Transcriber: Van Thao Reviewer: Anna Sobota
Hello, everyone.
It's such an honor and a privilege to be able to speak in front of you all today.
Like I was just introduced,
my name is Jordan Turner,
and I’m a sophomore here, at Austin Peay State University,
studying education.
This is my broken flowerpot.
Truthfully, when I saw the email that TEDx was having an event here on campus,
I was super excited
because it’s always been one of my dreams to give my own TED talk.
But I was a little nervous
because while I was picking out the topic to do my demo video over,
if you guys didn’t know, we had to submit a demo video where they were like,
“Okay, yeah, that’s that’s pretty good.
We’ll let you come and give a talk.”
So I had a really hard time picking a topic.
So what I did, was I typed TED in YouTube
and then several topics that I wanted to speak over.
But I soon found out that a lot of the topics
that I wanted to talk about had already been taken.
So I got really discouraged and I was like,
“Well, if my topic’s already been taken,
I guess I need to find a new one or I can’t do TED.”
So I went to sleep that night very discouraged, as you can imagine.
But I woke up the next morning and I was really pumped and motivated
to find a topic that I was passionate about to talk about
here with you guys today.
So I went back and forth with myself wondering,
is my demo video going to be good enough?
Should I just not submit one at all?
Because I had a huge fear of failure that I was going to be rejected.
So as you guys can tell, submitted my demo video and it got accepted.
But how did I go through that process and the hardship that came with it?
I’ve gone through a lot of hardships in my life
and I developed a really intense fear of failing
because through my entire elementary school career, I was severely bullied.
Whether it was about how I looked or how I presented myself
or my way or academics, I was constantly being put down.
And that really manifested this huge fear within myself
that I was never going to amount to anything.
It was so bad that even some of my teachers told me that
I was not good enough.
Maybe you don’t think you have that fear of failure,
but do you ever catch yourself comparing yourself to others
or saying that you're not good enough yourself?
I think a really big reason as to why the fear of failure manifests
is because of that self comparison,
and that’s exactly how it started for me.
I found myself often comparing myself to my peers saying,
“I’m not as thin as you, therefore I’m not good enough,
I’m not worthy.
Or I’m not as smart as you or as pretty as you.”
People often won’t admit these thoughts that we have
because we don't want to show our feelings on our sleeve.
But I guarantee that every single person in this room
has at least experienced one of those thoughts a few times, right?
Yeah, it happens, guys.
But as cliché as it may sound,
you are you,
and that’s the best you, you can be.
It’s a mouthful, but
hyper focusing on someone else and their accomplishments or successes or beauty
or talents is only going to make you more miserable
and insecure about you and your self-worth.
One can make self-improvements to better themselves,
but one thing that we need to focus on
is that we don’t make improvements to be better than someone else.
The only person that we need to be better than is the person we were yesterday.
So I want to let you guys know that you were good enough and loved
and more capable than you may realize.
I wish I had come to this realization before I hit middle school.
Because of all the bullying that I endured,
I had a lot of self-loathing and self-hatred,
and due to that, I dug myself a grave.
I dug myself a grave to lie in because I was too afraid to dig out.
I thought that even if I attempted, I was going to fail.
But I'm standing in front of you guys right now,
and I couldn't be more happier about this experience.
And I'm very thankful that I decided to ignore my inner critic.
And that’s my advice to you all:
ignore your inner critic.
Because if I would have kept that mindset,
there's no telling where I would be today.
Would I have even been as successful as I am?
Would I be a sophomore in college?
Would I be able to fulfill the leadership roles that I do on campus?
I don't think so.
So work harder every day to become the best version of yourself for you.
Some of you may be struggling right now, and that's okay.
You may have dug yourself a grave to lie in and you don't know how to get out.
But start with this:
manifest positive thoughts and compliment yourself.
It is so hard to give yourself a compliment,
but it is so easy to critique every single little thing you do wrong.
Why is that?
It’s because of our inner critic.
So tell yourself, “I’m brilliant,”
“I look good today.”
Seriously.
But most importantly, what you need to do is not hold yourself back.
Do not hold yourself back.
Don’t let that fear of failure consume you
and drive you off the path of fulfilling
what you truly want to do in life
because you are capable of doing so much more than you realize.
The reality is we all fail, right?
We all fail.
We fail every day, maybe.
But the thing about failures is that it’s actually a learning experience.
It’s not our failures what define us.
It’s our actions afterwards.
So if you use it as a learning experience,
you’ll find that you’ll be more successful.
And victories wouldn’t mean as much if we won all the time.
I think the Tennessee Titans know that, right?
No hate on them but and I’m from Tennessee so that’s saying something.
But in all reality,
if you want all the time in every single challenge you faced,
it was a victory,
you wouldn’t have any room for growth.
And speaking of growth,
you guys heard me mention my little broken flowerpot earlier.
It looks broken,
it looks busted,
but it is fully capable of fulfilling its purpose, right?
It absolutely is.
And you can see by the beautiful flower that's inside of it.
Without challenges and without failure,
us ourselves wouldn’t be able to blossom and bloom and grow.
Thank you guys so much for listening, yeah, my name is Jordan Turner.