How a "Hi Level" mindset helps you realize your potential

How's everybody doing today?

  So for those of you who may not know who I am, which is probably the vast majority of you all.

  My name is Cordae. I'm 24 years old. I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. but was raised majority in Suitland, Maryland, which made me who I am today. I'm a hip-hop artist. More specifically, a Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist.

  A quote unquote critically acclaimed, world-renowned B-list celebrity.

  But to be honest, more like B minus. But again, you all can just call me Cordae and assume that I'm almost kind of a big deal because I am here doing a TED Talk.

  Now I know what you're thinking. What does a 24-year-old rapper possibly have to say during a TED Talk? Like, who cares what Ja Rule thinks, you know? But I'm here to talk about my mantra and my way of life that has gotten me this far and can hopefully take me a lot further on my journey, as I'm just getting started. And that’s the “Hi Level mindset.”

  Now before I get into the details about the Hi Level mindset, I want to tell you about the original creator of the Hi Level mindset. And that's my mom. She doesn't even know it. My mom had me when she was 16 years old. She was a single mom with all the odds stacked against her. And yet, from an unbiased perspective, I like to say she did a pretty decent job. We lived in some pretty terrible neighborhoods, man. I switched elementary schools about five different times. I remember one time her car had got stolen twice in one week. She overcame circumstance, obstacles, her environment and negativity. As I watched, our living situations would continue to get better and better as the years went by. Now that's Hi Level.

  Now the Hi Level mindset wasn’t something that she directly taught me or purposefully instilled in me, but something I learned simply by observation. The Hi Level mindset is a philosophy. It’s a wavelength to apply to your everyday thoughts and regiment. The Hi Level mindset will be of great service to you, especially when things aren't going as planned. These trying times that I speak of, or life testers, if you may, are what truly make us man and woman. Actually scratch that. How we handle these lifetimes, these trying times, or life testers, is what decides a person's destiny.

  Which brings me to step one of the Hi Level mindset. And that's always remain positive, no matter what people or life may throw at you. Now I'm going to give you a little bit of background about myself. Funny enough, I was actually voted most likely to be famous in both middle school and high school. Now I know what you're thinking. I'm sorry. I haven't always been this good looking, it takes a little bit of time.

  My goal was to graduate high school and to immediately blow up. But that didn't happen. So I went to college and as soon as I went to college, boy, did life hit me hard. Within the first couple of weeks of school, one of my best friends that I called my brother had gotten sentenced to 24 years in prison. I had gotten detained for driving with a suspended license, amongst other things, like having a pound of weed in the car before it was legal. And my grandmother had passed. Not to mention I was already a terrible student with horrific grades and a broke teenager. And I wonder why my grades were so bad. Now that's just disrespectful. I wasn't even trying to hide it. But on top of all of these things, what was really the breaking point for me was that I had released a mixtape that I worked on the entire summer and it had only gotten 200 downloads. Now my previous two mixtapes got 2,000 downloads, so I was not happy with the regression, to say the least. Again, this almost pushed me to the brink of quitting and insanity. But the Hi Level mindset made me think, "Man. These misfortunes are just going to make my triumph story a lot cooler."

  I used this as fuel to the fire, motivation, if you will. It made me think, you know, life is just a book. Not every chapter is going to be perfect. But it's about how it ends.

  Which brings me to the second step of the Hi Level mindset. Always be intentional with your desires. Know exactly what you want. In 2018, I created a vision board -- at the beginning of 2018, excuse me -- I created a vision board. And I'm proud to say that with the Hi Level mindset, within one year I almost accomplished everything on here. Ya’ll can clap for that.

  So I encourage you to just write down your goals. Starting off your day with reading your goals and dreams aloud gives you a boost of positive energy. This energy can be transmuted into something we call faith. Faith in your ability, faith in yourself, faith in a higher power will take you to places you can't even imagine. Know exactly what you want. How can you be Hi Level if you don't know what Hi Level is to you?

  And in order to do all these things, it brings me to the third step of the Hi Level mindset. Discipline. Growing up, discipline was always taught in such a lame way that I always tried my best to avoid it.

  But where motivation is low, that's where discipline kicks in. Anybody who's done something noteworthy with their lives all have one thing in common, and that's discipline. Mastering the art of discipline will literally change your life. I witnessed this close hand by studying a friend up close. This friend of mine noticed that every time he stopped doing drugs and alcohol, something good would happen.

  He felt as though this was a divine calling from heaven above to halt all his vices. Now can anyone tell me the three main vices of a 19-year-old college student? It's sex, alcohol and drugs. If you all didn't know that already. And after the first six months of him stopping his vices, I seen his whole life change completely. Again he thought this is a sign that maybe God doesn't want me to do drugs, drink alcohol or have sex. But no, that's not the case. Thank you. He was just simply learning discipline without knowing. Alright. I have a confession to make. Because I don't want to make this entire TED Talk about myself, I lied and said that this is a friend.

  It was actually me.

  Now a cheat code to ensure that you're staying disciplined to whatever you're striving for is to prime your environment for success. Your habits are based on your habitat. And the main product of your habitat are the people in your life. Which brings me to a very important step of the Hi Level mindset. The fourth step, to be exact. Remove all negative people out of your life immediately. Anybody that's semidoubtful or naysaying, get them out. If you're talking about your dreams and goals and they give small, sarcastic remarks ... boot them.

  Just an all-around negative Nancy? Kick them out of there, man. Does anybody in the audience know somebody that's like that? Please raise your hand. I need you all to do me a favor. Pull your phones out and block them immediately.

  No, no, no. I'm dead serious. Don’t let someone else’s negativity cancel out your light, for it can temporarily get in the way of you achieving what's owed to you. You are a product of those who you hang around. Let's make sure we're hanging around other positive, Hi Level individuals.

  Now I like to consider myself a master at this Hi Level stuff. I mean, I am here for a reason, right?

  But that doesn't mean things always go my way. Even now, I just recently released my sophomore album "From a Birds Eye View" that I spent two full years creating. My debut album, "The Lost Boy," was met with massive critical acclaim and success, and I had a lot of pressure on myself, to outdo myself. And in my eyes and in the eyes of many, I did. I had huge expectations for this album, but when it finally released and it wasn't received as well as I'd hoped, I completely broke down. I did my fasting. I stayed positive. I wrote down my dreams and goals. I was disciplined. I was doing this every day to make sure that this big moment that it was leading up to, that would change the entire world, would go perfectly. But that didn't happen. I did not meet the expectations that I had set for myself, that the world had set for me. And this is the first time as a major artist that I had received mixed reviews of my art. And again, it broke me down, man. I became unmotivated, I started overindulging in things that I'm not proud of. I was almost thinking about canceling my upcoming tour. I was in a very dark place.

  But then I heard this Yiddish proverb that A$AP Rocky actually told me about at a most important time, and I’m sure he didn’t even know it. It’s “We plan, and God laughs.” And that made me think. The Hi Level mindset is not a recipe for perfection but a commitment to honoring your potential and what you have to offer the world. Don't let your small failures make you lose sight of your bigger picture.

  I'll leave you all with this. We only have one life to live. 110 years maximum if you are a health guru and you have great health insurance.

  How are you going to maximize your time on this Earth? Do you want your name to be remembered long after you're gone? The Hi Level mindset is about doing everything that you put your hands on at the highest level that you're capable of doing. Think of your life as a book. Again, each chapter isn't going to be perfect. But how do you want your story to end? In anguish? A bunch of what-ifs? Or leaving a legacy? I choose legacy. The Hi Level way. Thank you.

  Why having fun is the secret to a healthier life

  You know what's a lot harder than it seems like it should be? Actually feeling alive. And what I mean by that is that we are all constantly doing, or, at least, we're constantly scrolling. But we're not necessarily living.

  You know, we keep ourselves busy to the point of exhaustion, but we're also languishing. We feel a little bid dead inside. And I think we know that, on some level. I think that's part of the reason we keep ourselves so busy and distracted to begin with. But we don't know what to do about it.

  So I'm here to tell you I figured out what to do about it. We need to have more fun.

  So you might think that you're already having plenty of fun, and that's because in our everyday speech, we often use the word "fun" to describe anything we do with our leisure time, even if it's not actually enjoyable, and, in fact, a waste of time. So for example, we scroll through social media "for fun," even though doing so often makes us feel bad about, like, kind of everything. Or we'll say, "That was so fun. We should do that again soon" --... in response to things that weren't that fun and that we don't want to do again, ever.

  But it's not really our fault that we're a little bit sloppy about how we use the word "fun," because even the dictionary doesn't get it quite right. It says that fun is amusement or enjoyment, or lighthearted pleasure. It's something for kids to have in play areas. It makes it sound like it's frivolous and optional.

  But if you think back on your own memories that stand out to you as having truly been fun -- and I really encourage you to do this -- the memories that you would describe as -- and forgive me for scientific terminology -- "so fun" -- you're going to notice there's something much deeper going on. I've collected thousands of these stories from people all around the world, and I can tell you it's amazing, because when people recount the memories in which they had the most fun, they tell you about some of the most joyful and treasured memories of their lives.

  So in reality, fun is not just lighthearted pleasure. It's not just for kids, and it is definitely not frivolous. Instead, fun is the secret to feeling alive.

  So today, I want to propose to you a new, more precise definition of what fun is. I want to reveal some of the ways in which it is astonishingly good for us, and I want to give you all some suggestions for things you can do starting right now to experience its power for yourself.

  So the first thing we need to start with is the fact that fun is a feeling, and it's not an activity. And that's important, because a lot of times, when I ask people what's fun, they'll respond with a list of activities that they enjoy. You know, they'll say, "Dancing is fun," or "Skiing is fun," or, I don't know, "Pickleball is fun." Everyone seems to think that pickleball is fun.

  And sure, pickleball can be fun, but we've all had experiences where something's off, and an activity that seems like it would be fun doesn't end up feeling fun. And then on the flip side, we've had experiences where something that doesn't seem like it'll be fun at all ends up feeling ridiculously fun. There's an element of serendipity. But when people do have fun, when they experience this feeling, it's actually very easy to recognize, because people who are having fun look like they're being illuminated from within.

  So, for example, here is me and my husband having fun together. Here are some presidents having fun together.

  Here’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama having fun together.

  Actually, those two seemed like they were very often, even constantly ...... having fun together.

  And as you can see in these photographs, true fun produces this visceral sense of lightness and joy. It's radiant. In fact, when I asked my daughter, when she was about five years old, what color fun would be, she said "sunshine."

  So what is this sunshine? You know? What is this feeling that we call "fun"? When people tell me their stories about fun, it's really interesting, because the details are all different, and often quite mundane, but the energy running through them is the same. There were three factors that are consistently present, to the point that I believe they constitute a new definition, one that is a lot more accurate than what's in the dictionary. And those three factors are playfulness, connection and flow.

  So by playfulness, I do not mean you have to play games, or, God forbid, make believe. I just mean having a lighthearted attitude of doing things for the sake of doing them and not caring too much about the outcome. Letting go of perfectionism. When we have fun, our guard is down, and we're not taking ourselves too seriously.

  Connection refers to the feeling of having a special, shared experience. And I do think it's possible, in some circumstances, to have fun alone, and for this feeling of connection to be with yourself or the surroundings, or the activity. But in the majority of stories that people tell me about their peak fun memories, another person is involved. And that's true even for introverts.

  And then flow is the state where we are so engaged and focused on whatever we're doing that we can even lose track of time. You can think about an athlete in the middle of a game, or a musician playing a piece of music. It's when we're in the zone. It's possible to be in flow and not have fun, like if you're arguing, but you cannot have fun if you're not in flow.

  So playfulness, connection and flow all feel great on their own. But when we experience all three at once, something magical happens. We have fun. And that doesn't just feel good, it is good for us. In fact, fun does so many amazingly good things for us that I personally believe that fun is not just the result of human thriving, it's a cause.

  So, for example, fun is energizing. When people tell me their stories about fun, they glow. It is like a fire has been lit inside of them, and the energy and the warmth that they give off is contagious. You know, so much of life drains us, but fun fills us up. Fun also makes us present. A lot of us put a lot of work into trying to be more present -- we do yoga classes, we meditate, and that is all great, but the fact that fun is a flow state means that when we are having fun, we simply are present. There's no other way for it to happen.

  Fun also unites us. We live in a really polarized world, and as we all know, there's a lot of very serious problems. But when we have fun with people, we don't see them as different political parties, or nationalities or religions. We connect with them as human beings, and it's worth noting that that is the first step in being able to work together to solve those problems.

  Fun also makes us healthier. Being lonely and stressed out, as many of us have been for the past two years, causes hormonal changes in our bodies that increase our risks for disease. But when we have fun, we're relaxed and we're more socially connected, both of which have the opposite effect. So, kind of blows my mind every time I think about it this way, but having fun is a health intervention.

  And then, lastly, fun is joyful. You know, we all so desperately want to be happy. We read books about happiness, we download apps about happiness, but when we are in a moment of having fun, we are happy. So it makes me think that, perhaps, the secret to long-term happiness is just to have more everyday moments of fun.

  So how do we do that? How do we have more fun? Well, to start with, do not take the suggestions you'll find in magazine articles about how to have more fun. I looked at some of these myself, and I found suggestions that include -- and I'm not making these up -- "roast a turkey."

  "Put together an altar to loved ones who have passed."

  “Watch a documentary about climate change.”

  And my personal favorite, "Adorn your table with gourds."

  Those are not good suggestions. Instead, the most effective thing you can do to have more fun is to focus on its ingredients, by which I mean, do everything you can to fill your life with more moments of playfulness, connection and flow. So here are some ideas for how to do so. To start with, reduce distractions in order to increase flow. Anything that distracts you is going to kick you out of flow and prevent you from having fun. And what's the number one source of distraction for most of us, these days? Oh, thank you.

  It was rhetorical, but yes, your phones.

  I wrote a book called "How to Break Up With Your Phone," so I have strong feelings about this, but I can guarantee you that you are not going to have fun if you're constantly on your phone. So today, I want to challenge you to keep your phone out of your hand as much as possible, so you can take me up on my second suggestion, which is to increase connection by interacting more with other human beings in real life. Now, I know that one of the main reasons we're constantly on our phones is specifically to avoid having to spend time and interact with other human beings in real life.

  So I want to assure you that it is worth it, and it is not as hard as it might seem. So here's how you do it. You start by making eye contact with someone. Like, look them in the eye, don't look in the middle of their forehead, where the camera would be on a Zoom call.

  And you say “Hello.” And if that goes well, you can introduce yourself. And if that goes well, maybe you can ask them a question, something that's thought-provoking, but not overly personal or threatening, like "What's something that fascinates you?" Or "What's one thing that delighted you today?" And you might be amazed by how good just one little moment of connection can make you feel.

  And if you do find someone to connect with, maybe ask them to join you in trying my third suggestion, which is to increase playfulness by finding opportunities to rebel. Now I am not talking about James Dean-level of rebellion. I'm talking about playful deviance. I'm talking about finding ways to break the rules of responsible adulthood, and giving yourself permission to get a kick out of your own life. One person told me that some of the most fun she'd had in recent memory, happened on a Friday morning, when she and some of her friends ditched their work and their childcare responsibilities, tucked flasks into their purses and snuck out to a 10:30am showing of the movie "Bad Moms."

  So lastly, here's one more thing that you can do today to start having more fun.

  Prioritize it. That might sound totally obvious, but one of the main reasons we're not having enough fun is that we're not making it a priority. Our fun is always at the bottom of the list, and it can't speak up for itself. So I'm not suggesting that you take out your calendar and make an entry that says: “From 4 to 6pm on Saturday, I shall have fun.” That is a guaranteed way to not have fun. But if you know you consistently have fun when you spend time with a particular person, make a point to spend time with that person. If you know there's an activity that really does often generate playful connected flow for you, carve out time for it in your schedule. Treat fun as if it is important. Because it is. I've been doing this myself for a couple of years now, and it's amazing to see how many areas of my life fun has touched. I'm more creative and more productive, I'm more resilient. I laugh more. Making sure that I'm having enough fun has made me a better partner, a better parent and a better friend. And it has convinced me of something that I very much hope I can convince you of as well, which is that my daughter was right. Fun is sunshine. It's a distillation of life's energy. And the more often we experience it, the more we will feel like we're actually alive.

  Thank you.

  How to discover your authentic self -- at any age

  I am a late bloomer. In fact, a friend of mine you may have heard of -- Chris Rock -- he once called me the most late-blooming mofo he’d ever met.

  Now, some people might consider that snide, but I revel in it. I’m 55, and I’m here in this curvy body as someone who has done the work, lived the life walked the walk in these very high heels --

  and therefore is qualified to testify in the church and in the court of law that it does, in fact, get greater later.

  Now coming to this realization wasn’t easy. At the age of 38, I was a very successful fashion advertising executive, and I was really living what most people considered a dream life. I was jet-setting to fashion shows; I was receiving free designer clothes; I was double-kissing my way across the globe.

  I was. And, you know, it was everything that I ever wanted it to be, and then one day I realized I was only pretending to be happy. But I couldn’t blow up my good life in my prime earning years, right? Wrong. Which leads me to lessons my mother Lolly taught me.

  Lolly’s number one lesson: don’t settle. Don’t settle. Now I’m aware that my well-paying, glamorous career is not exactly the humdrum, “I hate my job” stereotype that most people equate with settling. But it was a settle for me, because when I actually did quit my job at the age of 38, it was with the intention that every day be a great adventure. Now sometimes it was a very scary adventure, like being broke from the age of 40 to 45. But even still, I wouldn’t trade that for the safe and settled version, because if I had, I would not be here with y’all today.

  Yeah. So you know how when you like, buck the system and go against the status quo, it makes people really uncomfortable? And invariably, people will ask, “Where do you get your confidence?”

  Now some people mean it as a compliment, but very often it’s shady ...

  and it's a silent judgment. And to those people, I respond with a quote from this Brooklyn poet you may have heard of, Jay-Z.

  “She get it from her mama.” I am she, and my mama is the epitome of a grown-ass woman: someone who has always been very comfortable in her skin. In 1965, my mom was 37 years old. She already had one child, my big brother, Gerry, and she married my dad, but she kept her maiden name. And then she had my sister Stephanie and I back-to-back, but she continued to work because she refused to be beholden to my dad for money. And I bet my mom was the only woman in our neighborhood who cooked once a week. She made Sunday dinner. It was an extravaganza, but that’s all she did. She cooked one day a week.

  My mom is just amazing. And she also had this ability of talking to her children about real life and making sure that we understood the virtues of going your own way, which is why I believe today at the age of 94, and a recent widow, my mom is still carving out ways to find and determine and define her own version of happiness. She cooks for herself. She maintains her home exactly as she sees fit. She enjoys champagne and R-rated films.

  My mom has managed to maintain her glamour, her sex appeal, you know, her independence. And I really hope some of that rubs off on me.

  You know, recently I’ve been thinking about one of the best lessons that my mom ever taught me, which is the literal beauty in aging. Now, we all know that Black don’t crack, right? OK... Black don’t crack. So at the age of 50, my mom could have easily passed for the age of 35. And you know, that’s back during the time when people -- women were really coy about their age. “Oh, a lady never tells her age.” My mom never subscribed to that. She was always proud of her age. As a matter of fact, she believes you may not tell your age, but your hands and your neck will.So make peace with aging, or prepare for an entire wardrobe of gloves and turtlenecks.

  Yeah, my mom has always done these wonderful things like that, but I wish she could rub off on everyone because I feel like now I’m looking at even 20-somethings who have a fear of aging. I watch them on social media, like, you know, compulsively practiclng the latest 10-second dance craze, and it feels like their angsty and asking, “Is that all there is?” And I just want to yell, “Yes, that is all there is if all you’re going to do is settle for dancing to someone else’s TikTok beat!”

  Settling is very insidious. It keeps us dancing on this string, waiting for this elusive, better day to miraculously appear. Now thanks to Lolly’s tutelage, that’s not my story. In fact, I take each day as it comes but I try to make it better than the last.

  I’m an entrepreneur, but I keep multiple revenue streams. I’m a solo traveler, which means I’ve done the sepia version of “Eat, Pray, Love” on six continents. Because I don’t settle. What that means is that I also don’t second-guess my decisions, and I’m also not worried about my future because I’m firmly rooted in the present. Settling is a really sinister thing. It will keep you up at night tossing and turning, trying to figure out why and trying to answer that age-old question of “Is that all there is?” Personally, I don’t have time for that, because the only time I want to be kept up all night long tossing and turning is when I’m in the company of a fine-ass man.

  I wish I could tell you guys that I learned all these valuable lessons from Lolly and they were instilled in me and it was great, but alas, I am a late bloomer in all regards. So I had to learn a couple of lessons from the era of Bitchy Bevy. What kind of person has 10 assistants in five years? Bitchy Bevy, that’s who.

  Now I didn’t start out my career with a toxic attitude. No, initially I was really happy to be in the fashion industry. You know, but then I began to compare my trajectory to others, and I also began to feel burned out because I was burdened by these personas that I had created that were allegedly going to help me progress in my career. I made a couple of mistakes. One, I thought that being snarky was a good career move. It wasn’t. I also thought I look good in the color brown. I actually don’t.

  And, you know, I just -- in my dream montage, I wanted to get away from Bitchy Bevy. I wanted to get away from the color brown. And so in the movie version of my life, as soon as I quit my job, I’m a yoga guru. I’m extremely limber and very happy. Come to think of it though, guys, I’m actually limber and happy right now. But I would be lying -- and I believe it is against international law to lie during a TED Talk --

  so I’m not going to do that. And as a matter of fact, my insecurities popped back up as late as last year. I was minding my business, as one does, perusing social media, and I saw people excelling in a space where I, you know, traditionally had a lot of success. So I’m looking at it and I’m like, “Well, why the hell they ain’t call me for that job?” And I have this, like, angst, and then I realize they didn’t call me for that job because you already said you didn’t want that job. You told the universe you weren’t into working like that. You don’t want a job -- I really don’t.

  I’m not into it. So... that’s why it happened. And what I realize is that intellectually I had grown and evolved, but emotionally ... I was Tom Petty and I was living in “Petticoat Junction.”

  I told y’all that brown doesn’t look good on me; petty looks even worse. It’s not my shade. And so what I wound up having to do was really get a grip. I had to assess a few things about myself, and I decided to do a little self-help ritual called ... “Take a note, give a note.” It’s easy. When you see someone having something that you believe you deserve, you take a note. You ask yourself a few questions. Is it something that you really want? Perhaps that person is better suited than you are for that. Does the universe -- is the universe conspiring for you to have that? Really kind of try and be honest with who you are and where you’re at in life. Once you do that, you take a deep breath --

  and you say, “Their wins have nothing to do with my worthiness.” And then you’re ready to give a note. You go on social media, and you say congratulations. Or my personal favorite, you pick up the phone, like it’s the 20th century, and you say, “Congratulations, kudos, you did that, Al! You go, girl!” You do all the things. Instantly you feel like a better human being because you have actually extended grace. You’ve extended grace. You’ve extended grace to someone else. And I believe that when you remove malice from your heart, not only do you feel better, you look better. I think you lose your frown lines and your wrinkles lessen and your age spots disappear. I believe it’s better than Botox, extending grace. I do.

  Yeah. No, but let me get back to the note thing. So one of my favorite notes is from Willie Shakespeare. “To thine own self be true.” Now we’ve all read self-help books, and the first line of defense is always “Be your most authentic self.” And I believe in that. I believe that nobody can be you but you, so you might as well show up and show out. But here’s the quandary that the bard never put forth. What if you don’t really know who you are because you suppressed your inner self? You’ve suppressed the core of you. You’ve suppressed the best parts of you because you took on these other identities and these personas in an effort to make your life better. Because, you know, we all buy into some things about what we’re supposed to be doing and who we’re supposed to be. So what if you squelch that? Because I know I had to excavate to dig up a Little Brown Bevy. But the way I found her was with three questions. Who am I at my core? How am I being perceived? How would I like to be perceived?

  Who am I at my core? At my core I’m looking to authentically connect with people. I don't like a cursory, you know, interaction, and I do not believe in networking. I like an authentic connection. I’m also curious and I’m adventurous and I’m kind and I’ve got big dreams.

  How am I being perceived? Well, y’all know the nickname, Bitchy Bevy ... so, duh. But here’s the problem. There’s a lot of power in that persona, and I actually really enjoyed it for a time, you know, because you can make a lot of money being a bitch, especially in fashion.

  But it’s also incredibly lonely and isolating, and I didn’t want to live that life anymore. And so I decided to change my life. And I left all of that alone. I really did, like, just change my spirit. And leaving fashion obviously helped. And when I did that, all of a sudden, I let Little Brown Bevy out to play.

  Little Brown Bevy. I love her so much. Little Brown Bevy is a nerdy girl, and so I let my nerdy pursuits come out to play. I must have joined every museum on Museum Mile in New York City. I began to travel the world just to look at architecture I had always dreamed of. I learned how to be alone without being lonely. My spirit shifted. I became a better person. You can ask people -- I became a better person.

  And now I get to stand here in front of you guys with no bravado, with nothing to prove, I tell you, with nothing to prove. I’m not trying to prove nothing to y’all.

  I have an open heart. And I can’t even believe that Little Brown Bevy from 150th Street and Eighth Avenue, from the hamlet of Harlem, is now an award-winning radio and TV host, an author, an actress, a creative consultant. I would do all those things for free. But here’s the thing. I ain’t cheap, and I’m definitely not free, so don't get any ideas.

  But I am here in this “Mama I made it” moment as someone who can show up as her most Bevyest self because I’ve done the work. Yeah, my most Bevyest self. So, you know, I’m going to show up -- some of you’ve met me -- you know I’m vibrant and boisterous, AKA loud. OK, you know that I’m going to show up, and I’ve got a pep in my high heel, red-bottom step. I do have heaving cleavage.

  And I’ve got a tell-it-like-it-is approach to life that’s always dosed with a ladle of love.

  It took me 55 years to get here. So, Chris Rock, you’re right. I’m a late bloomer. And that’s OK. Because I’m right on time, Because it gets greater later.

We can make COVID-19 the last pandemic

  In the year 6 CE, a fire devastated Rome. In response, Emperor Augustus did something that had never been done before in the history of the Empire. He created a permanent team of firefighters who used buckets just like this one. Augustus understood that individuals alone can't protect themselves from fires. They need help from the community. When one person's house is on fire, that creates a risk for everyone else's homes.

  And so what we've had these last few years is like a horrific global fire. The COVID pandemic has killed millions and upended economies, and we want to stop that from happening again. COVID, it's hard to overstate how awful it's been. It's increased the health inequities between the rich and the poor. Survival depended partly on your income, your race, the neighborhood you lived in. And so we should seize this opportunity to create a world where everyone has a chance to live a healthy and productive life. Also a life free from the fear of the next COVID-19.

  When I was on this stage in 2015, I was one of many people who said we weren't ready and we needed to get ready. We didn't. The speech actually was watched by a lot of people. But 90 percent of the views were after it was too late.

  So now I hope the need is clear. And of course, we've learned a lot. During this pandemic, a lot of things worked well, a lot of things didn't work well. And so we have all that knowledge to build a prevention system.

  COVID-19 can be the last pandemic if we take the right steps. So how, what are these steps? Well, let's go back and look at what the Romans did. Think about how, over time, we've gotten good at preventing big fires. Fire prevention is kind of this pervasive thing. It's well funded. It's well understood. If an alarm went off right now, everyone here would know we're supposed to calmly gather, go out and wait instructions. We'd know that help would be on the way because we have lots of trained firefighters who practice. The United States alone has 370,000 full-time firefighters, even more than I guessed that number would be. We also have access to water. The United States, for example, has almost nine million fire hydrants. And so that type of investment, that type of practice, that type of system is what we need to stop pandemics.

  Now, often in movies, we'll have pandemics. And I'm always impressed with what takes place. Let's look at an example of this rapid response.

  Well, that's quite impressive. We don't need the music, but otherwise we saw exactly what should happen. An outbreak’s detected. Very quickly, literally within days, doctors are dispatched. They have a helicopter to get into exactly ground zero. They go in there, and they’ve got the right tools. And this is what should happen when an outbreak is spotted.

  But we don't have that team, we don't have those resources. And if an outbreak took place in a low-income country, it could be literally months before we started to orchestrate those resources.

  So despite what you see in movies, there is no group of experts standing by to prevent this disaster. So we have to create a new team. I believe we should create what I call the GERM team. Germ stands for Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization. This group is full-time. Their only priority is pandemic prevention. It's made up of a diverse set of specialists with a lot of different realms of expertise: epidemiologists, data scientists, logistics experts. And it's not just scientific and medical knowledge. They also have to have communication and diplomacy skills. The cost of this team is significant. It's over a billion a year to support the 3,000 people who would be on this team. And its mission is to stop outbreaks before they become pandemics. The work would be coordinated by the WHO. They'd be present in many locations around the world, stationed in public health agencies. They'd work closely with the national teams, depending on the income level. They'd have more in the lower-income countries. You know, for example, we could have GERM members say an epidemiologist, working out of the Africa CDC office in Abuja. And a very important thing is that like firefighters, a GERM team would do drills. When you want to have quick response, when you want to make sure you have all the pieces there and you can move very quickly, practice is key. That's how you make sure everyone knows what to do.

  Now, this team, there could be periods where there's no risky outbreak and they can keep their skills strong by working on some of the other infectious diseases, but that would be a second priority. They would work with countries to strengthen their health systems. The health systems are the front line. You need to know if, say, a lot of people show up with a new kind of cough, that’s when GERM needs to look into it and say, is this an outbreak? Is there a new pathogen here? What is the sequence of that? And so for all of this, the first 100 days are key. Viruses spread exponentially. And so if you get in there when the infection rate is fairly small, you can actually stop the spread.

  You know, in this epidemic, if we'd been able to stop it within 100 days, we would have saved over 98 percent of the lives. Now, we did have countries that did a good job. Australia is an example. They orchestrated diagnostic capacity. They came up with distancing policies and quarantine policies. And so their overall death rate per capita will be well less than a 10th of other countries. But we did not, as a world, contain it. And that's what we have to do next time.

  When COVID struck, we were almost like Rome before they had fire buckets and firefighters. We didn't have the people, the systems or the tools we need. Now, with the right investments, we can have a whole new generation of tools, better diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. A good example in the diagnostic area is this little machine, this is called the Lumira. We can have these all over the world that can test for any number of diseases. It’s a 10th as expensive as PCR, it’s absolutely as accurate, and it’s simple. So it can be used anywhere. We need other R&D investments. One that I'm very excited about is the idea of a drug that you inhale that blocks you from getting infected. It can be pathogen-independent and trigger your immune system so that you'll be protected. A lot of the tools, the diagnostic tools and those infection-blocking tools are important because they can be staged in advance. Now, we also need vaccines, but we want to stop the outbreak before we have to do a global vaccination campaign. And so vaccines can play a couple of different roles, but not the primary role. We have to invest in more than just that.

  When we look at vaccines, they were the miracle of this epidemic. They saved millions of lives, but they can be far better. We need to invent easier-to-deliver vaccines that are just a patch you put on your arm or something that you inhale. We need vaccines that actually block infections. In this case, there were lots of breakthrough infections. We need vaccines that are broad spectrum, so they work against most of the emerging variants, which we did not have this time. And we also need factories that are standing by so we can build enough vaccines for the entire world within six months and achieve far better equity. The vaccines can also do something that would be super helpful, which is to help us eradicate entire families of viruses. Innovative new vaccines used properly could get rid of the flu family, the coronavirus family. And there's a huge burden of those, even in non-pandemic years, and if we get rid of it, it can never cause a pandemic.

  So I'm talking about investments in three broad areas: Disease monitoring, that's GERM. The R and D tools that are far better. And finally, and the most expensive, is improved health systems. This won't be cheap, but it'll save lives. And even it'll save money in the long run. It's like an insurance policy.

  The cost to prevent the next pandemic will be tens of billions of dollars. But let's compare that to what we just went through. The IMF estimates that COVID has cost nearly 14 trillion dollars. And so we need to spend billions in order to save trillions. And here's the best part of this. Even when we're not having an outbreak, these investments like the Lumira, those new vaccines, they will make people healthier. They'll shrink the gap, the health equity gap, which is gigantic, between rich and poor countries. For example, we can detect more HIV cases and do a better job of treatment. We can reduce deaths from malaria. We can get more people high-quality care. And so this is not just a downer about how to stop things from getting worse, but also a chance to make things better.

  If we take the right steps, we can make COVID-19 the last pandemic, and we can build a healthier, more equitable world for everyone.

  (Applause) Helen Walters: Thank you so much. I have a few follow-up questions and one is really about the formal status of GERM. So you mentioned this would cost a billion dollars, you mentioned it comes through the WHO, but exactly who's running this, how does this work, how do we make this happen?

  BG: Well, GERM does not exist. It's a proposal I'm putting forward that hopefully over the next year, while the pain of the pandemic is still clear in people's minds, will get a global consensus. The rich-world governments will have to step up like they do with all the aid things and come up with that money. The way the personnel systems works, so that it's under WHO, but a really top-notch team, there will be a lot of debate about how to do that well. So, you know, I'm putting it forward and hopefully within the next year we'll get that consensus.

  HW: Who do you need to pick that up next?

  BG: Well, it's really the rich-world governments. The WHO has this big yearly meeting, the World Health Assembly, and at some point somebody will put forward a resolution and we'll see if the extra resources can be put in for that. After World War II, we did a lot. You know, we created the United Nations, we talked a lot about war. So I'd be stunned, although, you know, so far the action has been less than I would have expected, I'd be stunned if we don't go forward with something pretty close to what I'm laying out there.

  HW: This has been pretty personal for you. You know, the anti-vaxxers are out there, they are loud, and this has become personal. I just wanted to ask, like, how are you managing that?

  BG: Well, it's kind of weird.

  Now, our foundation, the Gates Foundation, is very involved in vaccines, the invention of new vaccines, funding vaccines. And we're very proud that through joint efforts like GAVI, that saved tens of millions of lives. So it's somewhat ironic to have somebody turn around and say, no, you know, we're using vaccines to kill people or to make money or, you know, we started the pandemic, even some strange things like, that I somehow want to track, you know, the location of individuals because I'm so deeply desirous to know where everybody is.

  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that information.

  You know, does this turn into something where, you know, there's constantly crazy people showing up? Who knows? But, you know, hopefully, as the pandemic calms down, people are more rational about, hey, vaccines are a miracle and there's a lot more we can do.

  HW: So the future is in our hands in the present.

  Bill Gates, thank you so much for being here.

  BG: Thank you.

  "A seat at the table" isn't the solution for gender equity

  So when I was born on September 26, 1988, my grandparents and great grandparents back in India didn't find out for two weeks, which is a shame because I mean, look how perfect I was.

  And it's not because the phone lines were down or because they weren't available. It's because there was a complication with my birth. And that complication was being assigned female at birth. You see, because my mom had been told that if she gave birth to a daughter, it wasn't worth phoning home about. After all, she’d already given birth to my older sister, and this time everyone had high hopes that she would do right and have a son. But she didn't. She had me. And so there were no congratulations or Indian sweets sent our way. Just the reality that from the moment I came into this world, I was already a disappointment to so many people. It's as if they had a time machine and already knew the trajectory of my entire career and life and decided that I had less to offer. And it sucked.

  So why am I telling you this heavy story? I'm supposed to be a funny person. I have the nerve to come out here and hit you right in the feels. How dare I? I'm telling you this because although this is my lived experience, it's also the reality that millions of girls face every day across every culture and in every country. And I'm telling you this because being born into this reality set me on a lifetime mission of trying to prove myself and just feel like I was enough.

  What did I want to be when I grow up? I wanted to be treated equally. And I'm not alone in this mission. In fact, us girls, what we desperately want is a seat at the table. It's what every motivational poster, Tumblr post, Instagram account you follow, business card tells us: Success is a seat at the table. And if they want to be extra spicy, they say, "If there is no seat, drag your own seat." I'm sure you've heard this, right? And so my marching orders were clear. Get a seat at this coveted table by any means necessary. And that's been the driving force behind my entire career.

  Now, in 2010, I noticed that no one on YouTube looked like me. There was no South Asian woman who's very loud and uses her hands a lot, giving her take on the world. There was no me in front of a camera. I saw a seat up for grabs. So I got to work, and I started a channel under the name “Superwoman.” Yeah, because although I’m smart enough to do a TED Talk, I'm not smart enough to understand copyright.

  I taught myself how to write, shoot and edit my own content. And I worked really hard. When I finally got the hang of it, I committed to posting two comedy videos a week. And I found success. With a backwards snapback on my head, I gave my take on relationships, pop culture, taboo subjects and, most popularly, dressed up like my parents.I can't tell you how many times I forgot to wipe that chest hair off. A lot of times.

  Now fast forward to 2015, and I'm on stage in India announcing my first world tour. As fate would have it, the day after this monumental milestone, I was set to fly to Punjab, India to visit my grandfather for the first time in my adult life. And whoo, nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen. I vividly remember it. I was in the car driving to his house. He was standing outside. I nervously got out of the car, walked up to him. He walked up to me, looked me right in the eyes, and he raised his hand and decorated me with a flower garland: a gesture fit for people of importance. He then proceeded to welcome me into his home, my mom by my side, and proceed to show me all the newspaper clippings he had saved with my name and face on them. He said the words he was wrong. Words I had never heard a man say before to me. He said that I had done what no one else could have done, and I had made the family name proud. Me, Lilly, the baby born a girl. That's right. Now in that moment I truly felt like Superwoman. I did. You know, through my YouTube videos, I've amassed almost 15 million subscribers and three billion views. But more important than all of that, I managed to change one view. I challenged my grandfather's entrenched gender beliefs. And for the first time in my life, I remember thinking in that moment, “Oh, I finally got a seat at the table ...” Hello, props." ... alongside the men in the industry.” I felt like that.

  And encouraged by my grandfather's approval, I became more confident in my influence. I remember thinking, "Oh, I'm going to talk at this table, I'm going to join the dinner conversation." You know, a lot of my male mentors make comments and posts about box office numbers and salaries and titles and those dollar dollar bills. So I thought, I'm going to chime in here. I learned very quickly that whenever I spoke of money, people got a little uncomfortable. Like the time I pointed out the gender gap in the Forbes list for online creators, a list I'd previously been on. I remember wanting to start a critical conversation because I saw this article and I was heartbroken. You know, the digital space had always been a place that I thought was without gatekeepers. And here it was looking just like old Hollywood. Well, let me tell you, the internet was not interested. I don't know how it's possible, but it literally felt as if Twitter leaped through my screen and body slammed me onto my desk. The message was clear: you can be on this list, but don't try to start any conversations about the inequality on this list.

  I have thousands and thousands of videos. One of my most disliked videos is why I’m not in a relationship. Yeah. A lot of the men at the table did not like me telling them why I didn't need a boyfriend. I quickly learned that there’s an invisible gatekeeper called culture, and the table is smack dab in the middle of it.

  Now, in 2019, I made history with my late-night show, “A Little Late with Lilly Singh.” Thank you, thank you. (Applause) There I was, Lilly, the baby born a brown girl, rubbing elbows, or at least time slots, with comedy royalty. And I got to give a huge shout out to NBC for boldly trying to break late-night tradition. I remember when the show came out, I remember all the articles because they looked practically identical. "Bisexual Woman of Color Gets Late-Night Show." I almost legally changed my name to "bisexual woman of color" because that's what people called me so often. And you know, as strange as that sentiment was, I thought, OK, the silver lining is that we'll finally get a different perspective in late-night. A little bit of melanin, a dash of queer, a different take on things. Let's do this! And I remember thinking, "Now, oh, now I've been invited to the big table. And now things will be different." So I took my seat.

  Now, unfortunately, the budget wasn't based on the importance or significance or historic nature of the show. It was based on the 1:30am time-slot that we had. So to say the budget was small, the writing staff even smaller, and to do the first season, I had to shoot 96 episodes of late-night television in three months.

  LS: Whoo is right. To put that into perspective, that is shooting two to three episodes a day versus the network standard of one a day, maybe two on Thursday. We did it all with a writing staff of about half a dozen writers versus the network standard that's about double that. Words cannot explain to you how exhausting, emotionally and spiritually challenging that was. And I started to feel like, "Hm, I think this chair's a little wobbly."

  Now, I think we can all agree that the beauty and magic of late-night is its timeliness. You know that no matter what's happening in the world, you can turn on late-night television and hear all about it. But when you shoot 96 episodes in three months, you kind of lose that magic. I was the only show talking about hooking up, partying, cuddling, traveling, in front of a live audience during a literal global pandemic. Now, still, I thought, if the budget doesn't celebrate the historicness of the show, then the creative can. I can bring some much needed spice to late-night. And sometimes I was successful. But other times, I would receive notes like, "Don't be so loud." "Don't be so big." "Don't be so angry, smile more." And my all time favorite, "Don't overindex on the South Asian stuff." After all, everyone else at the table who's been sitting there for years, people are used to them. I might be a little jarring to audiences.

  Now, during season two of my show, I remember I went into overdrive. I found all the loopholes, I did all the necessary jobs to try to make the show more timely. And I was excited to. And I felt compelled to because for the first time in history, we had a woman, not to mention half South Asian woman, become vice president of the United States. Now we witnessed one of the greatest protests in human history with the farmer protests in India. And I was excited to finally give my take on these things. But my take was almost never included in topical media news coverage round-ups. You know, we still got the same voices, the same perspectives, even though someone and something different was literally in the next time slot.

  I kept trying to pull up my seat. I kept trying to join the dinner conversation. I kept trying to ask for a more supportive seat. But every time I would be told that I should be grateful to have a seat in the first place. After all, everyone else that looks like me is still waiting outside the restaurant in the cold. You know, the strange thing about having a wobbly seat is that you spend so much time trying to keep it upright that you can never bring your full self to the table.

  So now, why am I telling you all this? Well, because my therapist costs 200 dollars an hour and this is way cheaper.

  But also because I just experienced one of the most notorious boys' clubs ever in late-night television. And I'm here to offer solutions. I don't always follow up a venting session with solutions, but when I do, it’s a TED Talk.

  That's right.

  You see, my goal was always a seat at the table. It's what women are conditioned to believe success is. And when the chair doesn't fit, when it doesn't reach the table, when it's wobbly, when it's full of splinters, we don't have the luxury of fixing it or finding another one. But we try anyways. We take on that responsibility, and we shoulder that burden.

  Now, I've been fortunate enough to sit at a few seats, at a few different tables. And what I've learned is, when you get the seat, trying to fix the seat won't fix the problem. Why? Because the table was never built for us in the first place. The solution? Build better tables.

  So, allow me to be your very own IKEA manual. I would like to present to you a set of guidelines I very eloquently call: “How to Build a Table that Doesn’t Suck”.I've been told I'm very literal.

  Now, right off the bat, let me tell you, this assembly is going to take more than one person or group of people. It's going to take everyone. Are you ready? Should we dive in? Let's do it.

  Up first, don't weaponize gratitude. Now, don't get me wrong, gratitude is a great word. It's nice, it's fluffy, a solid 11 points in Scrabble. However, let's be clear. Although gratitude feels warm and fuzzy, it's not a form of currency. Women are assigned 10 percent more work and spend more time on unrewarded, unrecognized and non-promotable tasks. Basically, what this means is all the things men don't want to do are being handed to women, and a lot of those things largely include things that advance inclusivity, equity and diversity in the workplace. So hear me when I say, a woman shouldn't be grateful to sit at a table. She should be paid to sit at a table.

  Especially ones she largely helped build. And a woman's seat shouldn't be threatened if she doesn't seem "grateful" enough. In other words, corporations, this step involves a woman doing a job and being paid in money, opportunity and promotion, not just gratitude. And women -- yeah, go ahead, live it up, live your life.

  And women, a moment of real talk, trust me, I've been there and I know it's so tough, but we have to understand and remember that being grateful and being treated fairly are not mutually exclusive. I can be grateful but still know exactly what I deserve. And that's the way to do it.

  Up next, invest in potential. When investing in women, don’t invest in the 1:30am time slot. Invest in empowering something different. Invest in a new voice. Give them the support they actually need. Cultural change takes time and money. Heck, it took my grandfather 25 years to see that I was worthy of more. So a true investment is one that values potential over proof. Because so often that proof doesn't exist for women. Not because we aren't qualified, but because we haven't been given the opportunity. In other words, if you're trying to be inclusive, don't give someone new a seat made of straw until they prove they deserve a better one. Don't hold something called a "prove it again" bias, which requires less privileged people to constantly keep proving themselves, even though white men tend to get by on just their potential. Give them a seat that they can thrive in, that they can do the job you hired them to do in. Allow them to contribute to the table, and they will make it better.

  Up next, this is my favorite one. My favorite one, it's quite common sense, actually. Make space for us. You know, for every three men at a table, there's only one place setting for a woman. People are so used to more men showing up that they plan for it. There's an extra seat in the corner, there's a steak under the heat lamp. When more men show up, the table gets longer. But when that extra RSVP is a woman, more often than not she's encouraged to compete against the only other woman that was invited to the table. Instead, we need to build multiple seats for multiple women, not just one or two, so that women are not sitting on top of each other's laps, fighting for one meal. We already know that more diverse teams perform better. A recent study shows that corporations that have more gender diversity on their executive teams, were 25 percent more likely to experience above average profitability. And more racially diverse companies had 36 percent more profit. So really, no matter how you look at it, it's time to build longer tables and more seats.

  And I want to say something, and I want to admit something, I want to be vulnerable for a second. Because I've fallen victim to this so many times, and women, let me know if you've experienced this. We have to get rid of the scarcity mindset and champion each other, you know, because I've learned what's the better win? Me sitting at a table or us sitting at a table? Don't be convinced to fight for one spot. Instead fight for multiple spots.

  And let me lead by example right now and say, I know there’s many other women that are going to come on this stage, and I hope they all nail it, and I will be cheering you all on because we can all win. And I'm going to be your biggest cheerleader when you're up here.

  Last, it's time to upgrade the table talk. Now, I believe stories make the world go around. You thought it had something to do the solar system? Joke's on you, it's stories.

  Stories are how we understand ourselves, how we understand others and how we understand the world. And arguably the most important stories are those we see in the media. Because we’ve seen time and time that they control the narrative and impact culture. Now, when it comes to genre, you can argue that certain genres have certain target demographics. When it comes to the world news, the target demographic is the world, and we know half of the world is female. Yet women and girls make up only a quarter of the people interviewed or that the news is even about in the first place. Instead, when it comes to issues that impact women, we not only need to be included in the coverage, we need to be driving those stories and dimensionalizing our own experience. Inviting everyone in on the table talk isn't just a nice gesture. It makes for better, more productive, smarter conversation with more than one point of view. And that's how you get better.

  So this all sounds like a lot of work. And it is. But I'm going to tell you why it's necessary and worth it. To be honest, this is about so much more than just women in the workplace. In fact, I could probably come up with many more guidelines across many other industries. This is about creating a world where half of the population can thrive. You see, because the work we do today can create a world where future generations of girls can have equitable access and opportunity.

  And here's the best part. Are you ready for it? Everyone listening today, all the men, the women, everyone in between, the big companies, the small ones, the media outlets, the people that snuck into the back, all of you, you can help create this future. A future where we have longer tables and more seats that actually work instead of fighting for a seat at the old ones that don't. A future where everyone is seated at the table equally. And a future where being assigned female at birth is not a disappointment or a disadvantage, because girls are encouraged, empowered and expected to do great things. And I can't wait to make that a reality.

  Thank you so much.