Failure is knowledge, knowledge is success | Tim Gibson | TEDxGriffithUniversity

we live in a world where popular culture celebrities public speakers say that if you chase your dreams you will achieve them this message of chase your dreams and you will 100% get there is contextualized with this guarantee that you will get there what it doesn't mention is failure failure being an absolute component of your path to success what it doesn't mention is that conditions can sometimes apply conditions like what if you've got a personal impediment what if there's a policy standing in your way have a think for a minute about what you wanted to be when you were four years old maybe it was a firefighter maybe a business person maybe a doctor now think about when you were 17 18 even 20 years old do those two passions align when you were those two ages if so it's likely that that's all you ever wanted to do that's all you ever wanted to be for me there was only one thing I wanted to do in my whole life since I can be about this higher thing and that was to fly the Australian Defence Force that was my only dream all I wanted to do was sit in the cockpit of an f-18 and fly for my country so I bet I said about a path to achieve that goal I bought a lot of books magazines read on the internet when I was really young I ended up getting my pilot's license before I could drive a car and my instructor my flight instructor I'll never forget what he said to me said Tim if you want to achieve your goals remember the seven P's prior preparation and planning prevents piss-poor performance fair enough so I remember that my path I'm on I went I did all the analysis all of the study from the dynamic equations of speed distance and time right through to anti-g straining manoeuvres taught to me by fighter pilots in the Air Force and then I got to being a naive 17 year old I've walked up to the recruiting office in Brisbane I've said here's my application corporal the Corp was look me up and down he's gone you've got glasses don't even bother and again as a naive 17 year old I thought well that's gospel I like I guess I can't do that so walked out of that office so I found a business degree to study and I made a living that way but a few years later I recognize that that that wasn't me I need to find a way to attack this I need to find a way where I can achieve my goal when I can achieve my one true dream so I thought what is stopping me now these things are my face they make me look incredibly intelligent but they are not conducive to being in the cockpit of one of them so I found this ophthalmologist an eye specialist and he was more passionate about aviation in a military environment than I was I couldn't believe I met this guy he was saying Tim are you the f-18 and the f-111 does this and I went once took a ride on it and a nearly broom I blew my socks off and wow he was a great guy and I thought hey this is the person I need to support me and he said you can get a surgical option it's available to you it's called ICL it's basically where they shove this contact lens into your eye whilst you're wide awake and presto you can see I'll remove that in case you've had a big lunch and I thought oh great I can get that I can't get laser because my eyes are high-profit they're long sighted and unfortunately just outside the sphere and lasers currently approved but I can get this ICL surgery which is not currently approved and he said Tim if you make it through to the end I'll endorse you I'll sign off that way before you and hopefully the defense will agree with me I thought brilliant this is this is awesome here we go so I compiled all the research I research 16 different medical peer-reviewed journal articles on that ICL is better in the longer term in 8 10 year and 11 year studies then Laser is in efficacy and safety and all these these key components I became an honorary optometrist I thought well this is pretty cool and so I took it to the recruiting office and I went through all the processes the you session the GAM tests the wombat testing pilot specialized testing so I can do views asking me some really funky questions I'm allowed to speak about and I go to a point where they say Tim go see the ophthalmologist I thought brilliant so I walk on over I walk into the office and I said I'm here to see you and that doctor ah school the other week and she goes at him he retired two weeks ago I thought well okay um well I've got to see a defense approved one so who else oh you can see such and such oh great Road and my thousand dollars went to five minutes of his time I'm passionate not not quite as passionate as the previous ophthalmologist and I get to a point about six weeks later or I've got this this letter in the mail and it says D mr. Gibson thank you so much for your application you've been a successful brother but good luck in your chosen civilian career okay I've got to fight this some more so then I went to the US Air Force I went to the Royal Singapore Air Force the US Army as well and I got their leading ophthalmologist to endorse maplocation they wrote to me and they wrote to the the studies that I I selected it as part of the the program for ICL and I said yeah you're absolutely right here's our letter of endorsement and they're currently using it in the US Army so I went back with that and I went to the chief chief medical officer for the Defence Force and they said no so then I went to the chief recruiting and they said no and then I went to the chief of the Air Force the chief of the Defence Force the Minister for defense and they all said no so what do you do I was quite frustrated I got that last letter I thought well there's going to be something else so I just sat down the couch and I don't watch a lot of television but I'll sit on this couch going what do I do and this ad comes on the TV and it says do you want to go to space and I said yes I do what am I going to do and it was a competition there was a complete luck component in being selected as one of four Australians to go over to NASA to go on a shortened space program selection program Ethel has no way I'll get this anyway six months later I'm at NASA with four were three other Australians and all of that was luck would you believe nothing about my history that was all luck well I was about to embark on was all a skill based assessment to see if I could actually put up with going into space and it was run by none other none other than Buzz Aldrin the second man on the moon so we did some really cool stuff we did Theory examinations on physics Aeronautics and dynamic theory we went all the way through a military assault course I love cement bags and mountains and our muds quite enjoyable it's good for the skin as well I find out and we did a few other things as well but it got to the point where the really cool stuff happened one of those things was a centrifuge similar to this thing here it's where you spin around and around and around and around you keep spinning and from the requirement is to hold 3.5 to 4 g-forces that's its gravitational loading so if you weigh 100 kilos you instantly weigh 400 4 G's and there's no way I would have passed this test if I didn't pick up on a failure that I had with the Air Force the anti jeje straining maneuver they've taught me to withstand G and so I was able to pass that test another really cool thing is the Vomit Comet if you think about a plane that can take you between here and Sydney remove all of the seeds put a few pads in it and as the plane raises up to new vertical that 60 degrees nose-high attitude it then pushes over and for those 30 seconds you are weightless water takes a perfectly spherical droplet scrambled eggs look really different when they're coming from someone else coming close to you as well hence the name but the one cool thing for me was something I thought unachievable it was as close to my dream as I could possibly get it was the flight test they paired me up with none other than the X commander of the Top Gun aggressive squadron in the US Air Force his call sign was Bluto and he taught me everything from formation flying he let me take the stick formation you're six feet away from your own gravesite when you're in formation we did snap haiji turn zero-g pushovers inversions everything you can imagine is part of that flight and it was this as if I was tasting my dream I was almost there I was this was what I was going to do this was part of me and I learned a lot from that one man I find myself at the end of the program 105 other people from around the world this is from 2 million entrants all the way down through a skill based assessment and I've got all these nose in my history so I've said to myself there's no way I'm going to take this out there's no way just be grateful for what I've done and Buzz Aldrin comes up to me and says Tim yes you can go to space you've passed this course you're going to space through all the nose I got previously I'm in front of a guy that I actually respect and he's told me yes I'm a blubbering mess at this stage I'm asking him already got his tie from he said the gift shop it's pretty cool now I'm not standing in front of you saying I've achieved my dream I haven't I'm not where I want to be my one true dream was to fly for the Australian Defence Force and I'm not there but it doesn't mean that I'm not ecstatic about where I am right now you see all the fellas that I got from the Air Force all of those different points of failure they gave me knowledge and that knowledge read success in somewhere that I thought absolutely not possible not in a million years regardless of any personal impediment regardless of any policy on the path to your dream the path that you select success can be bred in a place you could think that is absolutely not possible and it might not happen for years decades to come failure is an intricate part of chasing your dream failure will happen to you failure gives you that knowledge that you need to conquer and become successful in or in my case around your dream failure is knowledge and knowledge is success I'm Tim Gibson thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 184,204

Keywords: TEDx, ted x, tedx talk, ted talk, ted, tedx talks, tedx, ted talks

Id: pwnWFNoe7Pw

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2015