The simple message that brought the entire room to tears

So it's my last day in Malaysia and I had a really emotional session that I felt compelled to make this video. I'm exhausted, my head is pounding, I've had very little sleep over the past week. It's been awesome meeting entrepreneurs and here's the story. So this morning I woke up After very few hours of sleep because I was out late salsa dancing, went down to get my breakfast and a woman came up and approached me and said, "Would you like to join me and my husband for breakfast?" So I wasn't eating alone. And I found out that she was actually going to be speaking for 10 minutes just before my session. It was a surprise addition. It wasn't on the original schedule. And she was a local Malaysian and she was the victim of cyberbullying. Where basically she refused to do a deal with somebody, and as a result, that person has been slamming her in social media for the past 7 years. And it's just a really sad and terrible story. And she was getting up and she was nervous, and it was the first time she was going to do a presentation, and she was just trying to inspire people and tell her story. And she got up and did a good job. She shared it and she was reading from her paper. And I felt for her because her story wasn't getting out properly. In her story, she was telling people how to overcome cyberbullying. But it wasn't touching people. And what she told me at breakfast was moving. So here's part of what happened to her, okay? So she said no to this woman for this deal, and as a result, now this woman is taking pictures of this person and is putting them on naked bodies and posting them on Twitter. And she's doing it to her family, her friends, When her mom got a heart attack and was in the hospital, she posted that this person's mother was a prostitute. Just really nasty, nasty stuff in the very public eye. And it got to the point now where her friends won't take pictures with her because they're afraid that this person will also slander them on social media. You know, how bad is that? Your own friends won't take pictures with you. And so I felt so touched talking to her this morning, and we talked about, like, you got to share your story, you got to make people feel this, not just say how to avoid cyberbullying. And it may have been too late for her to make that change, and so she went up, she did her presentation, and it was— it wasn't what it could have been, and because she didn't have the practice. And I felt bad because these people were, you know, they weren't fully tuned in. They didn't know what was going on. They didn't know how important it was and what her story was. So I got up at the beginning of my presentation. I changed everything around. Instead of launching right into my session, I asked her to come next to me with her husband who were in the room. And I told the story about her grandmother or her mother and all the abuse that she's faced over the past 7 years. And how her friends won't take pictures with her anymore. And I got everybody in the audience to stand up, form a line, take out their phones, and I told them, what I want you to do— because the session was about creating movement— I want you to come up and take a picture with her and make a peace sign. And I want you to hashtag— I said if you hashtag peace and you copied me, @EvanCarmichael, I would give you the free copy of my Zouga guides. And it was so moving because her own friends wouldn't support her, wouldn't take pictures with her, and she felt like she was all alone. And here's a room, you know, like 100, 150 people in the room, something like that. Here's a room full of total strangers who were willing to get up and take a picture with her. And they did, you know, peace signs and gave her hugs and said, "What you're doing is important." And it made her feel so good and validated and that people were supporting her. And it changed her life. And everybody felt better for having been part of this. And I wish I had the whole moment on camera. I went on with my presentation and throughout my presentation people lined up for the hour to take pictures with her and they started tweeting it and sharing it and posting tweets like, "I'm taking a picture with this person. She's a victim of cyberbullying and her friends won't take a picture with her, so I am." The point of that story, apart from it moving me, as you can tell, is if you— this woman is a very strong woman, okay? She's very— she likes— she doesn't like being vulnerable. She doesn't like being seen as weak, and she's been fighting this for 7 years in a very public eye. And I Tried to get the point across to her, and this is important for you guys, that if you want people to take action, you have to make them feel something. You have to make them feel your pain and come from that point of vulnerability, because when you do that, it draws people in. Complete strangers lined up to take pictures with her, were giving her hugs, were crying with her, when her best friends were too afraid to do it. And they didn't know her before I got up, and this happened within the first 5 minutes of my presentation. And when you use powerful stories like that and make it real and personal— here I was telling her story. Imagine if she did it herself. Like, you do it yourself. It's much more powerful and strong. That's how you get people to take action. So I'm exhausted. I gotta get some sleep. I'm going dancing again tonight, but I wanted to quickly make this video just to share while I was in the moment of what happened today, and I wanted to close the video just showing some of the pictures and some of the tweets that came in from the session of people supporting her and how, you know, in 5 minutes we were able to change not only that one woman's life but also everybody in the room. And you should go out and make an impact with what you're doing as well today.

Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us, only sky. Imagine all the people. Living for today. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.