I recently gave a TEDx talk that received a standing ovation. When everyone stood, I was grateful, of course, but I wasn’t shocked. It had happened before. In fact, when I started thinking about it, I realised it had happened more times than I remembered. I believe my very first talk received a standing ovation. The funny thing is, back then, I didn’t even know what a standing ovation meant for a speaker.
I have never had formal speaking training. I have never attended a speaking class. Yet I have driven my talks to big stages, standing ovations and earning more than $5,000 for a single talk. People often ask me how much I rehearse, and my answer usually surprises them.
Hardly at all.
Rehearsal has never really been my thing.
So where does the magic come from?
I have thought about this deeply, and here is my answer.
I looked at my story. A friction occurred between who I am and who I was expected to be. Over time, that friction produced something in me — a knowledge. I may be Black. I may carry an accent. But I now know something because of the life I have lived. And when I paired that knowledge with everything else I had been given; my passion, my personality, my quirks, my gifts, magic was the outcome.
How did that happen?
Okay. Let me break it down.
- We are all born with a unique design.
No two creatures are exactly the same. There are billions of people on this planet, yet every single one of us arrives with a particular design. We look different. We think differently. We are drawn to different things. We have different talents, passions, curiosities and ways of seeing the world.
That uniqueness is the first clue.
- Every individual is part of something bigger.
Now imagine those billions of uniquely designed people, each living their individual lives. I believe every single one of us is also part of a bigger team – a bigger force, and that force is behind our existence as individuals.
You did not simply arrive here as an isolated human being trying to figure out what to do with your life. You are part of something much bigger than yourself.
- Your individual mission serves a bigger mission.
If there is a bigger force behind your existence, then your unique design begins to make sense.
You have been sent here to do something that contributes to something bigger. Your life itself becomes an example, call it a case study, for a particular knowledge, truth or argument.
Your life is here to say something.
- You arrived prepared for what your life is here to say.
Whatever your life has been sent here to communicate, you were given what you need to communicate it.
It is in your design.
The design might look like being born a dwarf while your passion is modelling. It might look like being born deaf while you are here to tell stories. It could look like being born into a world that has never known electricity, while something inside you carries a fascination with electricity.
Your design, your journey, your passions, your curiosities and your talents are not random pieces scattered across your life. They are connected.
Look closely at the humans around you. Listen to their stories. Study the stories of the greats, the ones whose lives are already saying what they came here to say, and you begin to see the patterns.
- Awakening begins when you recognise the pattern.
At some point, something begins to wake up inside you.
Think of it like pregnancy. All this time, your life has been forming something within you. Every experience, every challenge, every question, every passion has been producing a particular knowledge. You have been carrying it, even when you didn’t know it was there.
Then awakening happens.
Awakening is like the beginning of labour. Something that has been growing quietly inside you is suddenly ready to come out.
It may begin with a thought: My life is meant for more. Or: There is something inside me that I am supposed to use. You begin to realise that your journey wasn’t in vain. Your life has produced something.
Then you begin asking your whys. Why did I go through that? Why was I born this way? Why am I drawn to this? Why do I love speaking, writing, singing, painting or teaching?
The more of your whys you answer, the more clearly you begin to see what your life has been forming within you.
The labour has begun.
- You realise that you are the channel.
Whatever your life is here to say has to come through you.
Just as a pregnant woman becomes the channel through which the baby enters the world, you become the channel through which the knowledge your life has produced enters the world.
And it must come through your unique design.
One woman may give birth by pushing; another may need a caesarean. The destination is the same, bringing forth what has been carried, but the way it enters the world is shaped by the individual.
The same is true of us.
Your message may come through speaking. Someone else’s through writing. Singing. Painting. Teaching. Building. Leading. Your passion, personality, talents, and quirks become the means through which what you carry is delivered.
And when the time comes, your job is to surrender and let it come through you. Suddenly, all those seemingly disconnected parts of you begin working together.
That is where the magic sits.
I have had multiple experiences where people have approached me after I speak and tried to describe what they felt. Some have told me there were spirits with me on stage. Some use God. Others say electricity. Magnetism. A wave. We could feel something coming from you to us.
Different people give it different names, and yet the secret, for me, is simply surrendering to what my life is here to say.
I see my existence as a collaboration. I believe there are forces greater than me behind my existence, and I am not here to do this work alone. My responsibility is to recognise what has been entrusted to me, surrender to it, and play my part.
So now, when an invitation to speak comes, I don’t immediately begin worrying about how I am going to impress the audience. I ask the forces behind me a very different question.
What do you want me to tell your people?
When the day comes, just before I walk onto the stage, I surrender again.
It is time. Speak through me.
And then I go.
There is something incredibly freeing about that. I don’t have to carry the entire weight of the room. I don’t have to manufacture brilliance. I don’t have to walk onto the stage thinking, Jessica, you better be incredible today.
The work becomes bigger than me because I believe it was always bigger than me.
I am simply the tool carrying the message.
Alignment
There is an authority that comes when a person is no longer fighting themselves. When what they have lived, what they know, what they carry and what they give are no longer pulling in different directions.
They begin to move in one accord.
I believe surrendering to our story brings us back into collaboration with the bigger force behind our existence. Instead of walking through life alone, trying to manufacture who we should become and what we should do, we begin working with what we are and what we already have.
Our story meets our knowledge. Our knowledge meets our passion. Our passion meets our design.
And we become aligned with the very thing our life has been preparing us to do.
Now, let us look at you.
You have a story. You have lived, loved, lost, failed, succeeded and started again. Your life has produced a knowledge that could only have been produced because you existed.
So if something inside you keeps saying, There has to be more to my life, listen.
Turn around and study your story. Find the knowledge life has forged through you. Find your big why. Then surrender to your design and allow that knowledge to move through you in the way only you can deliver it.
You think you’re poor, but you’re the richest. Life gave to you, and you are expected to give it back. So give it back in collaboration with the One who sent you, and make magic.
