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When I was a kid, I was obsessed
with the Guinness Book of World Records,
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and I really wanted to set
a world record myself.
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But there was just one small problem:
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I had absolutely no talent.
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So I decided to set
a world record in something
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that demanded absolutely no skill at all.
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I decided to set a world record
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in crawling.
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(Laughter)
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Now, the record at the time
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was 12 and a half miles,
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and for some reason, this seemed
totally manageable.
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(Laughter)
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I recruited my friend Anne, and together
we decided, we didn't even need to train.
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(Laughter)
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And on the day of our record attempt,
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we put furniture pads on the outside
of our good luck jeans
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and we set off,
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and right away, we were in trouble,
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because the denim was against our skin
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and it began to chafe,
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and soon our knees were being chewed up.
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Hours in, it began to rain.
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Then, Anne dropped out.
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Then, it got dark.
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Now, by now, my knees
were bleeding through my jeans,
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and I was hallucinating from the cold
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and the pain and the monotony,
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and to give you an idea of the suffer-fest
that I was undergoing,
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the first lap around
the high school track took 10 minutes.
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The last lap took almost 30.
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After 12 hours of crawling,
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I stopped,
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and I had gone eight and a half miles.
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So I was short of the 12
and a half mile record.
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Now, for many years, I thought
this was a story of abject failure,
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but today I see it differently,
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because when I was
attempting the world record,
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I was doing three things.
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I was getting outside my comfort zone,
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I was calling upon my resilience,
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and I was finding confidence in myself
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and my own decisions.
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I didn't know it then, but those
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are not the attributes of failure.
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Those are the attributes of bravery.
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Now, in 1989, at the age of 26,
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I became a San Francisco firefighter,
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and I was the 15th woman in a department
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of 1,500 men.
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(Applause)
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And as you can imagine, when I arrived
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there were many doubts about
whether we could do the job.
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So even though I was a 5'10",
150-pound collegiate rower,
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and someone who could endure
12 hours of searing knee pain,
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I knew I still had to prove
my strength and fitness.
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So one day a call came in for a fire,
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and sure enough, when
my engine group pulled up,
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there was black smoke billowing
from a building off an alleyway.
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And I was with a big guy named Skip,
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and he was on the nozzle,
and I was right behind,
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and it was the typical sort of fire.
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It was smoky, it was hot,
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and all of a sudden,
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there was an explosion,
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and Skip and I were blown backwards,
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my mask was knocked sideways,
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and there was this moment of confusion.
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And then I picked myself up,
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I groped for the nozzle,
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and I did what a firefighter
was supposed to do:
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I lunged forward,
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opened up the water,
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and I tackled the fire myself.
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The explosion had been caused
by a water heater,
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so nobody was hurt, and ultimately
it was not a big deal,
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but later Skip came up to me and said,
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"Nice job, Caroline,"
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in this surprised sort of voice.
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(Laughter)
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And I was confused, because
the fire hadn't been difficult physically,
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so why was he looking at me
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with something like astonishment?
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And then it became clear:
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Skip, who was by the way a really nice guy
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and an excellent firefighter,
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not only thought that women
could not be strong,
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he thought that they
could not be brave either.
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And he wasn't the only one.
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Friends, acquaintances, and strangers,
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men and women throughout my career
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ask me over and over, "Caroline,
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all that fire, all that danger,
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aren't you scared?"
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Honestly, I never heard
a male firefighter asked this.
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And I became curious.
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Why wasn't bravery expected of women?
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Now, the answer began to come
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when a friend of mine lamented to me
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that her young daughter
was a big scaredy-cat,
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and so I began to notice, and yes,
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the daughter was anxious,
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but more than that,
the parents were anxious.
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Most of what they said to her
when she was outside began with,
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"Be careful," "Watch out," or "No."
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Now, my friends were not bad parents.
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They were just doing what most parents do,
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which is cautioning their daughters
much more than they caution their sons.
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There was a study involving
a playground fire pole, ironically,
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in which researchers saw that little girls
were very likely to be warned
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by both their moms and dads
about the fire pole's risk,
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and if the little girls still wanted
to play on the fire pole,
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a parent was very likely to assist her.
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But the little boys?
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They were encouraged
to play on the fire pole
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despite any trepidations
that they might have,
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and often the parents offered
guidance on how to use it on their own.
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So what message does this send
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to both boys and girls?
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Well, that girls are fragile
and more in need of help,
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and that boys can and should
master difficult tasks by themselves.
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It says that girls should be fearful
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and boys should be gutsy.
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Now, the irony is is that
at this young age, girls and boys
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are actually very alike physically.
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In fact, girls are often
stronger until puberty,
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and more mature.
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And yet we adults act
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as if girls are more fragile
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and more in need of help,
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and they can't handle as much.
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This is the message that we absorb as kids
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and this is the message that fully
permeates as we grow up.
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We women believe it, men believe it,
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and guess what?
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As we become parents,
we pass it on to our children,
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and so it goes.
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Well, so now I had my answer.
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This is why women, even firewomen,
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were expected to be scared.
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This is why women often are scared.
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Now, I know some of you won't
believe me when I tell you this,
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but I am not against fear.
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I know it's an important emotion,
and it's there to keep us safe.
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But the problem is when fear
is the primary reaction
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that we teach and encourage in girls
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whenever they face something
outside their comfort zone.
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So I was a paraglider
pilot for many years --
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(Applause) --
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and a paraglider is a parachute-like wing
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and it does fly very well,
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but to many people I realize
it looks just like a bedsheet
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with strings attached.
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And I spent a lot of time on mountain tops
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inflating this bedsheet,
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running off, and flying.
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And I know what you're thinking.
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You're like, Caroline, a little fear
would make sense here.
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And you're right, it does.
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I assure you, I did feel fear.
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But on that mountain top, waiting
for the wind to come in just right,
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I felt so many other things too:
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exhilaration, confidence.
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I knew I was a good pilot.
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I knew the conditions were good,
or I wouldn't be there.
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I knew how great it was going to be
a thousand feet in the air.
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So yes, fear was there,
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but I would take a good hard look at it,
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assess just how relevant it was,
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and then put it where it belonged,
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which was more often than not
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behind my exhilaration, my anticipation,
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and my confidence.
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So I'm not against fear.
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I'm just pro-bravery.
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Now, I'm not saying your girls
must be firefighters,
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or that they should be paragliders,
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but I am saying that we are raising
our girls to be timid, even helpless,
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and it begins when we caution them
against physical risk.
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The fear we learn
and the experiences we don't
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stay wIth us as we become women,
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and morphs into all those things
that we face and try to shed:
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our hesitation in speaking out,
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our deference so that we can be liked,
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and our lack of confidence
in our own decisions.
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So how do we become brave?
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Well, here's the good news.
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Bravery is learned,
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and like anything learned,
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it just needs to be practiced.
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So first, we have to take a deep breath
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and encourage our girls
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to skateboard, climb trees,
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and clamber around
on that playground fire pole.
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This is what my own mother did.
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She didn't know it then,
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but researchers have a name for this.
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They call it risky play,
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and studies show that risky play
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is really important for kids,
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all kids, because it teaches
hazard assessment,
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it teaches delayed gratification,
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it teaches resilience,
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it teaches confidence.
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In other words,
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when kids get outside and practice bravery
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they learn valuable life lessons.
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Second, we have to stop cautioning
our girls willy-nilly.
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So notice next time you say,
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"Watch out, you're going to get hurt,"
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or "Don't do that, it's dangerous."
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And remember that often
what you're really telling her
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is that she shouldn't be pushing herself,
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that she's really not good enough,
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that she should be afraid.
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Third,
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we women have to start
practicing bravery too.
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We cannot teach our girls
until we teach ourselves.
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So here's another thing:
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fear and exhilaration
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feel very similar:
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the shaky hands,
the heightened heart rate,
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the nervous tension,
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and I'm betting that for many of you
the last time you thought
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you were scared out of your wits,
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you may have been feeling
mostly exhilaration,
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and now you've missed an opportunity.
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So practice.
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And while girls should be getting
outside to learn to be gutsy,
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I get that adults don't want to
get on hoverboards
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or climb trees,
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so we all should be practicing
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at home, in the office,
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and even right here getting up the guts
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to talk to someone that you really admire.
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Finally, when your girl is, let's say,
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on her bike on the top of the steep hill
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that she insists she's
too scared to go down,
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guide her to access her bravery.
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Ultimately, maybe that hill
really is too steep,
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but she'll come to that conclusion
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through courage, not fear.
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Because this is not about
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the steep hill in front of her.
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This is about the life ahead of her,
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and that she has the tools
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to handle and assess
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all the dangers that we cannot
protect her from,
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all the challenges that we won't
be there to guide her through,
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everything that our girls here
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and around the world
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face in their future.
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So by the way,
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the world record for crawling today --
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(Laughter) --
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is 35.18 miles,
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and I would really like
to see a girl go break that.
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(Applause)