Your greatest moments aren't what you think! | Rosanna Tomiuk | TEDxYouth@Montreal

I want to tell you a story about one of the greatest moments in my life when I was a little girl I grew up and my dad wasn't really around and if you know the statistics about kids with apps and fathers they tell you that a girl like me would drop out of high school get pregnant as a teenager and have a drug problem I didn't become any of what the statistic said I would and I think it's mostly because I had a dream when I was 10 I decided I would become an Olympic gold medalist and when I was 14 I decided the sport would be water polo even though it was my crush on a boy that had me quit the swim team and joined the water polo team I really loved the dynamic and the intense nature of the sport researchers say that water polo is the second toughest sport in the world and I bet if those researchers put on a speedo and got in the pool with me they would agree that it's the toughest sport in the world at age 17 I had won a Junior World Championship that's me biting on my medal there at 22 I had won a silver medal at the pan-american games at 24 a silver medal at the world aquatic championships and now at 28 all that was left was my Olympic gold so in 2011 in Guadalajara Mexico I was with Team Canada and it was the gold medal match of the Pan American Games the winner of this game would get their ticket to the Olympics so the game begins and the energy in the room is pulsating we shoot we score they shoot they score it goes back and forth and the game ends in a tie at 8:00 8:00 so we go into overtime and it stays even so we go into shootouts they shoot they score we shoot we score five rounds of that and it's still even so we go into sudden death penalty shots they shoot they score we shoot we score and then it happens the u.s. comes to the penalty shot line picks up the ball they shoot we stuff them we stop them oh my god we just qualified for the Olympics I look at my teammate she looks at me no wait Rosanna you have to go back in there and score Gophers oh okay my coach then comes to me he holds my face and he looks at me he says resented last night I had a dream that you would score the winning goal for us no pressure I jump into the pool I swim to the penalty shot line I pick up the ball I look at the goalie with all of my determination I pick up the ball I shoot BAM she saves it Oh No so we go back to it they shoot they score we shoot we score and then it happens the u.s. comes to the penalty line they pick up the ball they shoot they score and then Canada comes back to the penalty line for the return we shoot they save it after 20 rounds of shootouts in what has become the longest shootout in the history of the sport we lose the game of our lives not to mention we make the Guinness Book of World Records that night after all of those years of sacrifice after 18 years of dedicating myself of missing out on parties of missing out on family events of feeling like my muscles were too big for what they should have been for a normal girl of tears and sweat my biggest dream doesn't come true I failed I remember feeling completely shocked I was confused and I was so exhausted 20 rounds we get onto our bus to go back to our hotel and someone passes around chocolates as if they know exactly what a girl needs in her worst moment and there I am snot dripping on my Toblerone bar we arrived at the hotel and I'm crying and asking why with all of my emotion and then I fall asleep I wake up the next morning I'm disheveled disoriented wondering if it was all a dream I quickly realized that it wasn't a dream and then something happens something happens that changes how I look at life forever so if you're taking notes right now pay attention this is where you want to be hashtag I wake up the next morning I'm completely disheveled disoriented I realized that it it was true in fact I had failed at making my biggest dream come true and well then I eat breakfast I eat breakfast the morning after her biggest dream doesn't come true hashtag she eats breakfast now I know some of you guys are probably confused and wondering how my eating breakfast is a TED worthy idea but let me explain all throughout those years of me working towards my Olympic dream there was this irrational part of my primitive brain that was telling me that life stops after failure the failure is this permanent thing that becomes a part of who you are forever and stops you from ever taking any action forward like if you mess up once it's over but there I was sitting at the breakfast table eating some sugary cereal and life kept going it kept moving forward it didn't stop I ate breakfast and I kept eating breakfast morning after morning I ate breakfast and I ate breakfast and then this one morning in particular I remember I had this aha moment about all of my Olympic journey I realized my Olympic journey was less about whether or not I got a gold medal but more about who I became as a person because I dreamed this big dream I had to take big actions which forced me to develop as a person I perseverance and stamina and resilience selflessness grit which had me asked the question if dreaming big means that you're going to take big actions which inevitably will force you to become a really awesome person then why why aren't we always always dreaming big maybe it's because most of us have this irrational feeling like I did that failure is something permanent that failure is something that becomes a part of who we are forever rather than just something that happens so there I am and I realize that most people don't really want to risk it why would we but then what if we reframed how we look at failure it reminds me of this story I know about this high school art teacher and his pottery class now it was nearing the end of semester and so he assigns to the class their final project he splits the class in two and two group one he says you are being graded solely on quantity you have to make as many pots as possible 50 pounds of pots is in a 40 pounds of pots is a B etc and then to group two he says you're being graded solely on quality so you have to make just one perfect pot so off they went and well came grading day and you can guess which group produced the pot of highest quality I mean I heard the story and it was obvious to me the group that spent the most amount of time working on that one pot would have made the pot of highest quality right right well you can imagine my surprise when I learned that I was wrong that in fact the group that made the most amount of pots the quantity group actually made the pot of highest quality you see whether they realized it or not as they were churning out pot after pot they were making mistakes they were failing and rather than failure or mistakes being something that defined who they were forever and stopped them it was just a feedback system for how to make that next pot better which got me thinking what would it be like if we looked at failure as nothing other than a feedback system for a better way to go forward what would it be like for you if you looked at failure as nothing other than a feedback system for a better way to go forward so this ladies and gentlemen is the mindset that I've taken on now that I've retired from my career as professional athlete I'm 31 and I'm retired I've been asking myself as I went from professional athlete to professional and personal coach musician entrepreneur model motivational speaker I've been asking myself how can I make so many pots like massive amounts of pots and just recently I challenged myself to write one song every day for 30 days and record a video of it and post it online and when I got to the end of my challenge it was this exhilarating experience I was like I just made thirty putts I wrote 30 songs and of course they weren't all very good there are some of them the volumes turned down because like I said of course they weren't all very good but in the process I got feedback and in the process I grew in my mastery of songwriting and in character because I definitely didn't want to show up every day but I did so you see this mindset has been amazing but of course it's not always easy because I've chosen an unconventional career path for myself and maybe some of you guys are thinking that you might choose an unconventional career path for yourselves and there's been days where my family has sat me down and they've asked me resent of what are you doing with your life you had a 3.9 5 GPA in your biology undergraduate degree why aren't you in med school why are you wasting your smarts to which I reply I'm doing what I love I'm pursuing my passions and mom I got money in my bank again you know sometimes our parents we just have to convince them that we're not going to steal their pension and then that's half the battle so here I am and I have challenged myself to pursue a career that's different and and it's challenged me and I haven't always known where I'm going to end up but it's been this beautiful experience because what I've learned from my greatest failure that it's nothing other than a feedback system for better future actions to take has changed all of how I've looked at my life so what would it be like for you if you allowed yourself to do what you love and challenge yourself to do as much as it as you could if you give yourself to doing what you love and you do a whole lot of it you're bound to fail but go ahead fail fast and fail more because every time you fail you'll experience feedback for a better way to go forward I remember there was a day I was at the airport not too long ago and I met this robotics engineer and he said to me this is the operating room in a hospital and there's a robot and he said to me you know robots are taking over these this conventional way that things have been is is changing and what used to be done by humans is now being done by robots so here I am thinking even a surgeon isn't a guaranteed career path so we may as well do what we love so as you step into these next parts of your life go ahead and do what you love and as you fail know that you had the courage to do something great and even if you fail at your biggest dream know that that in itself will be an indication that you have become great and then perhaps one day you will tell a story of one of the greatest moments of your life

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 8,469

Rating: 4.8904109 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Canada, Life, Failure, Personal growth, Sports

Id: _w_kqQO5Grs

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2016