Maizie+A’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

“Just one severe sunburn can double a child’s chance of developing melanoma later in life.” Well shit. I guess the being sunburned constantly, peeling skin, wrinkling leathery forehead look isn't the poster child for skin cancer prevention, but I think my memories are worth the melanoma. My tan lines tell my story and I think a pretty good one. So if skin cancer is the trade off for the life I want to live, lay it on me. I am ready.

You see, this is not a talk about all of us getting tan, sunburned and dying from that funky mole on our back. This is a speech about doing what you love, and doing what you believe in because I think that is our purpose in life. To follow our dreams, our passions, and to discover who we are without the fear of failure, fear of skin cancer, fear of whatever stop us, because I believe that when faced with fear we are also faced with the decision to stop or keep moving forward. Amy Purdy, an Olympic snowboarder despite having two prosthetic legs believes like me that “It's not about breaking down borders. It's about pushing off of them and seeing what amazing places they might bring us. Innovation has only been possible because of our borders. I've learned that borders are where the actual ends, but also where the imagination and the story begins.”

So I would like you all to imagine different snapshots in time. Frozen moments captured throughout your life where you tasted sweet success, bitter failure, the tenderness of empathy, or the warmth of courage. What made those moments special? Why are they trapped in your memory. For me many of those pictures that are framed on the walls of my brain were when I did something crazy, something unthinkable, something absurd, unexpected, glorious, dumb, when something didn’t work, but most of all when I learned. You see many people define success based off of a number whether that be the number of schools that accepted you, number on your paycheck, number of children, number of places traveled, numbers, numbers, numbers. I base success on how much we take away from this life, and most of that happens when we follow the things that we love, the things that we are interested in, the things that we are passionate about.

I think a lot of us are being held back due to the fear of failure.

We don’t take the chances given to us, because we are afraid. Afraid that that plane ticket is too expensive. Afraid that that school is too far out of your league. Afraid that if we follow what we believe in we will be hated.

And you know what, I have that feeling every single day. A fear that life is crumbling in on me worst than it is on anybody else. A fear that I won’t be successful. But it is that fear that holds us back. If I let my fear of developing skin cancer eat me alive, I would be miserable. If Amy Purdy, didn’t try to achieve her dreams out of fear of falling, fear that her legs would go down the mountain without her, fear that she would never be able to recover, she would be miserable to.

The message I am trying to spread is that failure and fear is okay, but it is our jobs to be able to conquer fear. I wish all of us enough failure to keep us dreaming, to test out our grit, but also enough success to keep us trying. Know that it is our job, especially as young adults to screw up majorly, but it is also equally important to learn. It is here at these failures that I hope you decide to get up of your butt, stop whining, and go after it, because the absolute worst thing you can do before quitting is complain about the impossible. I have two stories that taught me to embrace the idea of fear, failure, happiness, and success. These incidents, some small, and some large have each impacted who I am, as well as taught me the importance of pursuing our beliefs, and our happiness.

Story One: I have a slight history of stalking people, and you know what the results have been pretty great. While I have an abundance of truly amazing stalking stories, the one I am going to share today happened just last week. I don’t know if many of you know of a show called “The Amazing Race,” but this season had two teams that got my stalking wheels a rollin. #TeamFun and #TheBoys won my heart this season. So like a normal person, I stalked all of their instagrams, found their websites, located their emails, and then emailed my new best friends Redmond, Matt, and Becca. And all of them responded AND sent me smiley faces.

The reason I am telling this story is because today I am proudly donning my “Fun-O-Meter” made by Becca who was a member of #TeamFun. And I want my meter always at Funstoppable because I think we should all take advantage of what we can and have a blast doing it. But I think the more important and eloquently put message is the one that came with my Fun-O-Meter, and that is simply put: FUN.

Failure breeds success. Unexpected is expected. And Never Stop Trying.

I loved these teams because not only did they return my emails, but all of them enjoyed their journey's, looked to learn, and weren’t afraid to fail because they were there to live their lives and follow their dreams, and all of them lost but their approach was so amazing that they won millions of hearts. Some people would say they failed, but not me because with one failure came many successes.

My second story is one that may be overused, but equally important: The Sports Bra Scandal of 2015.

Whether you were pro shirt or pro sports bra at the time, your stance is irrelevant to this story. What does matter to me is the result of this issue. It changed me forever for the better, but only because despite somewhat getting what I wanted, I have never in my life felt more distraught, or like a failure. “Friends” labeled me as a disease, blamed me for the threats our coach made about quitting, and told me I was unwelcome. I lived in fear that I had ruined my life, that I had made the wrong decision when choosing my beliefs over my friends, and a concrete knowledge that my high school experience was forever changed.

I stirred the pot and many people believe that I shouldn’t have, but I believe it was necessary. I was put in a position where I had to choose between my friends and my beliefs and I can tell you that if you want to experience a situation where you are terrified of failing that will do it for you.

I think I “failed” coach Reeves and many members of the cross country team. I feared failing my family due to the fact that I almost stopped the fight because I was so exhausted from being torn down for months on end. But what made this situation worth it is that I did not fail myself because I did not quit. I fought for what I believed in, and it lead me to greater things.

I talk about this story not only as a feminist but as a person who may have accomplished one of their largest achievements thus far. I was afraid of failing, but I didn’t let it win, and that is the message I want to leave you with today.

In the America I and my children grow up in, I want people to bounce off their failures in order to achieve anything they aspire to big or small. I want us to stop asking for things and to start doing things. I want all of our fun-o-meters to be on Funstoppable, because I know that we are all capable. We are all young. We should all muster up the gumption to go out there and do it.

With this message in mind, my I live by the phrase: If I am going to get skin cancer I am going to do it well! What will your motto be?