Translator: Vitória Smania Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I brought a good luck charm with me.
"Rotary Clubs of Bath, Youth Speaks Competition,
Best Speaker, 2003."
(Laughter)(Applause)
I was 12 years old when I won this.
So if I mess up today's talk, know that I did a good job once.
OK. I'm just going to put that down there.
I'm honestly kind of worried about giving my talk today
because we've heard so many inspiring talks here at TEDx@Bath Youth.
I guess I decided that I wanted to be uninspiring for a change
and potentially bum you out.
We've heard a lot about following your dreams today,
and the title of my talk is not "Fun Science,"
it's "Unfollowing your dreams."
And I want to make clear, I guess, that it isn't necessarily a bad thing,
and I'm not going against the idea of following your dreams in the first place,
I just want to share with you an alternate perspective.
So, my generation, our generation, maybe not your generation, (Laughter)
is taught the following kind of narrative of success.
It's have a dream, follow that dream,
achieve that dream, achieve happiness and fulfilment.
And I like that's the kind of narrative we're given.
I think it's better than what came before it.
I think the equivalent of "Follow your dream"
probably used to be "Get a real job."
So I like that ours is definitely a bit nicer,
but I do also think that it has some flaws.
So I want to share with you some of the flaws that I found in it
through trying to follow my own dreams.
The first thing is that dreams can be unrealistically positive.
This is kind of the nature of dreaming, I think,
is you are imagining yourself in a scenario that you have never been in.
So you're thinking about all of the positive aspects of that.
I want to be clear that when I mention the word "unrealistic,"
I actually really don't think that dreams are unrealistic to achieve at all.
That very much kind of depends on the dream.
If you want to be the next Steven Spielberg,
or you wanted to be a vet, those are both perfectly valid dreams,
one is definitely more achievable than the other.
What I mean is that when we imagine ourselves, say,
you want to be the next Spielberg,
when you dream about that scenario, you might be thinking,
"What will it be like for me to be able to share my stories with millions,
what will it be like to be able to work with famous talented actors
or win awards?"
but nobody dreams about what it will be like to lose an award,
get nominated but not win, or not get nominated at all,
or be able to work with a talented actor who's incredibly volatile,
and you don't have a good relationship with them at all,
or work with really bad actors.
Or what it would be like to face all of the hardships
that face so many people trying to get into filmmaking,
resulting in not being able to tell their stories at all
or having them watered down.
These aren't the things that we dream about,
but they are the realities of the situations that we want to be in.
And as a result, what happens is that, inevitably,
and I want to say this as well,
even when you do fact those things into your mind when you're dreaming,
you can ultimately be in a situation where you say,
"Well, I know that there are downsides to this thing that I want to achieve,
but it is my dream.
I can do it because I can do anything."
But what happens is that even if you do achieve your dreams,
ultimately, it never results in being as good as you had dreamed it.
Because how can a dream that you have ever live up to the reality?
Now, I never dreamed to be doing the job that I have today.
I am a video blogger.
For those of you who don't know,
this is someone who basically kind of talks to a camera
and uploads the result to the internet.
I've been doing this for ten years,
it's been the only job I've ever had,
and it is a proper job as well,
I just want to put that out there, definitely.
But I never dreamed I'd be in this position,
because this position didn't exist
when I was dreaming of what I wanted to be.
And that is, I think, another flaw that comes with focusing on having a dream
is that often you're picking from things that already exist,
that are already available to you.
And that could be minimizing.
That can focus you on something, say,
there might be people in the audience today that dream of being a video blogger,
but what if there is a different possible career that you could be following
that simply doesn't exist yet, but you're not going to focus on that,
because you can't think of it, because it doesn't exist.
Eventually, I did decide that it was time for me to have a dream.
I thought,"OK, this is what you're supposed to do."
I'd been making video blogs for many years already,
it was already my full time job.
But I thought, "Well,
I haven't thought what my dream is yet, I need to pick one,
I need to pick one thing that I focus on for the rest of my life."
And so I decided that I was going to be a filmmaker.
That was going to be my new focus.
That was my dream.
And I gave it a good go as well, definitely.
I had many options, you know, I had many interests:
I loved music, I loved performing, I loved all art, really.
But for whatever reason,
I felt like I needed to pick one thing and focus just on that.
And I think, in hindsight,
the reason that I even picked filmmaking in the first place
is because it felt like a more legitimate version of the thing I was already doing.
And I think this, in the same way as how picking from what's available
can be limiting to you when you dream,
another thing that can be limiting is falling into the trap of legitimacy.
I remember that I did a panel a few years ago
where I was introduced as video blogger and Radio 1 presenter,
both of those put on the same level
even though I'd been video blogging for about eight years at that point,
I had made it my full time job, and I'd hosted on Radio 1 twice
and not earned very much money from it,
and the shows hadn't been particularly successful.
But they are the same level.
Or at least they were perceived to be the same level simply because, well,
everybody sees being a Radio 1 presenter as this cool big thing
whereas a video blogger, that's new, less important, that's less legitimate.
I remember getting texts and tweets from people saying, "You've made it!
Because you're on Radio 1."
And to me, I was like: "Well, no, I've actually kind of already made it."
But I fell into that trap all the same.
I decided "I want to be a filmmaker" because that feels much more legitimate
than what I am already doing.
And I think that can be limiting too.
Now obviously, there are people exist
who have managed to pick the right dream for them.
And we know those people exist because those are the people who say,
"Follow your dreams."
Because for them, they've picked a dream, they've followed it, they've achieved it,
and that's been the correct dream for them and who they are,
and so that path is very clear to them, and so they say, "Follow that path."
And I think the reason I wanted to come up here
and talk about unfollowing your dreams
is because that path is simply not for everyone,
and I personally don't think that that's a problem.
And I don't want to find people who are disappointed
because they've tried to follow their dream so desperately
and found out that it doesn't fit for them personally.
Eventually, I said, "OK, I'm going to be a filmmaker."
I made a number of different short films, all of which went on my YouTube channel.
I really enjoyed the process, I got a lot out of it.
I came out of it thinking, "This is what I want to do. It feels -
You know, I'm living my dream."
And then, what happened is I was approached by a publisher.
I'm in a very fortunate position recently,
lots of video bloggers, like myself, have been approached by publishers
to write a book.
And I thought, "Well, I mean, that sounds nice, but it's not my dream,
you know, it's not what I want to be spending my time doing.
I want to focus just on this one thing, this one ambition that I have."
And so I almost decided not to do it at all.
But for whatever reason, I said, "OK,
I'll have a go, I'll write a book, why not?"
And I decided to write a book called "Fun Science."
This was based on a series of YouTube videos
that I do on my YouTube channel by the same name,
trying to kind of communicate science
to people who aren't necessarily science fans yet.
I picked "Fun Science" -
That was kind of my first idea for a book as well,
it felt like it would go well, there is a lot science,
it feels like I could have a lot to pick from to make a book.
And so, I went for it. Fairly arbitrarily.
The process took about a year and a half, all said and done, I want to say,
which is a lot of time to take away directly from a dream that you have
and put it into something else.
But by the time I had finished working on that book,
by the time I'd gone through that process,
I knew in my heart that I wanted to be a writer,
and that was the thing I wanted to focus on.
It's difficult to explain,
but I know that when I compare how I felt about filmmaking
to how I felt having written that book,
I was just so much more comfortable.
I had accepted who I actually was.
I think a big thing, a big thing that is hard to talk about
is choosing a dream and ambition
that is simply not suitable for who you actually are today.
And a lot of the time, you end up picking a dream
based on who you think you will be.
I have a quote, actually, from one of my friends on YouTube,
he is a video blogger too, Mr. Hank Green.
This is a tweet that he posted recently:
"You have no obligation to your former self.
They are dumber than you, and they don't exist."
Just let that sink in for a moment.
You might find yourself in a position
where you've been following a dream that you had years ago
and then realize that you, two years ago, I mean, even you yesterday,
didn't really know who you were going to be today.
They can have some idea,
but who knows better about who you are today than who you are right now?
You shouldn't let your past self
be the person who makes choices for you today.
Make those choices today.
Now, I want to be clear, when I talk about unfollowing your dreams
it can seem flat, you know, it seems horrible, it feels like failure,
but it isn't failure,
it isn't giving in, or settling for less.
I personally think that unfollowing your dreams can be progress.
And let's get this clear as well,
I do think you should use your dreams as a guide.
I do love dreams.
I think, where do your dreams come from?
They come from your ambitions, your interests, your passions.
If you're going to follow any type of compass on your journey through life,
that's got to be the one you follow.
But you have to be able to know that it isn't the one path for you necessarily.
If you're going to dream, you should dream smart;
I think that's an important thing to do.
You want to make sure that you don't give in to these ideas
of romanticising your dreams
or thinking that maybe you need to focus on something legitimate
or limiting yourself.
Because although dreaming sounds like something that's big and endless,
I don't think it is that, not all the time,
I think it can limit what you feel like you're capable of.
Personally, I still dream.
I still dream now of being a writer
even though I've gone through this process of writing the book.
I think for a lot of people who had this ambition to write,
finding yourself at the other end and being like "I'm a published author"
feels like the end goal.
But for me, it's still a dream that I hold dear.
I still want to keep writing,
writing books, writing screenplays, whatever it might be.
But I also know to say to myself
that that might not be the dream that I want to have tomorrow,
because I don't know who I going to be tomorrow.
And personally, I don't think that that is failure,
I think that's progress.
Thank you.
(Applause)