My heart just starts to beat fast. We go out on this boat trip that weekend, and five margaritas later, we fall madly in love. You know how that goes. As the relationship progressed, I realized this wasn't a typical relationship. This was toxic. There were many ups and downs, lots of fights. There was abuse, manipulation, control—the whole thing. I was losing myself. And one night, we get in a raging fight, and I'm shaking. I've got mascara drawing down my face. I'm feeling broken. And he looks at me and screams at me, "Don't come home until you bring another woman home for both of us." I'm devastated. I still go out that night cos I didn't think I had another choice even though I knew I was so disrespected. So dishonored. So I'm sitting at the bar, and I'm getting drunk. And I look and feel into, Is this really my life? Is this really what I came here to do? Is this happening? Am I gonna end up just like my mom, living on the streets, choosing alcohol and drugs, and being a prostitute? Am I gonna end up just like her? No, no, no. It's not supposed to go like that. No, no. Until one day, I woke up drunk for the last time. I woke up, and I'm sitting on my bed, and I reek of alcohol. I'm shook up. I'm dying awake. And with God's grace, I was shown two paths. One path; if I was to continue that path and go down that route of self-destruction, what my life would look like. And guess what? It was just like my mom's. And then I was shown this other path; if I was to awaken and choose myself and sobriety, and it was heaven on earth. That day I called every single family member and told them I had a problem. I told them I needed help. And so, as I climbed my way in sobriety, the lights started coming on. I started to awaken who I truly was. I started taking empowering steps. I went into yoga teacher training. I almost changed my name - Anandi. (Yeah. That's where it comes from.) I wanted to change myself. I started running, I started yoga. I started all the things that I loved. It was a full month—my first month of sobriety—and I felt joy for the first time. And I go, Can I feel this good? Can I feel this free? Yes, yes, yes. But I still couldn't leave him. I was hooked. I was hooked. So he agreed to go to therapy with me. And that's when it shifted. That's when things really shifted. His name was Greg—the therapist. He was an expert in his field, amazing with addiction. And he started to give us tools. He gave me tools. As I started to peel back the layers of what I thought was me madly in love with this man was just my compensation for the love I didn't have for self. And Greg started telling me it was my inner child trauma that was keeping me going back and back and back to this man. And so he asked me to create a boundary, a boundary that I knew I was gonna keep. And that boundary? I'll never forget. I was sitting with our therapist, and I say to the therapist as a witness, "If he does this one more time, I'm out that door." And he did. We were driving to the airport. We're in another raging fight. We get to his gate as he was leaving. And he says those words, and there was the boundary being crossed. There was it. I got home, packed my stuff, and left him. And I never went back. The gift that Greg gave me from that boundary was the gift of fatherly love. Because at the time, I didn't have my father in my life. I didn't have my mother in my life. So I had to start to father myself and mother myself. See, when we have trauma from our childhood, we typically have these stories that are wrapping us into attracting partners and things that keep us locked in prison. And we need to start to heal these inner traumas, to allow us to awaken our own inner sovereign power, to bring us back into our inner parent and our inner union. Especially if you're dealing with a narcissist. See, if you're an empath like me, we have a lot of motherly love. And the narcissist and the empath, they go hand in hand. They're a perfect recipe for disaster. But you know what? That man—my partner—was my guru. He was my teacher. So remember the mirror and the blessing in the lessons. They're showing you what is still unhealed. Let it be a reverence to continue your path to awaken to who you truly are. See, this is why I show up every day, supporting men and women all around the world, helping them heal these inner traumas from the physical, mental, and emotional body to bring them back into their sovereign divinity, their sovereign power. It is such a blessing that I get to support women and men. Watching them blossom, awaken, and remember who they truly are. From that boundary, I've been able to achieve quantum leaps. And I continue to surprise myself like here I am surprising myself showing up. I would never have been able to do this years ago. Let me be an embodiment of how liberation can be. Let me be an example that you don't have to live in that pain. Let me show you that going from that much density brings you into this much light. See, women, I'm talking to you. We need to shift this. See, when a woman follows her intuition, she is free, and they are free. When a woman walks away from a relationship that's dimming her light, that's causing her pain, she is free, and they are free. When a woman says no, that sacred no, even if it's hard, she is free, and they are free. See, when I started to awaken myself, he started to awaken, and that's how it works. Here we are awakening ourself to awaken others. From that time period, I've been able to connect to my dad. After ten years estranged, he sends me text messages, "I love you." It's amazing. It's a miracle. And that's what happens. You become the miracle. So let me leave you with this. Remember, you are the medicine. You are the one that you've been waiting for. Remember, freedom is your birthright. Thank you.

I'm in a cabin in the woods, meditating about my upcoming move to Bali. I'm stressed out. I don't know if it's the right decision. I've sold almost everything. And I say to myself, Colleen, how bad can it be? I stopped myself. How bad can it be? You're moving to Bali! How good can it get? I jump up, and on a big piece of paper I write ‘How good can it get?’ Underneath that heading, I started to write down things that would mean that my life was getting good. One of those things was 'Make out with a sexy man.' Little did I know that was the beginning of a torrid love affair. I had met Aaron a week before at contact improv dance, and he was sexy, witty, and playful. So I went back. He was there. We danced. Though we're not supposed to talk when dancing, I asked him, "Did I see you at dinner last night?" He said, "No." But quickly followed up with, "Maybe you're seeing the future." At that moment, Aaron gave me a gift. He put a ball in the game. Now usually, because I'm not enough, I would not pick that ball up, but I had a choice to make. Was I gonna continue being small and know myself is not enough, or was I gonna be playful, sexy, and free. I chose the latter. Well, people do say I'm extremely intuitive. After the dance, Aaron asked me, "Well, when do you wanna go on a date?" I said, "Well, it should be soon cos I'm leaving town in three days and the country in three weeks." That's one of the guidelines of a torrid love affair—someone should be leaving soon. So he said, "How about tonight?" I said, "Fantastic." He told me the location to meet him at a restaurant, and we meet up, and I think to myself, Oh God. Now I have to like have a conversation. I don't wanna talk about the stress I'm under, or what we do for work, or our past relationships. I wanna keep it sexy and fun and stay in the present moment—another beautiful guideline of a torrid love affair. So I think What's gonna make him feel good? I ask him, "So what are you passionate about? What turns you on?" We start bantering back and forth, and the conversation gets very sexy. He finally leans into me and says, "You just wanna fuck, don't you?" Now I heard him loud and clear, but what came outta my mouth was, "What?" He got really shy and backed away. And I realized that my good girl conditioning was showing, and I wanted to recalibrate back to being sexy, fun, and free. So I lean in. "Oh no, I heard you. I just wanted to hear it again." Even though I didn't answer his question, we both knew what was gonna happen that night. So we started talking about how would we make it happen? Where would we go? What do we want to take place? Another beautiful guideline of a torrid love affair—a high level of communication. So we made our plan. He was gonna come meet me back at my wooden cabin. We meet there. He comes back with music, candles, and binds one would use to tie someone up. I soon find myself in quite the compromising position. As I'm lying in bed tied up, he leans over me, and he whispers in my ear, "You're mine. No one else can have you." After the binds have been taken off and our session was done, I ask him, "How did you learn about all this?" He's like, "Actually, I've never done it before, but I've always wanted to do it." Another beautiful guideline to a torrid love affair—pushing your edges. He tells me about a time where he saw Batman being tied up by Catwoman when he was a young boy and how it made him feel. The next night I dress up as Catwoman. And I dance for him. And it's so edgy and so real. And I feel crazy but so alive. He laughs, and I jump on him, and I push my hand down on his chest, call him Batman and tie him up and say, "This is no laughing matter. You're mine. No one else can have you." When Batman was untied, he turns to me, and he says, "Can I dance for you now?" In awe, I'm like, "Yes." He gets up to dance, and I start to cry. Can it stay this innocent, this free, this playful? And again, I catch myself, and I say to myself, Maybe it can, maybe I am the one who dictates my life. And I say how it goes, and it can be this way forever just because I say so. I start to laugh with delight. He jumps on top of me, and I look at him like he's the most amazing man in the world. He says to me, "Has anyone ever barked into your pussy?" "You mean like a dog?" "Yeah." "No." "Oh, poor baby." As he goes down between my legs, the most masculine bark vibrations go up my body, and I think to myself, How good can it get?

I am standing in the foothills of the Himalaya. Blue expansive sky above me. Prayer flags fluttering in the breeze and just above the rhododendron forest, white Nepali mountains. And I'm not gonna see any of it because I can't take another step. My physical body is fine, but finally, the weight of my self-hatred is so heavy that I can't even pick up my leg. Next to me, with love in his eyes, my ex-boyfriend. He's just broken up with me because I'm toxic. It's not that I'm mean to him or abusive. He says it's like living with a black hole that all the joy and the happiness has just sucked inside. And I haven't realized that I hate myself. I've wanted to commit suicide for years just to escape the pain that's in my head. But I believe so strongly in reincarnation. I think you just come straight back. I can't even kill myself to escape from this planet. And even though everything is falling apart in my world, I know that I chose this. I chose him leaving me and walking away. You see, two weeks before, I'm in a temple in India. And I am praying. Who am I? I've been reading books by gurus with unpronounceable names. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and they're all saying, "Ask the question, who am I?" And they talk about how we are not our body, and we are not our mind. And I think, Wow, maybe I can go beyond my mind. And so I start to pray. I want to know myself. I want to know myself. And this question comes, "What if your parents think that you're nuts?" I have dreadlocks. I've been barefoot for years. I quit my successful corporate job in advertising five years ago to hang out with shamans in Siberia, monks in Tibet. My parents are kindhearted small-town Scottish Christians. They probably already think I'm pretty far gone. So yes, I want to know myself, even if my parents think that I'm crazy. Who am I? Who am I? Last question. Do you want to know yourself more than you want to be with Nicholas? Nicholas is my love. He's my best friend. He's my teacher. Don't make me choose. And I see those two paths. I see the life with Nicholas, us traveling the world, living in our home in Rishikesh. Maybe having a family. And the other path is just darkness. Where does that go? The path of knowing myself. Who am I fooling? And yet I know this is the only chance I ever have to be happy. I return to my prayer. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? I am praying with every fiber of my being, every cell of my body. I've never wanted anything more than I want in that moment. Who am I? And then nothing. There is a void. There is not even an eye to experience a void. And it's not the kind of nothing where everything stays the same after. It's the kind of nothing where everything changes. Later I discover this experience, which isn't an experience, is called Sunyata. The void. Emptiness. And after an eternity, there is an eye again, observing a void. And then my mind scrambles back. What just happened? What just happened? Did I just die? Did my dad just die? Did Nicholas just die? What just happened? What just happened? And even though I am freaking out, something inside of me knows my question was answered, and I just experienced the truth. And so I returned to Rishikesh excited to share with Nicholas this powerful spiritual experience I've had. And he dumps me. And I know that this is leading me on my path of knowing myself, but it doesn't help that twenty-nine-year-old little girl who's just lost her home and her life and her beloved. And I take myself to Lumbini where the Buddha was born. And I lock myself in meditation boot camp. From four o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, I am in constant presence and meditation in a tiny Tibetan temple with a monk banging a drum and chanting deep dark Mahakala Pujas, the destroyer of the ego. It's dark, and there's yak butter lamps and paintings of the Buddha's life on the temple walls. And I sit there for days and weeks. And after a while, I see my self-hatred. I see that monster and that beast, and I know that I've created it. I'm this tiny little girl with a candle. And it has fangs, and it's snarling. And it can destroy me at any moment. I've got no idea what to do. And I just back away from it. And the beating of the drum from the monk, it's like it starts to beat from inside of me. And I start to feel my heart coming back on line. And from that place, I look at the stories I've been telling myself about what's wrong with me, about why I hate myself and I trace them back. And they're just stories cos I can see from this place that nothing is true. And I get to a story where I am six years old in the playground in Scotland, and Allison and Emily are standing over me. "You're ugly. No one likes you. No one wants to be your friend. Your mom's English." And I think they must be right because no one wants to be my friend, and I am a crybaby. And this continues for six years. Every break, every lunch, I'm running away from them, or I'm locked in the toilet with my feet up on the toilet seat so they can't find me. And I grow into an adult believing what they're telling me is truth. That no one will ever love me. That I am broken. And I put on masks, hoping that other people can't see inside—thinking if I hate myself, no one else will need to hate me. And with this monk beating the drum and from this experience I've had in India, I realize these girls who said these things to me, they were kids. They were just kids. And I remember they had big brothers and sisters who were probably saying that to them. And, of course, I can forgive them. Of course I can just let it go because it's not true. But I realize I did the same thing. I took that hatred and that bullying home. And I did the same thing to my little brothers, and I bullied them and I was so cruel to them, and so mean to them. Can I ever forgive myself for that? And as I ask the question, I realize that I'm stroking my hair. Yes, I can forgive myself for this. I am forgiving myself for this. And I realize every single part of me, everything I've experienced, is worthy of love. All of it. And what I didn't know then that I know now is I needed to be covered in those paper cuts. So I could sit in front of other people who've been stabbed and say to them, "You are worthy of love. You can get through this. You can forgive this. You can let this go." And they know that it's true because they see in my eyes that I've been through hell and escaped and that now I'm happy. And in that temple, I pull the scarf back off my face, and it's packed with golden dragonflies. Out of nowhere, golden dragonflies everywhere. And it's like they're flying all around my head, and they're taking these thoughts out of my brain. And I am free. For the first time in my life, this love is just pouring through my brain, and through my heart, and through my body. And I look down at my heart and, you know, sometimes you just see that little boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, that little pulse. And I thank my heart for always beating for me. I've treated her so badly. I've been so mean to her. I've blamed so much on her, and she's always cheered for me. And I hear my heart say to me, "Who else would I beat for?" Thank you.

2005. I'd never seen my father so happy like that before. His eyes were bright, sparkling. He said, "Finally, I have a son in my life." In Bali, we use the patriarchy system. It means the son is like a king. A son can do everything. Everything. My mom only had daughters. She wasn't able to give my father a son. That's why he married again. He married another woman. A Balinese man can marry another woman at the same time. My mom did everything for my dad. As a wife, she was the best wife. A Balinese woman is Wonder Woman. They can do everything. They can do cooking, washing, working, offerings, take care of the children, take care of the husband. They even have to take care of the husband's family. Even with all of that, my dad still left. I was ten years old. My mom said, "I have to go. I have to go to Timor-Leste." I'm like, "What? Timor-Leste? Where is Timor-Leste? And why?" Timor-Leste is a small country. Before, they were part of Indonesia. Right now, they are an independent country. She left quickly. My mom left. My dad left. I only stayed with my sister and my grandma. I looked at all of that. It was not for me. I had to grow up quickly. I had to take care of my sister. And when I had to go to my sister's school, I had to sign her report records. People around me were like, "Hey, what are you doing here? Where is your mom? Where is your dad?" I was like, hell, a little girl. I was like, "Shut up. None of your business." They're like, "Hey, what are you doing here? Where are your parents?" "They're working." And "None of your business. Shut up." I was so mad. I was so mad because why did this happen to my life? Why me? Why? I looked at all of them. It's not for me. I'm not destined to have a life like that. It wasn't for me because of my comment to not become my parents. I went to university. I had a scholarship because I was the national champion of shortboard. Even though I had a scholarship, I still had to pay for my college—for my books, living costs, and gas. And do you know who paid for that? It was my mom. She paid for me and my sister's college to make sure we got an education. In college, I started learning English. I read English books even though I didn't understand. English books, listening to music, watching YouTube because I wanted to improve my English. I even signed up to Tinder. Oh my God! How can I improve my English? How can I speak English very well? Because I just want to. Okay, I didn't learn anything on Tinder! Because of my comment to become an entrepreneur, I'm a modern woman who will marry with modern man. I started writing it down into my dream book. Oh my God. Excited. Modern man will come to my life soon. He's from a different country, from another country. He's tall—180. I know exactly what I want! Sorry. He has a beard and glasses. Oh my God. He's older than me. (Hi!) Why not? He's ten years older than me. I'm twenty-four. And he's sweet and will treat me like a queen. Oh my God. And then the most important thing is he's not stingy. Hell no. Please. No, he will treat me like a queen, right? Not stingy. And I believe he will come to my life soon. He will find me here in Bali and say, "Julia, will you marry me?" Oh my God. So excited. Woo-hoo! I'm a university graduate. My mom had to come home because of COVID-19. And then, for the first time, I looked in her eyes, and I asked her, "Hey, why did you leave me? Why? Why did you leave me like this?" She just held my hand. She started crying. "Darling," she said, "darling, I always knew there was something about you. I always knew you were different. I always knew you are a leader. I had to go to Timor-Leste. In Timor-Leste, they have US dollars so I could make money for you and your sister. And I had to make sure you got an education and not end up like me. I want you to be a strong woman, a smart woman—not like me. I just accepted everything that my husband did. My husband tried to kill me. My husband threw a knife. My husband hit me, punched me in front of you. I don't want you to end up like me. You deserve to have a great life. That's why I had to go to Timor-Leste for fifteen years." And I was crying. Oh my God, I used to judge my mom. I used to just think, Why did you leave me like this? I used to judge her. And then for me, she made a hard decision to leave me, to leave her family for fifteen years just so me and my sister got an education. And I just realized the best part of me is because of my mom. The independent woman that you see in front of you is because of my mom. This is the best gift that she has given to me. I just wanna say to you guys, Balinese women, we are strong. We are like Wonder Woman. Please. It's not time to be silent anymore. You have to say something. Please say no. If you are not safe, or don't feel safe anymore, or don't feel comfortable, say, "I wanna divorce." Say it like that. This hard decision might break the culture, but can you stay in a jail for a long time? No. Hell no. And because of that, I don't want a Balinese woman to have a life like my mom, because I saw my mom cry every night and then had to leave me and make a hard decision because she just wanna do the best for me—for my future. You have to do something. A hard decision might break the culture. But it's now or never. Today isn't too late. My mom sits here. I invited my mom. I never said I was going to speak in public. No, I just said, "I just wanna invite you for dinner, Mom." Sorry, Mom. Sorry. I don't wanna cry. I don't wanna mess up my makeup. Sorry. She is here right now. Hi Mom, and my sister. Thank you so much for everything. I will do everything to make you happy. I'm a woman, but I'm more strong than ten men. I am, please! I'm your daughter. I'm your honor. I love you so much, Mom. I love you so much, Sister. Don't cry. Don't cry.

I'm in bed. It's a tender Monday morning in New York, and we're basking in post-orgasmic bliss. On this Monday morning, everything is relaxed. We let go. And suddenly, he asks me, "Margot, will you spend the rest of your life with me?" My God. That's the last thing I wanted to hear. I don't believe in marriage. I don't believe in ending up in a golden cage of marriage, like my parents. So I'm like scratching my chin. And I'm thinking, on the other hand, I do have a belief that having a man in your life is tantamount to being successful. So what to do? So I tell him, "Darling, I'm so honored. Give me five minutes, so I think about it." So I tiptoe down from the loft of our bedroom in New York, and I discreetly and silently go to the office downstairs, open the door, close it, grab the phone, and make a call to my friend Robert the lawyer. "Hi, Robert, can you tell me how much money does it cost and how much time does it take to divorce in New York?" "Oh, easy. $200 and in two days." Oh, wow. This is just what I wanted to hear. "Thank you." I hang up the phone, go back to the bedroom. "Darling, it's a yes, it's a yes." Well, time passes, and now we're five years later, and $200 and I'm a divorced woman, and I'm on my way to India to meet this famed spiritual master called Osho in Pune. I have to admit that I have a broken heart. This divorce wasn't so easy. I made it sound easy, but I woke up to the fact that this man really loved me, and I kind of maybe didn't take him seriously enough. So my heart is crying. I missed an opportunity for love. So I come in front of Osho—the great Osho. Ah, he's wonderful. He wears a white robe, and he has a long beard, and he's at the same time, impressive and tender and soft and open. And I look in his eyes, and I say, "Osho, my heart is broken. Will you help me?" Osho takes a flashlight out of his pocket, shines it on me, reads something mysterious—I don't know what—and says to me, "You have gone in deep emotions and suffered a lot, but it has not affected your core." "Ah, I see. There's hope. I don't have to stay stuck in this sadness and these tears for the rest of my life." And then he says, "Okay, go to do the vipassana group and come and see me later." "Okay. Very good." Off we go to the vipassana. Piece of cake. I'm such a good meditator. I am going to learn my peace on the pillow. It's gonna be easy. No problem. (It's my ego speaking.) Anyway, we arrive at the vipassana. We start the meditation. I sit on the pillow, and it's not at all what I expected. In fact, what happens is one mad soap opera after another starts to unwind in my mind while I'm sitting there, and there's nothing I could do about it. So the first day, I see my husband, or I should say my ex-husband, getting his bones bruised by some karate champions, losing the fight. The next day, I see gangsters coming and dousing gasoline over his house, and everything is burning. His pajamas are on fire. He jumps through the window into the pool. Ha ha ha! The next day the cops are stopping him and fining him because he didn't pay his debts, and he goes to jail. I'm watching all this, and I'm kind of wondering, what is this? What is going on here? This never happened to me before. And I have to admit that there is a secret part of me that kind of relishes the revenge. I am having my revenge sitting on the pillow in fact, but I don't feel too proud about it. Anyway, it goes on and on and on day after day, another soap opera, and it goes on. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm totally fed up. So I go to the teacher. I said, "Teacher, what is going on here?" And I explain what's going on. And she says something very wise. She says, "Well, when your body or your mind are wounded, then the infection is there, and the pus has to be released so the infection can heal. And so the wound also can heal. So your mind is like your body. Your mind is releasing the wound, and there's nothing you can do." Nothing I can do. Gee. Back on the pillow with hope. Same old, same old, more soap operas. He breaks a leg. He goes to the hospital. So finally I said, okay, it's enough. I'm gonna ask Osho for help. So I write Osho a letter, and I said, "Dear Osho, I didn't come to sit on the pillow here to kill my husband. Can you do something to help me?" I send the letter over. The next day peace in the house. No more soap operas. Everything is quiet. Peace on the pillow. Peace in my mind—blessings. Oh my God. Finally, I can meditate. Thank you, Osho. I'm very grateful. So I meditate, and the pearl arrives. The gift of this week-long meditation. This inner voice that says to me, "As a human being, you are a woman who is free, whether she has a man in her life or not." Now that to me meant a lot because I realized at that moment that I was actually in this program—in this belief—that I married this man because this was the way to be successful. This was the way to go out in the world to be socially accepted. And so without a husband, no success. So now I was getting the real teaching. And now the challenge was you are free as you are, and you don't need to have anybody to feel you can be creative and successful. So this was a new step into a new life for me—a big teaching. So I was very grateful. So end of the meditation, I go home. I rest, and I remember Osho told me to come see him when I was finished. Well, I got nothing to tell him, really, except I'm full of gratitude. Well, I go anyway. So I walk in the hall, the lecture hall. There's about forty people there, all rather solemn and serious. Germans. I sit down. I wait until they call my name. And when they call my name, I go sit at Osho's feet. And I just look at him adoringly. And I say, "Thank you" because I have nothing else to say, really. And then he smiles, and he puts his middle finger on my third eye as he usually does as a blessing. I receive it expecting nothing in particular. And all of a sudden, I feel like I'm in an earthquake. The ground under my coccyx is rumbling and grumbling and shaking. And I say, "What is going on?" And soon enough, it turns out that this grumbling and shaking is this uncontrollable laughter that is coming up from my loins through my bones. And I'm exploding in mirth, and there's nothing I can do to control it. Ha-ha-ha. And I laugh, and I laugh until I roll on the floor. I'm rolling on the floor with laughter, and Osho is laughing in his beard. And now, all of a sudden, the whole room is laughing, and I'm completely helpless. I'm here with my legs up, my arms up, laughing, laughing, holding my belly. Finally, they have to carry me to my seat. Okay. Well, this is a pretty exhausting experience. So at the end of it, we go home, and I say, "Wow, that was great. That was definitely, you know, a good gift—this laughter." I go home, and I think, Ah, time to rest. I'm really tired. The next day I get up. It's not finished. What happens, to my great amazement, is that every day at 7:00 p.m., the laughter comes back, and I have nothing to do with it. I might be walking down the street—ha-ha-ha-ha! I might be eating a restaurant with a friend—ha-ha-ha-ha! The food goes everywhere. It explodes in a moment that is completely unexpected. I forget. I don't know when it's coming. Suddenly the plate and food flies and my friend laughs. I get the tissue, the laughing tissue, out of my bag. I'm ready by then. And then I'd be writing a letter to someone—ha-ha-ha! Anyway, whatever I do—talking to a friend, walking down the street—the laughter comes back day after day after day. And guess what? Guess how long it came back? One month. Imagine that. For one month, you are breaking out in uncontrollable mirth, complete laughter. You have no control over it. You are not even doing it. It's happening to you. You don't know where it's coming from, but you realize a few things. You realize, my friends, that when you laugh, something happens. You are dissociated from the object of your laughter. You become a sort of a witness to something which isn't, you know, you. It's something. You are laughing, but you don't know what it is. So, after a while laughing and laughing and laughing, I start to realize what's happening here. I'm laughing at myself. You know, I'm laughing at myself because why else? Why else would I be laughing? So, then I start to say, "Yeah, I'm laughing at myself. Well, okay. So who is the self I'm laughing at? Oh. And I start to see all the shenanigans I've played in my life, and all the idiocies and the divorce and you know, everything becomes a kind of a ridiculous joke, you know? And I begin to see like life, everything around it, everything around me, you know, I see everything as a ridiculous joke. I can't take anybody seriously anymore. Myself the first. I am a clown. Everybody's a clown. Okay. Forget about it. Get onto your work. Write your letters. Do your thing. Ha-ha-ha! There it comes back to remind me once again. And so finally, I realized that this master had given me an incredible gift, and that was this gift to not be able to take myself seriously anymore, and not be able to take anything in life seriously anymore. And so there is this kind of deep inner joy, especially there, because imagine what would happen to you if every night at 7:00 p.m. you would start to laugh for no reason. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. You're not doing it. Okay? You have no reason to laugh and there it goes, and you have no control over it. I mean, it does something. It imprints laughter in the cells of your body. And you know that laughter is part of your nature, and laughter is your way to enlightenment. Okay. So that's the story.

I'm at a new school and for good reason. It wasn't going well. You see I'm nine years old and I'm at a private school—a French school. So I've got my white button-up shirt. I've got my maroon cravat. I've got my wool gray slacks. I'd love to have some new friends. So I walk into this courtyard, and I see some kids playing over on the wall. And as I walk over to them, my eyes widen because they've got paper and pencils and drawings and maps, and they've got these dice that look like gems. And I say, "What are you doing here?" They say, "We're playing Dungeons and Dragons. You wanna play?" "Y-yeah." Now I didn't know what Dungeons and Dragons was. So I was like just happy to be accepted to do anything. And so they said, "Here. You can be this character." And then I was on a boat, and in one hand I had a sword. And with my other hand, I had the tiller, and we were going towards this island. And then I looked in the water, and I could see these gems in the coral. And there was a treasure chest and I wanted at it, and I just jumped over and into the water. And I swam, and I could get to the gems and the chest except for I was wearing thirty pounds of chain mail. And I couldn't get up out of the water. And I drowned to death. And with tears in my eyes, I stumbled back away, and I was devastated. I didn't know what to do. My new friends, my new opportunity, my new school. It just felt like the world was crashing in on me. To take you back a year . . . I woke up to pounding on the door, and I had a little peephole in my bedroom where I could look down and see the front door, and I could see a woman there, and she was screaming for help. And curiosity got the better of me, and I went down the stairs, and I followed her out to a man lying dead on the ground with blood pooling out all around him. And my dad turned and saw me. "Get back in the house!" I ran back in the house, and I went in under my sheets. And that's when the nightmares started. "Mommy, don't go in there. Don't go in the closet. There's a witch in there. She's coming for you. She's coming for me. She knows you're here." My imagination had gotten the better of me, and everything every night was one nightmare after another. So I went the next day, a year later, back to see those boys after a night of crying myself to sleep, and I sidled up to them, and I was like, "So I died. Is that it?" They said, "Oh, you wanna make a new character?" I was like, "Yes!" And that became this moment where I came alive, and a whole new world came out for me. And I found a new place for my imagination. My imagination a year before that felt like a curse. And every time I went to bed, I was so fearful. And I don't want to tell you that Dungeons and Dragons made my life better because life is what it is. And life offered me a lot of different opportunities to face challenges. At ten years old, I was looking down into the coffin of one of my classmates. And I could see his white face, his cold body lying there. And at fourteen, I was hit with it again. One of my best friends had passed away, and it was announced at school while I was sitting there eating a bagel that just turned to sand in my mouth, as this was one of our brotherhood. This was one of the people who had gone on these journeys with me. We had slayed dragons. We had faced monsters. We had rescued damsels, and we had formed a brotherhood. And we had felt like we had connected with something. And then there I was at fifteen, and I was standing on a balcony with my dad. And I was just telling him, "I just don't know if I can go through this anymore." I was so cynical. "I just don't know what it's worth. I don't get it. I don't know what we're doing here. I don't know what this planet is. It's for rent. You know, like, what am I doing? I feel like I'm in a Tron light cycle, and I'm racing with my friends inside of a giant machine, and we're trying to beat each other and cut each other off just to get jobs." And this is the way I was looking at the future. I'm trying to get myself into university. "Who can get in there?" It's like, "Why do I even wanna do this? What is the point? Why don't I just pitch myself over the railing right now?" He talked me down from that ledge. And I carried with me this feeling of darkness. And it kept creeping back in on me. But I did have this imagination and this feeling that when I played role-playing games, there was something in the pain that my characters would go through that wouldn't stay with me. It was just in the game. Why was that? Why did I not mind the pain in the game, but in reality, it was so prevalent? It was so intense. And so, using my imagination, I thought, Well, why don't I role-play my own suicide? I didn't act it out. And I don't mean it in that way. I mean, in my mind, in my thoughts, like what would it be like if I just let everything go and just let go of all this intensity and let go of all these things that are haunting me because every time I was just getting upset. I was just getting anxious. And so I made a decision that day. "I'm committing suicide. I'm done. I'm finished. And I'm just gonna stick around to see what would've happened after." And I'm standing before you here today, having manipulated myself. So that the next day when I woke up, I actually felt a lot lighter. And I walked up to that girl that I wanted to ask out, and I asked her out, and I went up to the bully in our tennis team who kept correcting how I was playing. And I told him, "Let the coach coach me. Stop riding me." And, you know, I also had to come clean with some of my friends. And I remember really clearly deciding, all right. And I went to a couple of different friends of mine, each on my own. And I said to them, "You know, remember I told you about that girl that I got together with last summer at camp? Well, I didn't, and actually, I'm still a virgin." And it was really hard to do these things, but I started to feel lifted. And I had used my imagination to bring me to a new place. And role-playing stayed with me. It was always a place I could come back to. And I did when things got difficult, especially when I had a few long-term relationships. And in one of them, I just decided and said to her, "Look, let's get married. We don't have to get married like for real, but let's get married, you and I. Let's make our own vows. Let's commit not to leave each other. Let's commit not to walk out the door. Let's figure it out. Let's hash it out. Let's figure out what's going on—why I'm always trying to win in the relationship, and I'm hurting you. And I don't like that, and I don't want that anymore. And I wanna figure it out." And you know what? We got married for a year, and we renewed that vow for another year. And we stayed together for three years. We made it work, and we worked it out, and we played it out. And when it didn't work anymore, it didn't, and we let it go. And it was okay. We were okay. She left, and she found love. And I left, and I found love. And she's still sitting here with me in my life twenty-one years later. And you know, I've been trying to figure out how can I share this experience of role-playing and using our imagination in a positive way to uplift ourselves and to move forward in our lives. And so I wrote a book. It's called the Teacher-Gamer Handbook, and I just want everyone to have it—adults, teachers, gamers, psychologists, educators, social workers, community leaders. These are all people that could benefit from this. But the real people who benefit from it are the kids. The kids who are trying to make their way in the world who don't have tools or who don't know how to imagine or use their tools of imagination to move themselves forward when they face tragedy, when they face upset, when they face heartbreak, when they face their identities, and they try to work through their pasts and their futures. So I just want to share the joy and the gift that I've had of figuring this out. I feel like I'm very serious right now, but I wanna say to you that there's so much freedom that I found in it and fun and play and risk-taking. And there's so many things that are creative about it that I just wanna share. And I took a really big risk myself actually, working in a public school, working in a very official environment—I brought meditation into the school. But I didn't ask if I could do it. I just did it. This was in an inner-city school in Canada, where the retention rate was 50%. So one out of two people by the end of the year dropped out of this school. And so, I just taught my students how to meditate and how to bring it into their lives so that they could just ground themselves and get to work and find a way to connect with themselves. And they did. They connected with themselves. They found a way to empathize with each other and the world around them. And they developed skills—life skills—and they went into their lives, and they started to crush it. And the retention rate of the school went up to 80%. Yeah, we quadrupled how many students were actually staying in the school. And actually, from taking that risk, I got hired by a prominent globally recognized school—Green School. And that's how I got to this place where we are. And I just want to be able to share that commitment, the commitment that I have to try and move education into a new realm of using our imagination. And that's risky because as an intellectual and as an academic, I know that people don't always appreciate imagination. They want to keep it really straight. They wanna keep it really straightforward. And I struggle with that. I try to figure it out because it's tricky. How do you bring imagination into school and make it legit? And I want that to be something that people can try. And so, I commit myself to bringing role-playing games into schools worldwide. I don't know how it's gonna go, but I'm gonna do my best. And you can count on me for it. Thank you.

So I felt empty as I looked into my wife's eyes as we sat on the couch at our therapist's office, trying one last time to make this marriage work. And I asked myself, "Why? Why could I not accept her unconditional love?" I loved her. She unconditionally loved me. Isn't that what this whole life thing's about? Isn't this how the happily ever after story works? Why did I feel so empty? Why could I not go all in? What was this empty hollow feeling? It was shame. It was a shame that was fixed deep in me the moment I told her. The moment I looked into her eyes and told her that not only did I have an affair but that I had fallen in love with another woman. I watched her drop, collapse to the floor, crying and screaming. And all I could think about is how could I betray anybody, let alone this woman like this, someone who loved me, who I committed to being for the rest of our lives? How could I do that? It was not the shame that makes you feel like you did a bad thing. It was the shame that makes you feel like you're a bad person, that you're no longer worthy of being loved. And that hollow feeling in this moment, like how could I feel nothing? Nothing at all, completely empty. I was five, and I fell, and I banged my knee one time. And I remember my dad coming as I started to cry. He's like, "Chris, just relax. It's gonna be okay. Kathy, don't coddle him." Kathy's my mom. And I breathe. And I was like, you know, the tears went away, and I relaxed, and I was okay. And then I can remember the next time that I fell. And I remember falling. And I remember that pain started to come, and I squeezed, and I flexed so hard that I didn't feel any pain, and I didn't cry. And that was the birth of the stoic boy cos I was an emotional little kid. But if I flexed and squeezed hard enough, I knew I could protect myself from ever being called a pussy again—a wuss, a little girl. And that stoic boy turned into a stoic man. That stoic man entered the corporate world with no emotions cos emotion was weakness. Emotion was stress. If you were emotional or stressed, you didn't get the big account. They couldn't trust you to close the big deal. You couldn't get the big promotion. You couldn't be a success. Cos, of course, as a man, we all need to be a success. So I sat in this meeting one time. My boss tells me, "We're cutting your territory in half." I sit there, of course, just listening like, Oh. Half the territory, half the accounts, half the forecast, half the revenue, and my little chance at winning the little top performer's trophy was like fading away. But, of course, I'm sitting in this meeting cool, collective. I leave that meeting, and I feel something like in my heart. It just doesn't really feel great. So I walk to my car. I get in my car, and I start driving, and it goes like tick, tick, tick. And then boom. My tears are running down my face. I'm screaming in my car. I think I'm having a fucking heart attack. I literally be like, Get me to the hospital. I pull into the hospital. My wife comes and the doctor to tell me, "You're okay. You just had a panic attack." So I was okay. And only my wife, mom, therapist, and doctor knew that that had happened. So the next day, you go right back to the office like nothing happened. That stoic man in the corporate world made his way right into my relationship with my wife because I had to be strong. I had to be the pillar. I couldn't do something that might make her emotional because I had to be strong for the two of us. And it didn't allow me to connect to her at all. Cos I was scared if, all of a sudden, like I wanted to have a simple conversation, like "Can we just maybe do these things? Cos I think it'd be fun." Did she think I'm gonna shame her by that? Is that gonna cause a reaction? Might as well ... nope, can't say that. Her job was killing her, and I just wanted to be like, "Can we talk about your job cos it's impacting me too, and I just feel like it's getting in between us?" But I couldn't do that cos I didn't want to create hysterics. I had to be strong for her. I felt like I was playing second fiddle to her family, but I couldn't say anything. And then one night the phone rings at three o'clock in the morning. It's her mom hysterical, crying. And I can feel that she's about to have a breakdown. And in that moment, I'm like, Geez, I've done all this to avoid the breakdown. And here it comes. And then I felt the tick tick. And instead of the boom, it's that moment like in movies where they throw the bad guy on top of the grenade, except that was my heart. So it went like this . . . and I held the panic attack in, and it just like imploded me. This stoic man was killing me across the board. And in a moment when I was about to go into standard Chris Walker Fix it Mode, shift the knobs, change the job, change the location, do whatever it is—it'll be fine for another six months, a year—I realized that I had no idea who I was. I didn't know who I was. And like how could I fix what I didn't know? So I decided to move to Bali to become a yoga teacher. Yep. And backpacked a yoga mat, six books with me and why six books is important is cos I am not a reader. But if I was gonna prove to myself that I was gonna change, I was gonna start reading books. So I get to Bali. Yoga, eat, sleep, repeat. Yoga, eat, sleep, repeat. A little cacao dessert, a little ecstatic dance on the weekends, but leaving so much bullshit behind me. I actually began to really feel. I began to focus. I began to feel what I could only describe in that moment—it was just like this little glimmer of what felt like somebody wrote in a book about this thing inner peace. Like it just kind of felt like a little peaceful. I began to feel. And dare I say it just a little bit of may I call it self-love? Just a little bit. Just like a little salt on top of the dish kind of amount of self-love. But like I was feeling, and this shit was fucking awesome. But then I get a phone call. I get a phone call from my wife. She's been deported. She's in a holding cell in Gatwick Airport about to be forced to go back to France with absolutely nothing. And all I could think about is I need to be there for her. At the drop of a hat, I buy a ticket to Paris because I love her. I want to show her that I love her. I also wanna show her that like I've changed. I'm like a new fucking person right now. Like this is really, really real. I'm on the way to the airport. And I've got a book in hand. I call it 'The book.' Brené Brown's Daring Greatly. Now this book is the book for me for a specific reason. It's maybe six years before my mom gave me this book. That book moved to three flats in San Francisco, moved to London, came to Bali, had never been cracked once. So I'm going. And I can even remember through the difficult times in life and only now looking back on it, I could call it depressed states that I was going through, that my mom would say, "You know, Chris, I think it'd be a good idea right now if you read that Daring Greatly book I got you." I can remember hearing my wife being like, "You know, this might be a really good time for you to read that book your mom got you." Of course, I don't listen to them at all, but I lay a gauntlet out for myself. I lay a gauntlet that says I'm gonna read this book cover to cover in one day because that'll really prove to me and to her that I've changed. Cos the old Chris Walker could not read a book in one day. I had read about twelve books in my entire life up to this point. So I got this pink highlighter, and I'm sitting on the plane. Two hundred pages. All right, twenty pages tick. I get to ten tick marks the book is done. Twenty pages tick. Fading into, okay, take a nap. Back. Tick, tick, tick. I get the 10th tick. I finish the book, mission accomplished. I sit there, tears running down my face, and I'm like, "You mean vulnerability is not weakness. It's a superpower. What?" Ahh. I can laugh about it now, but in that moment, and I don't do anything half-ass, I knew there was only one thing to do from here. I was to repropose to my wife. So with vulnerability as my little superpower—on that, her Airbnb in Paris, I'm standing crying butt naked reading the vows that I had rewritten. This new commitment, this new love, this new me was there. And at the end, I asked her to be my wife, and she sat there crying and smiling at me. And she said, "I can't." It destroyed me. Like the feeling leading into it was so beautiful. It was so pure. It felt so good. It felt so amazing. I felt, I felt this whole time. I felt like I had never felt before. I was experiencing what it was like to go in, and regardless if she said yes or no, I knew that I had changed. I knew that I had feelings and a connection to this thing called vulnerability that I had never had before. But there was this deep sadness, like why couldn't this have happened two months ago? Like why couldn't I have found the whole sense of self two months ago, and I would've fixed everything. Right? How did I get dug into this hole? How did I believe vulnerability was a weakness for so long? Seven-year-old Chris knew vulnerability was weakness. I played basketball. This kid, David Baird, couldn't dribble with his left hand. And I terrorized him. I stole the ball from him over and over and over again. I was an asshole. It's okay, though. I was just thinking, ding, ding, ding, I didn't need to score a single point. Every steal was a win. I was winning, and I lived the rest of my life with two things moving forward from that point; a belief that everybody else was me. They were gonna take advantage of my vulnerabilities just like I took advantage of David Baird's vulnerabilities. And so, I began to live life strategizing on how to win. Cos why wouldn't you want to be a winner? Why would you wanna be a loser if you could be a winner? But obviously, with this story, it caught up to me. So now I stand committed to no longer seeing life as a game that's all about winning. I choose to see life as a game that's about experiencing. For life is not all about winning. Winning is this future-dated idea outcome. Focusing on winning kept me from fully feeling, from fully expressing, from fully connecting to who I was because I might put in jeopardy the win. It took me completely out of the present moment. And isn't life about this present moment? For when all we're doing is focusing on the outcome, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We set ourselves up for upset, suffering, depression. What if you create the company and the only reason is to make a bunch of money, and it goes bankrupt? If the only reason that you get into the relationship is so that it'll last forever, and it ends. If you build all the money so that you can be accepted as a success, and then you're still not. You focus so much on the result that you just let life go by, and you just miss experiencing all of it. So we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity right now to drop the stories. To drop the stories that told you what you were supposed to look like, what you were supposed to do, what you were supposed to feel. You can drop all of that bullshit and connect to the present moment. You can connect to the most authentic truest version of yourselves. And maybe you can even share the present moment with somebody you love. But you can begin to feel and share along this beautiful yet not always easy journey that's life because if you don't, life will pass you by one moment at a time until you either die or you tell yourself that you have had enough. Thank you all for your time.

I'm twelve years old. I'm on the school bus I ride to and from school every day—that big yellow bus with the double-seater seats with the little kids in the front and the big kids in the back. Well, today I'm in the middle of the bus. I'm talking to all my friends, having our usual banter bouncing up and down. And I hear a voice. Tanner Johnson. Ugh, your standard school bully. Well, Tanner yells from the back of the bus as loud as he possibly can for everyone on the bus to hear right at me, "You are a brown cow." Brown cow—attacking everything that's different about me. You see, I'm your star child. I get straight A's. The teachers love me. I don't wanna stand out for any reason. I'm already the tall girl with big curly hair, dark skin, dark eyes. I've got the middle Eastern nose. I don't wanna stand out. In that moment, I flashback to years ago. I'm six years old. We're at the Calgary Stampede, this big citywide event. We're in this crowded room, shoulder to shoulder. And with my family, we shuffle onto this escalator, and this woman turns around and tells my parents to go back where they came from. And as slowly as the escalator is moving down to the floor below, this feeling of sadness moves up and wraps me up. And this knot that had never existed before has now formed in my stomach. I don't remember what my dad said in that moment, but I know that he stood up for us. And I also remember that my heart broke, and I never wanted to feel this shame or sadness again. And so, this belief that I had to fit in to survive was solidified. You see, my parents came to Canada in 1982 as refugees from their home country of Iran. At the time the newly formed government was persecuting my family and thousands of other families who were members of the Baha'i faith. The newly formed government was giving them two choices, recant your faith or face prison, and oftentimes even death. And so my parents chose to give up everything that was familiar to them, including their own family, and leave to find a life that was better for their children. My parents sacrificed everything to seek out opportunity, security, and acceptance. And the sacrifice that they made has informed every single decision that I have made in my life. I'm back on the bus. And I remember the courage that my dad had in that moment. I take a deep breath like I'm breathing in the courage that my parents had when they were forced to leave their home and leave everything that was familiar to find a new life. And I look Tanner right in the eyes, and I yell as loud as I can, "At least brown cows make chocolate milk." It was that moment that my warrior spirit was sparked because I knew that what I had to say in that moment was bigger than just standing up for me. It was about standing up for every kid on that bus that was different—to tell them that their differences have value. And to tell me that I don't have to be ashamed. The impact that I had on that bus and everyone around me was unforgettable. And I knew it was because I showed up as my authentic self. Being a member of the Baha'i community, I grew up with this tight-knit community. It was awesome, but I also had formed some really strong beliefs. And I had drawn some really deep lines in the sand. If you were this, you were good. And if you were that you were bad. And when I was twenty-one, I finally moved out on my own to go to university. But that meant that I had to leave that community that I was so familiar with and comfortable with. Now I'm in this new city, and I have to make new friends. And all of a sudden, these people aren't fitting into the boxes that I had once created. I'm meeting people who are gay, straight, bisexual, non-drinkers, drinkers, weed smokers, weed-growers, weed trimmers, doctors, yogis, teachers, artists, cultural creators, and some who are all of the above. And unexpectedly, they're all inspiring me to be my best self which is incredible and eye-opening and heart-opening. And also really scary because that meant that I had to reidentify the way I saw myself moving through this world with this new understanding and this new empathetic heart. The world went from being easily black and white to completely gray. And I was scared, and I felt like I was being a traitor, particularly to my parents and this community that loved me so deeply because they also brought so many incredible things into my life. And so I retreated. I needed time to understand and figure it all out. Well, what did that look like? I stopped meditating. I stopped praying. I stopped reflecting. I was drowning in sadness. The guilt was overwhelming. And then one day I'm sitting in my room alone, and I look over at my nightstand, and there's this Baha'i book of meditations that I used to read from daily, and something was calling me that it was time to pick up the book. So I reach over, and I open it. And this is what I read. "The more difficulties one sees in the world, the more perfect one becomes. The more you plow and dig the ground, the more fertile it becomes. The more you cut the branches of a tree, the higher and stronger it grows. The more you put the gold in the fire, the purer it becomes. The more you sharpen the steel by grinding it, the better it cuts. And therefore, the more sorrows one sees, the more perfect one becomes." In reading these words, I realize that the pain of this past year wasn't for nothing. I am the earth being plowed. I am the gold and the fire becoming more and more pure. I am the steel being sharpened. I started reading these words every morning, and every night I would breathe these words so that every cell in my body could feel these words because they reminded me that you don't have to be afraid. You don't have to be afraid of pain or confusion. It wasn't all wrong. I was coming out stronger. I was forging my new own path. I wasn't being a traitor. In fact, I was just being really honest with myself. And the biggest thing that I realize is you don't have to forget your past to grow. In fact, it's the foundation that you are growing upon. The values that I grew up with are still within me and play a role in my life because nothing in life is a mistake. Looking back, the twelve-year-old me could have been quiet on the bus, and I didn't have to follow my heart. And I would've still been of service today, but I know it wouldn't have been with the same impact. And most importantly, the feeling of righteousness that I have in my bones. And it feels so good to know that this is my truth. The path of creative service is not dissimilar from the one named in the Baha'i meditation. It's not always an easy one, but the more I am willing to plow, the more I am willing to have my branches cut and to face the grind, the more powerful and impactful it becomes. I need me. Not the condition me. Not the one trying to impress, not the one feeling unworthy. I just need me. I need the authentic me to shine through. And that's why I'm here today to share my authentic truth with you. Thank you.