TAKING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED | Aaron Kyro | TEDxFHKufstein

[Applause] my name is Aaron Cairo I'm a professional skateboarder from the San Francisco Bay Area and today I'm going to talk to you about passion so as you can see my passion is skateboarding that's pretty obvious and I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you the whole story okay set that down before we get into this I really wanted to define passion what is that what is this thing called passion how do we figure that out how do we find out what it is so the oxford dictionary defines this as an intense desire or enthusiasm for something or a strong and barely controllable emotion think about that for a minute a strong and barely controllable emotion I like to define it as the thing that you would do if you could do anything what if money and time were not a problem what would you spend your time doing what would make you wake up in the morning everyday and go this is incredible that is the thing that is passion and that that is what has driven me it has driven me very far it has driven me to do many crazy and wild things as you saw in that video yeah you might be a little crazy to do some of those things so I'm gonna give you my entire life story starting from the very beginning which is that haircut there's me right on the right that incredible haircut right there so when I was six years old I was in a car driving down the street and I saw these three skateboarders and they were they were going and they turned into an alley and I don't know what it was about that it was the it was the most simple thing but I have this very distinct memory of deciding right then and there that is cool and that is what I'm going to do it's kind of funny I wouldn't have at six years old been like that is my passion but in a way I kind of was I think there's something very very powerful about that initial impulse to decide to do something it's a very interesting thing and I think a lot of times it happens when you're when you're very young you know you decide I want to be a fireman I want to be a dinosaur you know we could use some more dinosaurs right so there's there's this kind of funny thing that I'll tell you about in my school growing up in this very small town of Red Lodge Montana this quote was on the wall I think this quote is on the wall in many schools is it really famous quote two roads diverged in a wood and I I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference so in this small town of Red Lodge Montana there was a very exact path that you were supposed to follow right you go to school you are part of the basketball team and you are a part of band and Here I am I you know decided I'm gonna be a skateboarder and I got this skateboard video and I would literally watch it four times a day every day and skateboard many hours every day so you could kind of you could kind of get the sense but I always think it's so interesting because this quote is on the wall of the school so somebody decided this is a smart thing let's put this quote up and the kids should look at this and maybe they should use that and apply it to their life write something that you would think of but it's kind of funny when you when you tell your teacher who's very geared towards like you should play basketball and you should do these team sports which is fine there's nothing wrong with that but it's an interesting thing when you tell them I'm gonna be a skateboarder you know and they look at you like you're nuts or like what what are you doing so some very distinct advices that I got my band teacher he said if you keep riding that skateboard you're gonna make nothing of your life you're gonna be a nobody and you'll end up being a total loser I was like okay maybe you know you start you start to get these doubts right the funny thing is like did those doubts come from you did they come from other people because I had that very distinct like that's what I'm gonna do and then the basketball coach said the same thing if you keep riding that skateboard man you're gonna make nothing of your entire life but it's yeah you go back to this two roads diverged and it would I took the one less traveled by I kind of think the less traveled road is the the road of passion and I think it's a very interesting thing because I talked to a lot of people tons of people and I asked them what do you do in your life and they say various things a baker or whatever it is right and I say okay is that what you really really really want to do is that what you wake up in the morning and you go today's gonna be awesome it's going to be the best day and I'm gonna do everything that I want and they go no and I say well okay what is it that you would want to do and they say well I've always wanted to be a writer you know and my response is right you should be a writer that's what you should do right interesting interesting world so okay so I had these these times in my life where I hid these things and you got to kind of get the context here like I'm starting to go I love skateboarding that's what I'll do but all of life is sort of telling me don't do that you're gonna be a loser it's not going to work out etc so I continued skateboarding this is sort of me jumping over the hurdles of people telling me not to write I graduated high school with very good grades I had a full ride scholarship to any school in Montana and I just and I told my dad if I don't go to Vancouver British Columbia to go to school cuz they have like really good skateboard spots there I'm not gonna go to school at all right and so I throw away the scholarship and I went to Vancouver British Columbia spent a lot of time skateboarding I still got good grades you know I was I was good at school I could study and I could I could do that and it was really good but after a year of of University I I thought to myself if I don't go all in on this passion I don't think I will ever forgive myself for that you know I don't think I'll ever let that go and what would I do if I got a career in film which was this secondary was the plan B right plan a is become a skateboarder and Plan B was if that doesn't work out you're into film because you like skateboard videos so you could do film right so I was taking film but you see it was the secondary goal and I thought if I don't go all-in on this I just won't I don't know if I grow old am I gonna look back and always regret that I could not could not do that so after one year of university I dropped out and I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where I skateboarded harder than I had ever ever skateboarded in my entire life like to say that I gave everything is a drastic understatement I literally gave it everything I had to work to make money I worked at these jobs that I hated I worked at KB Toys and no matter what the person bought you had to ask them do you want batteries with that and they would usually say no a bouncy ball doesn't require batteries and you'd say well I'm sorry I have to ask that you know but again it's kind of a funny thing because you work these jobs to sort of pay for your passion or put that off to the side right so I'm in San Francisco I'm working so hard on my skateboarding I'm doing really good I'm skateboarding better than I ever have in my entire life and I pick up some incredible sponsors in the in the world of skateboarding the way that you make it a career is you get sponsors and then they pay for you to do things this is this is how the industry works right so I get some really good ones and I think wow this is it I have a very clear path I'm going to be a professional skateboarder my life goals are really coming together at this point and then I walk into my sponsor to to get my boards I pick up these free boards and the guy says you know there's been some budget cuts you're off the team this was like more than I could deal with right having the teacher tell me that you're going to be a loser is one thing but losing all of your sponsors overnight was like devastating I was done I was like this is the end of the road this is the end of my passionate push but if I didn't have so much passion I would have given up right then and there and I I'll be honest with you I'd nearly gave up and I did this thing that was kind of kind of funny because I was I was filming a lot at that time I had a lot of skateboard footage stocked up so I took it all and I put it together to this really weird music and I put it on this website at the time it was this very small website maybe some of you have heard of it it's called YouTube and I put that video up it was 2005 YouTube had just started and the video ended up getting 350,000 views and I was nobody nobody had heard my name they didn't know who I was and at that time I think it was the most viewed video on the internet period for skateboarding and I was like wait a sec I just lost all of my sponsors I have no career and now this like what do you really make of that it's kind of hard to hard to figure that out and I still have these ideas hitting me right you're a skateboarder that's what losers do you can't do that that's not a career so you know but that like that's sort of like lit the fire again like I think passion is this thing that everyone has I think some people had it and they went off and they got stuck on to like the making money or the very life things but it's still there and it doesn't matter how old you are who you are you can always rekindle that passion you can find it it is there I am 100% convinced that everyone has it okay so the journey of YouTube began yeah I put that video up got a lot of views and then a couple years later YouTube started becoming a thing where you could make videos and it would be like kind of a career right not a total career but kind of her career but for me it was it was an incredible freedom because it allowed me to do anything I didn't have to rely on sponsors I didn't have to go into any team managers I didn't have to ask for their okay if I wanted to set up a Domino course and slide through it on my stomach I could if I wanted to fill the mini ramp with balloons I could this is a long ways down the road right that made a lot of videos before I got that so the point I want you to take from this is that you need to make your passion important you decide and you figure out what your passion is you can ask yourself what would I do if I didn't have to worry about money what would I put my time into and organize everything else around that right you're going to need to learn many skills I had to learn how to film I had to learn how to edit I had to learn how to run a business I had to learn how to manage finances I didn't know how to do any of that but because I knew I had to make a career with skateboarding there's no if ands or buts about it I had to make that work I just by necessity had to learn those things but you see how I learned them because of my passion mistakes are gonna happen we made a video where we skated on a Christmas tree it's kind of a thing that we do we take these weird objects or random objects this was for Christmas right makes sense Christmas video skater Christmas tree right so and then some at some point in the video none of this is planned right we decide we're going to put this Christmas tree on the bungee and we're gonna shoot it and it ended up going about 90 miles an hour through the roof literally a hole in the roof but it's those kind of weird accidents that you would go this is bad my landlord is not going to be happy with but it's those weird accidents that you learn from and please be willing to make mistakes put yourself out there and have a mistake because you're gonna learn you're gonna learn from those mistakes one of the one of the things that I live by is don't go to sleep at night without having learned at least one new thing that day right another thing that I want to say is that in 2019 it doesn't matter what your passion is it literally doesn't matter you can make a career out of it this is a skateboarder that has no legs okay if you feel like I can't do this just imagine going I'm gonna be a professional skateboarder and you have no legs right so it doesn't matter what it is it doesn't matter how big the barriers are you can jump over them you can go through it you can handle it it's going to be okay and the next point I want to make is once you find your passion and you start creating on this please please give back to the community in fact I think giving back to the community is how you're going to actually make a career out of your passion doesn't matter what it is right generally speaking giving back to that community is what is going to create that that financial exchange so we do a lot of programs with kids our main thing is teaching I think I've taught more people to skateboard all over the world than anyone else ever ever which I'm very proud about right so this this sort of passion thing I the the idea that I think that is worth spreading is is twofold the first part is find your own passion or rekindle that passion it is there I guarantee it and use that and when people tell you you can't do that you just kindly ignore them try to understand their point of view right my band teacher wanted me in band because I was good at playing the drums he wasn't just a mean guy I'm not resentful toward him at all right so do your passion no matter what no matter what the circumstance is no matter what the barrier you just you just make it work and the second point that I want to make there is try and help other people with this you'll you'll find these people especially people that are just graduating high school and they're going to university and they're like I'm not totally sure what I want to do with my life you can ask them what would you do if you could do anything and you usually get a very straight answer well I would become a professional piano player and you just simply say you should do that and they will look at you and go do you really think so and you'll say yes you absolutely have to do that and more often than not you'll get this Wow you're the only person that has told me that you're the only person that actually believed that I could do it well I'd not only believed that you could do it I know that you can do it because I've done it it's not easy it's a lot of work but you can do it so if we just simply do that and we push this idea forward that alone will change the world thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 694,181

Rating: 4.9361644 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Business, Entrepreneurship, Passion, Skateboarding

Id: iw39hl-wDGk

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/richer2003]

I’m commenting before watching the video.

I wonder if he’s doing something similar to Rodney Mullen’s TED talk?

[u/CMPD2K]

Never forget he's a crazy scientologist