Translator: Ivana Krivokuća
Reviewer: Mile Živković Show of hands, who makes
a conscious effort to be yourself? (Laughter) That's a big mistake. (Laughter) I think trying to be yourself
makes you just like everyone else who's trying to be themselves. (Laughter) My feeling is that you should
try to be unique - (Laughter) By trying to be like everybody else. (Laughter) And it'll make you normal, which is good. (Laughter) I do believe that the most dangerous
liability in our world today is being yourself. Think about it: if you are being yourself,
someone might actually find out who you really are,
they might actually see you. (Laughter) You might actually find out who you are.
People might make fun of you. They might reject you. They might actually accept you too. Which is probably worse. (Laughter) That's very scary. I really advocate
a posture in life of being normal to help protect you
from these great threats. (Laughter) Are you guys with me? (Audience) Yes! At least this is
what our imaginations say, for some reason. I mean, it sounds a little ridiculous. But I think what's actually
more ridiculous than how it sounds is the fact that we all
act this out to some degree. It's also a fact that I just called
my opinion a fact. (Laughter) So it's like scientific, which is great. (Laughter) Another of my opinions is
the most pervasive disease in our world today is being normal. It infects a lot of people.
It infects 90% of people. (Laughter) The other 10% are also affected
but they don't know it, they're silent carriers. (Laughter) Are you okay? (Laughter) You look sad. Do you want some flowers? (Laughter) There. Woman in the audience: Thank you so much.
JP: You're welcome. (Laughter) To me, they're really quite ugly,
they just look like weeds. But I hope they cheer you up. I'm not a doctor, unless I'm in denial. How would you know if you're a doctor?
I assume someone tells you. But anyway, it's my opinion
I'm not a doctor, yet I believe being normal, it's caused by a fear-based mindset
of self-rejection. It's incredibly self-imposed,
incredibly self-induced. It's like, when we're being normal
and that becomes the religion we worship, we treat ourselves like the enemy. We reject ourselves
because that ensures us nobody else is going to reject us. If I reject me first,
then you don't get any of me, because I don't bring me to the table, so you can never reject me
as long as I'm rejecting myself. Which is pretty interesting. It's like, I'll kill myself,
so that I don't die. (Laughter) Nobody else can kill me if I die first. (Laughter) Honestly, I think we laugh
because it's true. (Laughter) I can feel you're
telepathically asking me, "JP, is there a cure for normal?" (Laughter) I believe so. To me, the cure
for normal is your weirdness. Not someone else's weirdness,
but your weirdness is the cure. Show of hands, who in here is naked
under your clothes right now? (Laughter) Cool. So you're all a bunch
of naked weirdos. (Laughter) The cure is inside of you. (Laughter) You don't need to go
figure out how to be weird. I think the design team that makes us, they are way too intelligent
to actually make us just normal. They want life a little more
interesting than that. By the way, that statement
has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. (Laughter) It's not food or drugs. But it is my position. From my perspective, your weirdness is a big part
of what makes you - you. Does anybody in here know
what the purpose of life is? Yeah. Oh, God. I guess that's the purpose. (Laughter) We're done, we just figured it out. (Laughter) Aside from the one narcissist
who actually thinks she knows what the purpose of life is, (Laughter) I don't know what the purpose of life is. But if I was pretending
to know the purpose of life, I think it would have a lot to do
with you living your life. You actually giving yourself permission
to be the miracle that you are, and expressing that, not hiding that. It's kind of interesting
how we're given this life, which I judge to be
something incredibly precious, and then I'm amazed at how much of my time
I spend hiding this precious life that I've been given. I guess I was profound. (Laughter) We got some sighs. (Laughter) What if the purpose of your life
was actually to be yourself? Can you slice through the psychological
scar tissue of your programming that has you acting normal, so that the miracle of you
can actually arise? What is weirdness? This stage creaks so much. (Laughter) Which is kind of normal for stages,
when you think about it. To me, weirdness is something
too far profound to actually be defined. So here's my definition of weirdness. (Laughter) It's the traits, the tendencies,
the behaviors, the perspectives that help make you unique. Again, it's nothing we need to acquire. I think it's something
we're incarnated with. (Laughter) The question is: can you take off what you
cover up your raw, naked weirdness with? Some of us would be sitting here saying, "Well, JP, you know, it sounds cool
to be weird, but I'm just normal. I wear a suit and I actually pay
my taxes on time. And I like doing that.
So I'm just a boring, normal person." What I hear you say is
you're actually in denial. Microphone check. Whoever invented this style of microphone
should be executed. (Laughter) It's like a water bottle company saying, "This water bottle is meant
to be held by your ear." (Laughter) Which brings me to my next point. You're weirder than you think. In fact, you're probably weirder
than you can think. (Laughter) That's my opinion. Question for you:
who inspires you the most? Think of the person
who inspires you the most. And yell out a name for me. (Audience talking) What I'm hearing you all say is JP Sears. (Laughter) Let's go with who inspires you
the second most, because I don't want
this just to be about me. (Laughter) Okay, now, your names. Woman in the audience: Myself. JP: Myself. Okay. I like that. But I heard some of you guys
saying Alan Watts. You can think of the cliche examples like Elon Musk, Richard Branson,
Steve Jobs, whatever. Whoever inspires you the most, the question is:
what about them inspires you? My delusional opinion is what inspires you
about them is the fact that they're weird. I guarantee nobody has ever inspired
other people by excelling at normalcy. (Laughter) I've tried, it hasn't worked. (Laughter) I think really what inspires us
about inspirational people more than their weirdness
is the fact that their weirdness actually delivers them to us. We actually get exposed
to the surface area of who they are. Because they're willing to risk
being their unapologetically weird selves. And somehow, we get inspired
when we see someone else being themselves. We trick ourselves;
we think we're inspired because of what they do or what they have,
but I think that's just a delusion. I think we're really inspired by them
being willing to risk being themselves. I might me the only one -
but I might not be too. I think we're all very thirsty
to experience ourselves. When we see someone else
drinking themselves - and again, not what they do,
not what they have, but who they are, they're ripping their normal clothes off
and we see them being themselves - we say, "I want some of that." What if you found out your weirdness
is a gluten-free bread crumb trail that always leads you to you - (Laughter) to your authentic self? I don't like to worship weirdness; I love to worship
where weirdness leads us, which was really hard
for me to say just then. (Laughter) It's a really abnormal sentence
to put together, apparently. (Laughter) So why I am a huge fan of weirdness is
it's my dogmatic belief it always leads us to who we really are. Not who we think we are,
not even who we want to be, but something far more significant -
it leads us to who we actually are, if we're willing to follow
the scent trail of our weirdness. On paper, being weird and not apologizing
for it sounds kind of cool. So why do we constipate ourselves
from expressing our unapologetically weird selves?
Why do we do it? Well, because there's nothing
but awkward silence meeting the question I just asked,
I'll give you my answer. (Laughter) I think we constipate
the expression of our weirdness and therefore the expression
of our true selves because we're all approval addicts. Why are we approval addicts? I'm curious, who in here
has had a childhood? (Laughter) Cool. I saw eight people. (Laughter) The rest of you are in denial, which just means you had
a very traumatic childhood, so the memory that you actually
had a childhood will come back to you at some point. I think one of the most fundamental
human needs is the need for connection. When we're a child, this need
for connection is incredibly raw. Babies can actually die
from failure to thrive syndrome if they don't have connection. What's the currency of connection
we learn early on? My experience - it's approval. When I feel approved of,
I feel a sense of connection. There are other connections available,
but they're kind of hidden, we typically have to work to find them. So little JP auditions
for mommy and daddy's approval. When he would get their approval,
I feel like I matter, I feel like I belong,
I feel like I'm connected to. Physically maybe, but more importantly,
psychologically connected to - so important. What do you have to do
to get someone's approval? You have to please them. What do you have to do to please a person? Be yourself? (Audience) No. JP: It's typically act like them. When someone acts like - especially if you mirror to them
the things about themselves they like - that's how they get approval. We're talking about approval,
not acceptance. Or we learn to read people and we become
what someone else wants us to be, whether we're acting like them or we just read what's going to meet
this person's need, and then we become that. Being our authentic self
isn't really part of that equation. In fact, I believe to some degree
all of us experienced as a child times when we would actually
step into being ourselves, and we weren't recognized for it. We weren't validated for it. We get this sense of approval and therefore we trick ourselves
into thinking that's validation when we're being
what other people want us to be. But here we are
when we're being ourselves, it might go unrecognized, therefore we don't get approval,
we feel kind of just empty, maybe a little bit abandoned, and sometimes even worse,
we'll actually get disapproval. We'll actually feel invalidated
when we are being ourselves. It's very rare when we're children that we're validated
when we're being ourselves. Apparently, life has a trick in store. We're supposed to figure that out
for ourselves later on. A little bit about my story - I might as well talk about myself
for the next 45 minutes. (Laughter) Myself is my favorite subject. One of the ways I've very much
constipated myself - my weirdness, yes,
but more importantly, me, the real me - is for the first 13 years of my career
I kept my inner comedian concealed. Like it was something dangerous
that would bring harm to my life. About two and a half years ago, I started to give myself permission
to not betray myself as much, to not be so constipated
with my weirdness. Because I had made up a story: it would be terrible for business,
it would discredit me - as an emotional healing coach -
if I was humorous. Like that would just be
a really bad idea, I told myself. And then I stopped believing it. Actually, I still believed it,
but I stopped worshiping that idea, and I started making comedy videos. My method of weirdness - when I am significantly handsome,
and that's just kind of weird. It's like, weird how handsome you are, JP. (Laughter) But also, the way I see the world,
it's unique to me, and I guarantee the way
you see the world is unique to you. But we're talking about me, not you,
so enough about you. (Laugher) I tend to see the world
like I see the unseen, and I want to expose it because it is
just so fascinating, so amusing to me. It can be weird to other people,
it can be unsettling to other people. It can actually cause other people
to disapprove of me. Sometimes they get angry
based on how they experience themselves about my perspectives. But I started to realize something: as long as I'm worshiping
other people's approval, I can never accept myself. It's kind of weird, as long as
I can never accept myself, I never give anybody else
a chance to accept me. When I'm trying to be in an approval-based
relationship with everybody, it costs me myself, and it means I can't be
in an acceptance-based relationship, because I'm in a perpetual posture
of rejecting myself, not accepting myself. What if that's true for you? Until you learn
to actually accept yourself, then you'll always be worshiping
other people's approval, or disapproval, just depending
on if you're compliant or defiant. Then the next question that I'm telepathically sensing
that you're telepathically asking me is, "Well, JP, how can we embody a yes to our weirdness?" I mean, I didn't say how can you say yes
to your weirdness, because talk is cheap. Ironically, that's talk
that says talks is cheap, so there's a hole in that theory. (Laughter) So how can you embody a yes
to your weirdness, which means embodying a yes
to you being you? Something I'd ask you to consider is a willingness to embrace discomfort is essential. As long as we fear the fear of rejection - (Laughter) (Train sound) Do you think if I get angry
and swear at the train, it'll help things? (Laughter) That fucking train. (Laughter) I'll play with my microphone for a while. I'll act like I can fix it,
even though I won't be able to. It really hurts my feelings. (Laughter) Remind me that I'm talking about weirdness
when I can talk again. (Laughter) Hmm. I'll pull my jeans up
before I start again. (Laughter) To me, a willingness to embrace discomfort
is absolutely essential if you're going to be yourself,
if you're going to say yes to you. Because if we're not willing
to embrace discomfort, that means I am always, always, always
unwilling to experience the uncomfortable fear of rejection. It doesn't mean rejection will happen,
it means I will fear rejection. And by the way, rejection will
definitely happen; welcome to humankind. Brené Brown, she's one
of my favorite authors. I've never read any of her books,
but I love what she says. (Laughter) She says something along the lines of: he or she who's willing
to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest,
but rises the highest. Because we're all so delusional
about anything, I make that statement
into what I want it to mean, which is: she's talking about weirdness. He or she who's willing
to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest,
but rises the highest. What if a willingness
to be uncomfortable is essential for us to embody a yes to ourselves? I don't think anybody has ever been hurt
from pain, emotional pain. I think we hurt ourselves
trying to avoid emotional pain. Our self-preservation instinct,
from my delusional opinion, says, "Pain is bad, move away from pain,
it might end our life." (Laughter) I'm modeling the root chakra, not... (Laughter) I should shame you
for your sexual thoughts of this moment. Welcome to church. You're sexual
and you should be ashamed about it. (Laughter) So, our self-preservation instinct says the direction we need
to move with pain is away from it, that's necessary to preserve my life. And then, when we live long enough, or at least, better said,
we have enough life experience, we start to get in touch
not with our self-preservation, but our self-realization instinct that says, "Oh, pain, yeah,
move towards it." We have to be willing to feel the fear
of death in order to actually live. The self-realization instinct
might just say, "Yeah, pain, go towards it,
because there's meaning in that, there's purpose,
and by the way, there's you. You are on the other side of pain, because it's you
who's generating the pain." What if pain can become our friend? It doesn't mean
you have to self-induce it, I think as a human, you have
enough of it inside of you already. It's just a matter of being willing
to embrace the fires and encounter the discomfort
of what you already have inside. Another consideration
I'd ask you to consider, to be redundant
with the word "consideration," which I've used three times
in this sentence already - (Laughter) It was just an observation,
it wasn't a joke. (Laughter) This consideration would be: can you challenge yourself
to turn your curses into a blessing? Or find the blessing within your curse? I think once upon a time in our childhood what we were made fun of for the most,
what we were most embarrassed about, what we were shamed for the most - it's typically our gifts. It's typically our weirdness. As a child, we look at our weirdness, whether it's someone
who's making fun of us because we're the only one
with red hair and freckles, and an awesome beard in first grade - (Laughter) I think we can all relate to that - (Laughter) Or we're the only one
that doesn't like to play sports, or we think we're the only one
who was abused, or we think we're the only one
with a broken home. Or we think we're the only one
with a home that's broken, but we're meant to pretend
it's not broken, we think we're the only one
living a facade. As a child, we tend to experience
a sense of "it's a curse, it's a burden," any time we have
a sense of "I'm the only one." The wounded child inside says,
"I'm the only one." But when we can bring that child
and marry it together with our heart - not in a bad way, but in a support
the inner child kind of way - we can be a more whole person today and say, "Yeah, I'm the only one,
that's amazing." Would you be willing
to bring purpose to your pain, find the blessing of it,
so that you don't have to avoid it? Then another consideration
that I'd ask you to leave here with is amuse thyself. I think if you can embrace the idea of "part of the purpose of my life
is to amuse myself," it'll help posture you better
to embody the yes to your weirdness. Allegedly, there's a story where Moses
came down with the Ten Commandments. My favorite commandment is the one
that wasn't on the tablets, which is amuse thyself. (Laughter) If you can amuse yourself simply by looking at you,
looking at yourself, then I guarantee,
you are not looking very deeply. Look beyond the surface, there is hilarious,
ridiculous material inside of you. (Laughter) There are only two types
of people in this world: those who believe that and those who are
in denial of the fact that that's true. (Laughter) In closing - I think the best way to begin a closing
is with the words "in closing." (Laughter) We're not at the closing yet, but I just wanted to tell you
what I'll do for the closing. I'm just kidding; we're at the closing. (Laughter) Would you be willing to consider that
in any given moment you have a choice? You can choose the cure for normal, and unfortunately, it doesn't appear
to be a destination cure. It appears to be
one of these journey cures, where we actually have to say yes or no
in any given moment. And we are always saying yes or no to it. We're either just conscious
of how we're saying yes to it, or unconscious of how we're probably
saying no to the cure of normal. Would you be willing
to look at what's most weird about you? Again, if you don't see it, look deeper.
It's there to be discovered. When you look at
what's most weird about you, please consider that what you're really
looking at is the real you. Then the real question is: are you willing
to risk saying yes to being you? Thank you, guys. (Applause)
