Luvvie Ajayi: Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable

In late November of 2017, Luvvie Ajayi did a TED Talk at TED Women in New Orleans, Louisiana. The talk was entitled Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and how being quiet is being comfortable and how this is our one life to live so we might as well be “uncomfortable.”

Luvvie Ajayi is a Nigerian speaker, digital strategist, and New York Times Best Selling Author. Her book, I’m Judging You: The Do Better Manual, was a New York Times Bestseller, #1 Washinton Post Bestseller, Redbook “20 Books By Women You Must Read this Fall,” and many more. She is well known for her social media presence, especially for her blog Awesomely Luvvie.

She begins her talk by telling the audience about how she thought her life was going to be. Ever since she was a little girl she said she wanted to be a doctor. She was studying Pre-Med at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and not long into being in the program she dropped out. Luvvie discovered that Pre-Med wasn’t for her and also started writing in a blog that first semester. She discovered that she was doing what she enjoyed and wanted to do more things that made her feel “uncomfortable.”

She was scared of being on her own, so went to the Dominican Republic to zip line by herself; was scared of heights, so she went skydiving; was scared of being submerged in water, so she went scuba diving.

She tells the audience that she feels that she is the force that knocks down metaphorical dominos. There was a time she was asked to speak at an event, but she had to pay to speak there. After doing some research, she found that white men had travel and hospitality paid for, as well as being paid to be there. Even white women were paid to be there, but she, a Nigerian woman had to pay to speak there. That is intolerable behavior that had to have some light shed on it. She realized that this could be financially detrimental to her career but absolutely needed to be said, and she did it. After she did, there was a domino effect of people coming forward with issues of the wage gap. Although she was uncomfortable with doing the actual act of speaking up, the repercussion was much more comfortable and satisfying.

However, before she speaks up she asks herself three questions:

1. Do you mean it?
2. Can you defend it?
3. Can you say it with love?

If the answer is yes to every question then she will say it. Nothing will ever change if you don’t speak up, but more importantly, if you don’t speak the truth nothing will change. She talks about how bridges built on truth connect a common ground. As humans, we can connect our truth so we can be more and more comfortable.