About
From rock bottom
to center stage.
My story
The dream.
At fourteen, I left home and moved interstate to boarding school to chase one goal: becoming an Olympic swimmer. At sixteen, I fractured my back. I was shattered, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I pushed harder.
It didn't work. I never got back to the level I'd been at, and slowly the dream faded, and my sense of who I was went with it. I came home without an identity. I didn't know who I was without swimming, and I didn't know how to talk about it.
The turning point
A cheap keyboard.
I'd grown up playing piano too; I'd even reached the highest level in Australia before burning out and swearing I'd never touch one again. But at my lowest point, I bought a cheap keyboard and, for the first time in two years, played the music I actually wanted to play. I started posting it online. Music became the first time I expressed myself without needing to speak.
That became a habit, then a craft. I arranged my own sheet music, built a following of over 180,000 people across social media, and started performing at weddings and live events, slowly learning to put myself out there, one stage at a time.
The payoff
The TED stage.
The breakthrough came when I gave my first TEDx talk, on starting before you feel ready. Standing on that stage, I was really speaking to one person: the shy kid who'd spent years hiding behind swimming and piano.
Today I share that story with students and audiences facing their own version of rock bottom, because the hardest chapter of my life taught me something I wish I'd known sooner. Your story isn't something to hide. It's your superpower, and courage is just a muscle, trained one small scary thing at a time.
“Your story isn’t something to hide. It’s your superpower.”Shane Ting