you've looked in at least one mirror today.

You've had a shave, or you combed your hair,

or maybe you checked your teeth for spinach after lunch,

but what you didn't know

is that the face looking back at you

isn't the face that everybody else sees.

It's a kind of reversed, distorted,

back-to-front image.

Some years ago, I was on a flight to New York,

and I read an article in the FT,

and it was an article about a phenomenon called a True Mirror -

and for the Americans listening, that's a mirror.

The True Mirror was actually invented

by a brother and sister team in New York,

called John and Catherine Walters.

What they discovered is if you take two mirrors,

and you put them together at right angles,

and you take the seam away,

the images bounce off each other.

What you see when you look in a True Mirror

is exactly what other people see when they look at you.

So, I land in New York, and I phone John up,

and ask him if I can go and see him,

and I end up in his gallery in Brooklyn;

it was like being at a sideshow in the circus.

There were True Mirrors

full length, face sized, all over this gallery.

When I walked over to the True Mirror for the first time,

and I looked in the mirror,

it was one of the most disorientating experiences I've ever had in my life.

The first thing you notice when you look in a True Mirror

is that your head's not on straight.

Yours is kind of going that way,

and yours is quite straight actually,

and yours is going that way a wee bit;

so apparently most of us tilt our heads one way or another.

So when you approach a True Mirror,

the first thing you try and do is fix your head,

but, of course, because it's reversed you go the wrong way;

so it's very, very disorientating.

But more importantly, I had a flashback.

I had a flashback to when I was a wee girl.

I grew up in Glasgow -

in case you haven't noticed, I am Scottish.

I grew up in Glasgow, and my mom,

when she was putting her makeup on,

I used to love sitting and watching my mom putting her makeup on,

you know, with my chin in my hands.

And I would tell her occasionally:

"Isn't it funny how one side of your top lip

is higher than the other side of your top lip?"

She'd look in the mirror and she'd say, "It is not."

And I'd say: "No, it's only a couple of millimeters,

but that side of your cupid's bow is definitely higher

than the other side of your cupid's bow."

She'd say, "Caroline, you're havering."

When I looked in the True Mirror,

there was the lip

that I had been wearing, at that time, for maybe 45 years,

and I'd never seen it.

The difference is when you look in a regular mirror,

you look for reassurance.

You look for reassurance that you're beautiful,

or you're young, or you're tidy,

or your bum doesn't look big in that.

But when you look in a True Mirror,

you don't look at yourself,

you look for yourself.

You look for revelation, not for reassurance.

And this was deeply interesting to me

because what I do for a living is I help people be themselves.

Not in any narcissistic or solipsistic way,

but because I believe that social reformation begins,

always starts with the individual.

When you look at remarkable individuals -

and when I say remarkable or successful individuals,

I don't mean monetarily successful;

I mean people that have been successful

at achieving whatever they set out to do -

you'll find that the thing they have in common

is they have nothing in common.

These are people who, you know,

work in many of the fields I work in.

I work with people in corporations,

I work with captains of industry,

I work with selected politicians.

I've worked with geophysicists.

I've worked with chamber orchestras

and ballet dancers and pop star and opera singers,

and I've identified the thread that links them.

These are individuals who've managed to figure out the unique gift

that the universe gave them when they incarnated,

and then put that at the service of their goals.

I think that we all come complete.

We come complete with one true note we were destined to sing,

and these are people that have managed to figure that out.

It doesn't dictate your choice of job;

what it dictates is how you do it.

When we see these people

we invariably call them larger than life.

You know, you'll see somebody like Roberto Benigni,

and you'll say, "Oh my goodness."

Eve Ensler, she's larger than life,

which always makes me smile

because how could you be larger than life?

Life is large.

But most of us don't take up

nearly the space the universe intended for us.

We take up this wee space around our toes,

which is why when you see somebody in the full flow of their humanity,

it's remarkable.

They're at least a foot bigger in every direction

than normal human beings, and they shine,

they gleam,

they glow;

it's like they've swallowed the moon.

And all the work I've done has led me to believe

that individuality really is all it's cracked up to be.

In fact, people who are frightened to be themselves

will work for those who aren't afraid.

Now your job is not to be anything like any of the people

that I put up behind me.

In fact your job is to be as unlike them as you can possibly be.

Your only job while you're here on the planet

is to be as good at being you

as they are at being them.

That's the deal.

So I want to start today by asking you

an incredibly personal question.

Not the one that says,

"Why are there so many syllables in the word 'monosyllabic'?". No.

Not even the one that says,

"Did you know that Britney Spears is an anagram for Presbyterian?". No.

(Laughter)

Something a wee bit more pivotal.

In fact, this is a question that's been looking for you your whole life.

It's probably the simplest

and the most complicated question you'll ever ask.

Yet how many times in your life

has somebody offered you that well-meaning piece of advice

that you should just be yourself?

How many times have you said it to somebody else?

One of your kids comes to you, or one of your team comes to you,

and they tell you they're nervous, they're scared.

They have to go and do something and their bold goes,

and you say to them, "Darlin', just be yourself,

because when you're yourself, you're fabulous."

Now it always resonates because it's all we want to do.

If you tell John to be himself,

he doesn't want to be Mary.

He's quite happy being himself,

but it's the use of the word "just" that I find interesting

because it would imply two things.

Number one, that that was an easy thing to do.

Number two, that it was an original piece of advice.

You know, John had never thought about it himself.

When it comes to being yourself,

when it comes to being in the world,

the minute you showed up,

the minute you incarnated,

you were given a life sentence.

Now, you don't know how long you have.

Maybe you have 70 years, and I have 62.

We've no idea how long we have.

Although, where you're born,

when you're born, to whom you're born,

all these things have a certain influence

or impact on how you become who you become.

If you're born in Switzerland,

chances are you've got a long time to figure this shit out.

If you're born in Zimbabwe or some parts of Glasgow,

and I'm not kidding, you've got significantly less time.

So what I want you to think about is not what your life expectancy is,

but what do you expect from life?

And what does life expect from you?

Those are more interesting questions.

And the two places in life where you are awesome at being yourself,

you're fantastic at being yourself,

one of them is when you're a kid.

When you're a kid, you're fantastic at being yourself

because you don't know how to disguise your differentness.

That's why you see kids on the beach,

you know, naked up until the age of five,

and then suddenly at the age of six or seven

they want a bathing suit, they want a bikini.

Who's got a four-year-old boy?

Anybody's got a four-year-old boy?

I'll take a three-year-old.

Jose, you've got a three-year-old boy.

I want you to imagine I go into Eduardo's class in school,

and it's a class of three-year-old boys,

and I say to the boys, "Who's the strongest boy in the class?"

What's going to happen?

Every hand, right?

Every single hand in the class will go up.

They'll be competitively strong.

If I go into the same class,

but it's full of seven-year-old boys, and ask the same question,

they'll say, "Him," because they know by time they're seven.

He's the strong one,

he's the fastest runner,

he's the funny guy,

he's the bully.

Society archetype emerges

around about the age of five, six, seven, eight.

That's why the Jesuits say,

"Give me a boy until the age of seven, and I'll show you the man,"

because that's the birth of consciousness.

And from then on you become more self-conscious

and by default less good at being yourself.

The other place you're fantastic at being yourself

is when you're a wrinkley,

because you can't be arsed.

You get to that stage in your life

where you realize there are more summers behind you

than there are in front of you,

and everything intensifies.

You become more honest;

you become less compromising.

So you're going to tell people,

"I don't want the spinach, I'm not going to eat it, I don't like it.

And I don't like jazz, so you can shut that noise off.

And while I'm at it, I don't like you!"

(Laughter)

We call these people "eccentric."

We call our oldies "eccentric."

In fact, what they're doing is being authentic.

So it's kind of like an hourglass effect:

when you're young you're great at being yourself;

when you're old you're great at being yourself;

but the bit in the middle is sometimes the most problematic.

That's the bit where you have to socialize;

you have to accommodate; you have to adapt.

So I've developed the "I complex,"

and the "I complex" is a model to help you figure out

which "I" you mean when you say "I."

You're very familiar with the superiority complex.

If you have a superiority complex, you pretty much think

you're the most important person in the room.

If you've got an inferiority complex

you suffer from an over-modest self-regard.

These are both signs of a fragile ego.

One of them is about delusions of grandeur,

and the other one delusions of insignificance.

There's a third way of being in the world,

and I call it "interiority;"

this is one of my made-up words.

The word "interiority" describes a particular disposition,

and there are two reasons it might be useful to you.

Number one, it's completely uncomparative.

If you have a superiority complex or an inferiority complex

you need other people around.