I'm Amy Walker and I'm a believaholic.
(Audience) Hi, Amy.
Thank you.
I believe that you are capable of anything you set your mind to.
When people ask me to teach them a new skill,
they're really asking for me to believe that they're capable of it.
They want to do it.
They just don't quite think that they can, yet.
And so I show them, over and over, that it is possible.
In small enough increments, I help them expand their identity
so that even though they begin by saying,
"Oh, I'm just taking lessons,"
gradually they'll expand their identity
to include the title "I'm a singer," "I'm an actor," etc.
I did not begin this way.
At the tender age of 14,
I was your above-average student with below-average confidence.
Depressed, apologetic, and not popular.
It wasn't until the end of my middle-school internment,
(Laughter)
the eighth-grade dance,
that all that began to change.
I'd somehow managed to squeeze my way
into the impenetrable circle of popular people.
Clearly out of my element,
I began doing what I always did then and looked around for someone to copy.
But as I perused all those faces with too much dark lipliner,
I noticed that these popular people, who always know what they're doing, right,
were looking around for someone else to follow.
So I just closed my eyes and said to myself,
"Amy Frances Walker, doesn't matter what they think.
Music is in your blood. You've been singing since the highchair.
Surely, you can dance.
You just don't realize it yet.
So you reach into your heart, and you feel the pulse of that music
and let it carry your body into dance."
And as I opened my eyes, I noticed that they were all following me.
Suddenly, I had the opportunity to become
"She who knows how to dance at social gatherings."
(Laughter)
It was a big deal for a 14-year-old, grunge-era fashion casualty.
(Laughter)
And so we encounter a crossroads:
The opportunity to be
or not to be
something we've been longing to experience.
I used to look at a beautiful person and think,
"She is so gorgeous. I could never look like that."
Of course, as we all know,
the entire world is only allowed 2000 beauty points, total.
(Laughter)
And since Beyoncé and Juliette Binoche are obviously 900 points each,
I must be like a point zero-zero-two or something, right?
But if I can look at a rotting leaf in a way that I see the beauty in it,
clearly, beauty is not a substance.
It's not a material that only certain things are made of.
Things like:
"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
and Julie Andrews because we're all smitten,
beauty is found in all manner of things,
beauty's the way you behold how it sings."
(Applause)
I began to practice seeing the abundance of beauty around me.
The more deeply I observed beauty singing in every form,
the more I began to see it in myself.
I started rewriting a bunch of old labels I'd been carrying for a long time:
not thin enough, not pretty enough, not talented enough, not good enough.
It's a challenge to break old judgment patterns
you've been identifying with for so long,
often without even being aware of them.
It can be scary.
I've had to abandon the relative comfort
of who I think I am
for the possibility of whom I may become.
It can be hard.
It can require courage, you know.
But as a wise fish once said,
(Laughter)
"Just keep swimming.
Swimming, swimming. What do we we do?
We swim, ha hahaha. I thank you, Alan and Pixar."
(Laughter) (Applause)
Dory.
Courage is not the absence of fear;
it's when you just keep swimming and sing louder than the voice of doubt.
And so as you watch these speakers today,
I invite you to practice seeing
the beauty and the potential in each one of them,
even beyond the wonders that they present today.
As you offer them an opportunity to grow,
you'll find that empowerment reflected back to you
because they're all here to share what they've learned
that you might take it to new heights on your own path.
Thank you.
(Applause)