Wani Iris Manly, Esq | Eminent Speaker | Global Research Conf. 2023 | King’s College, Cambridge, UK

I would like to now invite Wani Iris Manly Esquire to the front. Wani Iris Manly is a TEDx and award-winning speaker on Change, a business and IP lawyer and a best-selling author. She's the founder of the speaking and global consultancy firm The House of Inspirational Business based in Paris, France. Um, uh, Wani Iris Manly PA, a boutique business and IP law firm where inspiration meets law which provides legal contract templates, resources, and education for entrepreneurs. Uh, Wani has 19 years of international business, corporate, and IT law— IP law experience, sorry— while working exclusively with C-suite executives of multinational and public companies, including but not limited limited to MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc., and Office Depot Inc., to name a few throughout her career. Wani is the best-selling author of Get Out of Survival Mode and Live the Life You Really Want and is best known for her daredevil move from Miami to Paris, a city where Wani knew no one, not one word of French, without a plan A, B, or C, purely on following universal signs over the course of a year that led her to Paris, clearly demonstrating that if you're going to live life for success in life and business is quite simple, you are under zero obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago. So change. Wani Iris Manly Esquire is talking about Change is the name of the game for building sustainability after the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you.

Wani Iris Manly, everybody who's making it possible behind the scenes, I just want to say thank you so much for having me, for actually being part of it. And so I am going to talk to you about what I know best. What do I do with this too? Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Yes, okay.

I'm going to be talking to you about what I know best, what my whole life has actually been based upon since I came onto this earth, and that is how to change. I have lived in 5 different countries and 13 cities, and so change is something that actually comes to me quite naturally, and I actually seek out situations for change. In this age of COVID-19, or in the post-development or the post- COVID world, change is the name of the game for you to be sustainable after and where we're going right now. Yet as human beings, we actually are afraid of change. We grossly equate it to death and we avoid it at all costs. In fact, in 2021, Google Trends show that people Googled the fear of COVID and the fear of change at equal and alarming rates. That is actually how much we fear change. Played it to death. Yet what we don't realize is that change is actually the doorway to what we actually want. Let me ask you a question here. How many of you like change? Be honest. How many of you want to change? Be even more honest. Okay, I'm talking about room of leadership. Okay, I get it, I get it. Okay, how many of you then actually want to lead the change, to be at the stake and be at the front The front, yeah. Not a lot of people, but I'm talking to some top dogs here in the room, but typically the hands is just racking, everybody usually wants change, but then it usually looks like this right here, right? How many of you have seen this before, right? But we're all leaders here, right? We're all top dogs, so we're all like, you know, we're at the very bottom here. Yet with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Ashri Im is wanting a very quick, and a fast-changing world where to the point we actually have no choice but to actually change. Individually, we are also being forced to evolve at the risk of our very survival, our inability to actually thrive and even feed ourselves in this new and ever so changing world. So then the question becomes really, how do we resist, how do we stop resisting change in order for us to actually stay relevant in this new world? To not be made redundant, to not be replaced at our jobs, to not lose our sense of self and our sense of belonging. What we're finding right now is that everything's been replaced with the technology, right? How— and as much as we resist change, what we don't realize is that we actually are shooting ourselves in the foot, not knowing that actually embracing change is the gateway to all of our desires. It is actually the gateway to actually having the things we really want and living the life that we actually really want. And it's like the doorway after giving us a plethora of opportunities, if only we're willing to let go of the past and step into the future. And I can tell you, I am actually a living proof of that. So as you heard in my intro, I'm actually from Miami, and this is where I used to live right here. And in 2010, I made a decision that would change the entire trajectory of my life. That ushered in the greatest catalyst of change, which is even when I discovered the things I'm about to share with you here today. I'm about to hopefully change your perspective about change and to actually change your relationship with how you engage with change, because we're at a point right now where not only our sustainability actually depends upon it, but really how do we actually thrive? Because for me, I personally find sustainability is a mediocre life. It's mediocrity, right? It leads to boredom. That decision for me was that on New Year's Eve in 2010, instead of going out to party with my friends in Miami, I actually decided to stay at home abruptly and to analyze my life the whole year. And what I did was I began to, with meditation, I began to look at the things I had achieved that year, and I wrote those down, which is a very short list. I then went to look and see all the things that I actually failed at, and that list was much longer. Taking full responsibility, I looked at each one of my failures and I asked myself, Wani Iris Manly, what happened? What went wrong? The short end of it was that I was in love for the very first time, and I was also a brand new business owner, started my very first law firm. At the time, I knew nothing about how to run a business, but I know how to be a lawyer. But being in love for the very first time actually stifled any real chance for success. Next, I began to look at my limiting beliefs, and I wrote down every single limiting belief that I had about myself. I had begun the spiritual path. With the teacher here from England, and I began to connect with Hindu teachings and Buddhism. And actually, you know, growing up in Christianity, it just made sense for me, right? And I began to realize that what was actually causing my life was actually what I was believing about myself. So I got on all fours, and after writing every single thing down, I prayed the most reverent prayer to God, asking God to help me to release all the limited beliefs that I had about myself. Because I realized what was actually causing my reality was actually what I was believing about myself, what I was actually feeling about myself. And when I was done, I began to go through a whole self-forgiveness practice. When I was finished, it was now time to look into the future. I got a brand new journal like I always do for New Year's Eve, and it had the word "imagine" on it. And in that journal, I began to write. I wrote down every single thing that I wanted to be, that I wanted to do, and I wanted to have and experience in 2011. In fact, that day, I wrote without any limits whatsoever. I wrote by the words that I actually live by, which are The sky is not even the limit, but the viewpoint. These words are one of two words that I actually live in, which I'll share with you secondly. In fact, that day I personally believe I wrote what I feel Elon Musk must think like on a daily basis because I was writing so outrageous, like just things that I just wasn't even thinking about the how, but just what did I really want to experience. And when I was done, I began to visualize myself having those things. I began to say mantras and affirmations and Sanskrit over them, and when midnight came, I took one sip of glass of champagne and I passed out. Why? I was tired because I had been at this process since 6:30 AM that morning. Unbeknownst— nothing in my journal though said that I actually wanted to leave Miami, but unbeknownst to me was that I had ushered in a catalyst for change. 3 days later, everything in my life in Miami began to change. I began to experience all of these signs about Paris, French culture, French this and French that. It was super weird because I wasn't a typical American that was all crazy delusional about Paris and France. My parents are West African from Liberia. I'm not from a Francophone country, so it made no sense whatsoever as to why my Latin American Spanish-speaking-only world in Miami was all of a sudden being invaded with all the things about Paris, French, and French this. And so for a single year, it was Paris, Paris, Paris, Paris, One day in August, my heart finally spoke to me and said, move. And so in October of that year, I literally, I sold my apartment in Paris that I showed you earlier. I mean, in Miami, I sold my car. I gave away all of my things to different charities and I only kept my spiritual books. I kept my crystals, I kept my Malavids, and I kept my legal files because by law, 7 years attorneys actually have to keep all of our legal files. Otherwise, it's malpractice, right? And I moved to Paris. I didn't know a single person. I didn't know one word of French, not even how to say bonjour. I didn't have any plan A, B, C, or whatsoever. I had no idea like what the hell I was actually going to do going to Paris because I've been a lawyer all of my life. In fact, October this year, I'll be a lawyer for 20 years. Before I left Miami, my hopelessly romantic friends told me that I was going to Paris to meet the love of my life, and they began planning my wedding instantly. My spiritual teacher, who's actually from the UK, he went to Eton and grew up very privileged, went to school with Prince William, told me that I was actually going to Paris on a karma cleansing mission and to get ready for the adventure for my life— of my life. However, It was the words of my hairdresser whose attention got me the most. She told me I was going to Paris to meet the one, but it had nothing to do with the man. She told me I was going to Paris to meet me, the real me, the soul walking along my path. When she said those words to me, I knew that when I was coming to Paris that I wasn't just changing countries, that I was changing identities, that I was actually changing my fate, and I was ushering in the greatest change of my life. And this is what we are not made aware of. We're never taught that. And so we sit around, we're always like looking for things to change outside of us first, right? We're sitting there waiting around and wait for day, go day after day, week after week, month after month, and even for years waiting for something on the outside of us to actually change. For someone else to change, for some unwanted situation in our lives to actually just disappear, hoping and praying is our strategy. Sound familiar? And then what happens is this thing called COVID. We have an unprecedented global pandemic which arm wrestles us and it actually forces us to change because our world as we know it has come completely end it. In order for us to actually to stay relevant in this new world or to even feed ourselves, we must ourselves actually change and embrace the change that is actually now staring us in the face. It's actually change and embrace change or be made irrelevant. But what we need to understand is this: it is not that it's change itself that actually makes us irrelevant. It is our failure to actually embrace and to work with it to exploit the new avenues that the change is actually bringing before us. That is the failure, that is what's actually making us irrelevant. Then another question becomes is, how do we actually do this? How do we do it when we as human beings, when we hate change, we do everything in our power to resist change, to stay in the familiar no matter how bad and how toxic the familiar actually is? And also, and I want to share with you today, is a framework for you to actually stop resisting change, because we're at a point right now we actually have no choice, right? And for you to not only to be, um, to sustain, to, for you to sustain yourself in the new world, but actually be able to thrive in it. Because I also want to show you too that there's such a great opportunity here. And once we can get past of wanting the old life to return back again, wanting to have— because it's never going to come back. And I think we really have to let go of all of that because It's just not the case. And the very first, the first part, or part of this framework, is I want you to understand you're 100% responsible for your experience of any change you must be going through. Now, you may not have any control over the exact changes that should be for you, right, of the exact circumstance, right? However, you do have 100% control how you experience it, what your feelings are about, like what your emotions are about it, right? So for example, Goldman Sachs has said that 30 million jobs, or AI is actually going to eliminate or to downgrade 30 million jobs. How does that make you feel? Anybody want to share? Me as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, I'm just like, I'm just thinking of all the ways, all the new businesses that can be formed because that's just how I think, right? Now, for the very first time coming from Paris here to this conference, I took the Eurostar, right? And for the first time I experienced the whole facial recognition. Now, I could have gone through that and been feeling sad for the lack of human connection that was gonna happen, that was happening along the way. I could have felt sad because the very, for the worker that eventually was actually going to lose his job who scanned my passport. Or I could have looked at it, which is what I was doing, was, Wow, look how efficient this process really is, right? I was looking at it as, wow, look at how we have advanced with technology and look how we are using technology right now to actually make travel to just proceed a lot more easier. I could have also looked at the worker and say, my gosh, he's now going to be set free because I sincerely doubt that his dream job is to sit there and stamp passports, or that's actually his dharma. I don't think it's his life purpose. This. And now he's actually been set free to actually do what he really wants with this life and probably create more sustainability for himself as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as an innovator. Because we have to understand, to create financial stability for ourselves, we have to be in control of our own finances. COVID, on the other hand, you know, for us brought so many opportunities. I mean, look at— let's just take Zoom, for example, right? How many How many people even knew Zoom even existed before COVID right? Look at how it changed the events industry. Before COVID happened, we were only able to have an event where we can only invite a couple of hundred people, small thousands, right? However, with the Zoom, or with COVID it opens to the whole virtual world where we could actually be able to have events where we have like hundreds of thousands, even millions of people. For example, I'm a big Tony Robbins fan, right? The average price or the minimum price to go to Tony Robbins is $1,000 plus, right? And that is just the entry of the UPW. That's not even like the airfare. That's not even like the hotel and the food and all of that. But with COVID happening, he couldn't actually hold his events. He was now able to do the whole everything virtual and sell a ticket for $49. He reached over a million people. I was present online with him. 5 million. The event that I went to, he was reaching over 1 million people. People. So, but even, even better, right? 5 million people, right? But he, I mean, before he was like in a stadium or at convention centers, right? Look at how COVID then actually presented to us in terms of like the working from home, right? It set our whole commute times down, right? And people were not going into, you know, going to the office anymore, right? And so there's always some opportunities because, and that's what's being, That's what's always presented to us. The second part of the framework is you gotta have a growth mindset. Now, what is a growth mindset? A growth mindset is actually recognizing that everything is actually happening for you, that nothing is ever happening to you. In fact, not only is everything happening for you, it is actually happening by you. You are actually creating that, and it's actually for a very higher purpose or very for your evolution. And it's only whenever you can get out of the why is this happening to to me and actually how is this actually happening for me, you begin to see what I call the third component of this whole frame, which is actually like the golden opportunity that is actually within the change in itself. I want you to remember these words. Whenever you're facing a problem, it is this: the solution you are facing— I mean, the problem— the solution is always within a problem. There is no problem that is ever existing whereby the solution is always— is not in it. The problem is that we get stuck stuck in, why is this happening to me, all the victim talk and all the poor me and all the wanting to have the kumbayas with our girlfriends to support us in our poor me state that we never ever begin to open up and see what's being available to us, right? COVID gave us a golden opportunity, right? I was talking about the Zoom example earlier, OK? Another thing that COVID did, what I found very— what I found just incredible was how it gave rise to the pandemic entrepreneurs.. In 2020, in the US alone, 4.4 million new entrepreneurs were birthed from COVID And according to the BBC, in 2021, over 5 million new millionaires were born during COVID in 2020. And this is like at the height, despite all the economic damage. Me as a business owner personally, I have been in business since 2008 for 14 years. I had my best economic year in 2020 and beyond post Post-COVID, it just keeps going up and up and up and up because I, like many other people, like my other colleagues, because we all have this mindset of it's an opportunity, right? We saw the change, we saw the ways to actually innovate our business, and we actually quadrupled our income. And that's what you actually have to do, but you can't be in that state. The opportunities cannot come to you if you're thinking about, "Why is this happening?" You're looking at what's happening with the governments and what they're not doing, and just like you're getting caught up in all of the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's like, no, there's a golden opportunity there. In fact, if you look at in the past during recessions and depressions, all these tech companies we actually have right now, they were all born from changes, from negative, from depressions, all the Airbnbs, the Facebook, Waze, the GPS system, right? We're really being, all those were all created during great catalysts of change, including great supposed negative change happenings. The next component about the framework is to actually, you have to divorce yourself from the narrative that actually change is hard. Overwhelmingly, we have this narrative that we're always saying to ourselves that change is actually hard. We view change as something that's completely very difficult and that is, it's something to be avoided at all costs, and we see that as a threat. And what happens is that when you're telling yourself something is actually hard, are you looking forward to it? Are you moving towards it? You probably are avoiding it, right? You're probably feeling, you're feeling very constricted. And you know, I can share with you, I actually had to go through this when I was actually in Paris. When I arrived in Paris, I didn't know how to say anything in French, right? And the overwhelming belief about French, is that French is very difficult, right? The whole country is saying how French is actually difficult. Even French people born in France, live in France their entire life, will tell you their whole language is completely difficult, right? And so I found myself forgetting all my personal and spiritual knowledge and was like, yeah, it's hard, it's hard, it's hard. And guess what? I resisted like a plague. I didn't want to look at it. I was telling myself, you know what, I work in English, I don't need it, da da da. And I would just The language never stuck. And I was like, wait, I gotta stop doing this, right? And I began to stop telling myself— and I divorced with the mantra that actually French is hard— and began lying to myself, really, and telling myself it was actually easy. I began telling myself it was actually a beautiful language, it was fun, it was sexy. That's preferred. I prefer like the French-speaking version because I was like, wow, you're badass, okay? You've got French, then you got English. You got Spanish and now you've got French. It's like, and I love the fact when I go back to Miami, I feel like, you know, go back and forth and speak the, you know, 3 different languages, right? But I haven't told myself anything that it was being hard. It was only at that point where my brain began to actually embrace me, actually learn the language. I began to actually want to study it, go to classes for it, and actually begin to stick. It didn't feel like this like foreign language that I could never possibly get. And to the point to now where when I go back to Miami, which I was there a couple of days ago, when people spoke to me in Spanish, I just couldn't respond in Spanish. Only French was actually coming out because now my brain now thinks in French, but it only began to happen when I start telling myself that it was actually hard because the truth of the matter is that nothing is really hard, right? I want you to ask yourself, whenever you're telling yourself that something is actually hard, is it really true? Is it really true that it's actually hard, or is it really a story that you're telling yourself, right? And if you were to tell yourself, if you were to drop that story that something is actually hard, is it possible that you actually be, you might create a different outcome for yourself, right? Even quantum physics has actually caught up with that and has given observer effect, right? It tells us that what causes a thing to be really depends upon the person who's actually looking at it, right? So whatever you're— who's looking at it, what you're looking at, however you're perceiving it to be, is what exactly is what you're experiencing it. So I want you to start to reframe your language around heart— I mean, around change, right? And instead of saying that it's actually difficult, to see it as an adventure. For me, that's how I see it. I see it as an opportunity Maybe it's the business law thing in me, I don't know, but I'm always looking at, okay, how can I make money out of this? How can I, how can I create something? And it's like, for me, any, whatever the change may be, I'm always looking at the positive first and foremost, and that's it. I want you to see it as like, as a pathway to success for you to actually not, not even living your best life, but if not from a personal level, but also just like a business level as well too. The next piece of it is that you also have to get comfortable with being very uncomfortable. Listen, I'm not going to lie to you. Change is really uncomfortable, right? The feeling of it is right. And it's only because it's like, it's really, it's where it's unfamiliar because our mindset, our mind is very, is always clinging to what we know. And so when we're feeling something that is very brand new, to us. It's just we're just not used to it, right? Well, here's what I find about being comfortable. It's really complacency. It's actually like living— it's like it's living like a very unlived life. It's like you're just— you'll just be existing, right? And you're not really like really engaged in life. And what I also found about the whole discomfort is that it's actually temporary. It's only because it's brand new. And the minute you actually make the— because it's unfamiliar to the mind, the minute you actually make the familiar, familiar, it then becomes habitual. So you're no longer like in a state like Azir, it's all brand new, right? The last piece of it is that your desire to actually to embrace change and to move forward in the new light has to actually be stronger than you wanting things to be the same or to go back where it was. Otherwise you're going to find yourself maybe redundant, you're going to find yourself like being stuck, being replaced, and you're going to find yourself like being lost. And not having a place as to where we're actually going. What I've also actually found is people say change is hard. I actually find staying the same is actually harder. It's actually worse. Exactly. It's actually worse, right? Yes. What's harder is being left behind. What's harder is being replaced. What's harder is like being lost, right? What's harder is like not finding yourself out of a job because you're not able to— you're just afraid of technology. It's like, no, like you can use it. As a tool with anything else. And so what I want you to understand as we're going forward is that right now the name of the game has changed, and the only way forward is for you to be agile, is for you to be innovative. That whether it's your personal life, your professional life, your spiritual life— it's like even for me now, the meditation I was doing like 10 years ago aren't working anymore. It doesn't work anymore because why? New frequencies. We're doing— we're in a brand new world, so we actually have innovate. The last thing that I want to share with you is this, that, you know, I said to you earlier, there are two words or two phrases I actually live by. The first was that the sky isn't even the limit with the viewpoint. The second is that, and it's the words of Alan Watts, and it goes like this: you're under no obligation to be the same person who you were 5 minutes ago. And I say this with you because if it weren't for me actually changing, if it wasn't for me actually coming down here or actually following the signs and actually changing my entire life, my fundamentals of everything. I literally would not be here at Cambridge University. Like, what am I doing here? I was like, I was in Miami like 10 years ago, minding my business, you know. It's like, here I am. I follow signs and I follow the change, and here I am coming. I'm connecting with each and every one of you because it's so, so important. Because the minute you do it, like, an entire world opens up for you that you can never ever imagine. You can never ever expect whatsoever. And so the name of the game is actually change, not only to be sustainable, it's actually to thrive. Thank you.

Next, I would like to call up and recognize the fashionable and passionate Wani Iris Manly, Esquire, feminine speaker. Hello, I'm speaking to Wani Iris Manly Iris Manly today from the Global Research Conference 2023. She's come all the way from France, and I'd like to talk to her about how she's found the day. What's the most valuable thing that you've come out of the conference today learning?

My goodness, for me, I believe it's just like women's empowerment. I just— it's the more of like the voices of women actually that's being shared here today. I feel so inspired by everyone's journey, but what they've been doing, like what they've got, how— what they've done to actually get here. And it's just been like really uplifting.

Absolutely. And how do you think that you'll apply what you've learned today in the future?

You know what, for me, I think it's going to be more of connecting with more of these people because I find myself, I tend to work alone a lot and just like I can get there quicker. And I think for me it's just more of actually like connecting with more people, more peers, and actually, um, collaborate or collaborate with some of the women here today.

So what are your key takeaways from this conference?

Well, I was just so blown away by all the ladies here. And you know, for me it was just more about leveling up to a scale of really excellence. You know, I was just so blown away with how everybody was just so decorated, just so passionate about what the work they were just offering. And I learned so much. I mean, from every single talk, from every single woman, I felt more intelligent, I felt more open, I felt more expanded, and I felt more motivated to actually do better, to be better, and to actually learn, to actually give more. Thank you.