Discovering Self and Cultivating Confidence | Nate Dallas | TEDxTallahassee

[Applause] you can all relax a little bit because I don't have anything really profound or challenging or difficult that you have to do after this talk it's actually going to be really easy but I want to tell you a story today it's a story I know well probably the only story that I know well and that's because it's mine it's not really about me I'm a character in it it's a little bit about you but it's mostly about somebody that you love so I guess I want to start in middle school as you can tell from my accent I'm French Canadian raised in Wisconsin and when I was 12 I went to my mom and I asked her for something ridiculous I asked her if I could spend $200 of money I had earned on my own as a young entrepreneur I wanted to buy a specific list of items I needed a Melting Pot three l pounds of lead some wire couple colors of silicone rubber couple shades of paint and a few tools I wasn't interested in making bombs I wanted to make fishing lures I love to fish always have but in my crazy little brain I really thought that I had some ideas and that I could make fishing lures that were better than I can buy the store crazy as a 12-year-old to think something so obnoxious but I learned some things about fishing and I really thought I could do it and instead of my mom saying little boys don't play with molten lead and sharp objects you're probably going to permanently disfigure yourself instead she gave me this and I started making fishing lures and they worked really well so I started giving them to my friends who then shared them with their dads and then people started buying them and amateurs and professionals started using these things that I made with my own hands winning fishing tournaments and winning thousands of dollars so as a young entrepreneur the next thing I do of course retail so as a 12-year-old I started stocking fishing stores with stuff I was making after school pretty cool learned a lot about myself and a lot about life well like most things in my life and you're going to see as this story progresses I kind of go turbo for a little while and then I want to do something else so after about two years of that I wanted to do something else I was watching TV and I saw a man Sprint across the screen go 20 ft in the air clear a crossbar he did it on a pole that was an inch and a half wide and it blew my freaking mind and I said I have to do that so I went to my math teacher at school who was also the track coach and I asked him for something ridiculous I said Coach B I want to be the pole vulture for the track team he kind of snickered and he knew it was ridiculous because we didn't have any PO vter on the track team we' never had po vs on the track team there wasn't a single person at school knew how to teach her coach PV VA and we didn't have a mat to practice on and instead of saying this is foolish you're probably going to permanently disfigure yourself he gave me this and he said there's an old pole in the Fieldhouse I don't know where it came from it's been here ever since I got a job here you can use it so I went to the Fieldhouse blew the dust off and I saw where somebody had etched on it 160 lb and I knew that meant it was for somebody who weighed 160 lbs I've never weighed 160 lbs at that time I weighed about 116 pounds if I had on three pairs of clothes and they were all wet but he said if you can make it to the region meet by the end of the year on that poll we'll get the one you need he bought that pole the next year then he said if you make it in place in the state meat we'll get you a mat he bought that mat the next year after he got the mat he said hey dude I got to tell you something I really need you to train two other kids how to do this because if the school founds out I spent four grand on you I'm in trouble so fast forward a few more years and a few more ridiculous projects some of which were real successes and some of which I fell on my face and totally bombed that's okay I graduate high school and move on to college and I started out at one school and learned how to study for the first time I was always the kid who got in trouble for talking for not paying attention for not staying in your seat for being disruptive John just told me that was okay I heard that and so I learned how to study for the first time and that was because I could start choosing what I wanted to learn so made the whatever President's List or honor roll whatever it was something great that first year and started looking like a real student and I decided to transfer colleges not to puru pursue academic Excellence but to chase a young woman who I had fallen in love with some of you Snickers she's sitting right there we've been married 13 years and have four boys but when I got to that school I had a real problem because now it was time to pick a major and to broadcast to the world what do you want to do with your life that's a problem because I didn't know so I decided I wanted to keep my options open I talked to the guidance counselor and she said well you got to pick something and I said well I I think I want to do a lot of things but one of the options I want to keep open is the possibility of being a dentist I don't have a love for teeth I don't have an affinity for oral bacteria but there was one man in my life greatest man in my life my dad and that's what what he did I said let's at least keep that option open CU I know that works he made it to all my baseball games did all the family stuff that looks good the guidance his counselor said okay great pre- Dental major you need to be biology or chemistry I said whoa whoa whoa whoa I hate biology and I hate chemistry I'm a businessman I'm an entrepreneur she said well you're going to have to have so many classes that You' got to be one of those anyway and I said no I'll be a business major I'll take all the other stuff I need on the side to get into dental school she said you're going to have to have a science minor this is not an easy thing you're going to have to go every summer blah blah blah and I said okay just sign me up she gave me this I started classes the plan was beautiful I could do what I wanted to do and what I needed to do but see I parked on this side side of campus and over here was the business and the chemistry and the biology building but the thing I hadn't taken into account that almost messed up the whole plan was right in the middle of where I parked and where I went every day was the art department so on my walk every day I would hear this amazing noise the Roar of furnaces burning 2200 de propane I would hear metal clanking student yelling and I'd peek in to the glass blowing Studio students dripping sweat making gorgeous things on the end of a 4 foot long pole and they couldn't even touch it with their own hands and I knew I had to do it it obsessed me it's all I could think about I stopped in to talk to the professor and said I want to take this class I found a very Gruff very intimidating man who used words that I had never heard in my life and he let me know that the class was for art majors I said no problem man I'll change my major he said no I mean real art majors and even if you were a real art major there's a two-year waiting list for this class I told him I understood and I went on to my marketing class I stopped by that studio no less than 40 times that semester just to hang out you know what happened we became friends I asked questions that let Ralph Harvey the professor know that I was obsessed and that I was studying that I was listening he stopped me at the end of the semester and he said Nate I want to give you something there it is [Laughter] again he said next semester starts in two weeks and you're in the class PS I really need you to be good because a lot of Art majors are going to hate you if you aren't so now I'm a student I'm a business major with a science minor I'm now making a living out of the art Department selling in high-end art galleries art shows doing commissions for restaurants and hotel chains it's working and I get to be a businessman and an artist I had two real jobs one of which was a UPS store because I needed the discount packing materials to be able to run my online business shipping Goods the other was I was the manager of a little health club because I needed the free membership because I had also in my spare time become a competitive powerlifter I was a officer in two student organizations I was was everywhere doing everything and it felt great my scholarship was running out because I had taken way too many classes I didn't want to pay for college because it's expensive so I managed to negotiate being the editor of the school paper and Reviving it it had been dead for two years in exchange for another full ride scholarship so we did that why do I tell you all this stuff it's not boasting in my life I've realize now fast forward several years several businesses several children all the stuff I've realized when I'm not acting that way I'm really unhappy when I'm not in my zone I'm unfulfilled and and that's because the person that I am is busy and creative and I like to get my hands on stuff I'm a doer if all I did were teeth all day I would go crazy and that's kind of what I want to talk about with all of this is that everybody has a certain design we all have these things these things that pull us some some of them are good some of them are bad you can discern on your own but we must do them half of our adult population is dissatisfied with their own life and I have a theory on that it's because they're not living to their design and their potential and if you know you're wasting you feel bad about it and then you get angry you think geneveve has a pull for women she can't not do that she must do that I believe that a higher power designs us some of you may not agree and that's fine but that's good for me to believe because then I feel obligated to be good at so if figuring out who we are and what our design is matters if we need to learn how do we do that there's a million ways to learn right you can read a book you can watch Ted Talks you can go to a seminar but what's the best way to learn we all know experience I heard of a study not too long ago they were uh interviewing or or or surveying uh surgical residents who were just about to be released to the world to start performing surgery and they asked the residents would you rather be worked on by a new graduate resident someone just like you or someone who's been practicing 15 years that's intoxicated I don't know what the real stats are like 87.4% of stats are made up on the spot but it was like 90% of them said I want the drunk lady to do me because experience matters so if there's value in discovering self if we have to learn where that is if we know experience is the best way to get there then what do we have to do now see there's this little voice that sits on your shoulder called resistance and that little voice is always saying you shouldn't be doing that you're not smart enough to do not you're not qualified to do that what you what's he going to think Steven pressfield in an awesome book called uh the war of art he takes it a step further and he says resistance is not just a common stumbling block that we all have and something we have to get over it's actually evil it's not a spiritual book but he defines it as evil because it actually strips you of who you are and prevents you from being who you should be which I agree with so how do we defeat resist resistance that's where this comes in I know you want to know what's in here and I'm going to show you I've had the privilege of several people giving me this in my life and that very gesture is what made me discover who I am and make me be useful for the world this is it this is what you need isn't it anybody do you need this I would love to be able to give it to you but it's really cheap coming from me I'm a nobody some of you will still take today and use it because this is the only way to learn we have to start and the experience has to begin that's the only way but when I said at the beginning this isn't necessarily about you it's about somebody you love somebody your life need you to give them this so they can figure out who they are can you tell I'm serious I joke because I'm uncomfortable this is serious stuff so I want to commission you with a challenge and that is to take it if you can from somebody like me and use it yourself but beyond that give it over and over and over to the people around you that are crying out to you asking for it thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 49,958

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Achievement, Curiosity, Failure, Purpose

Id: 6Xu5-vHcgBI

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2015