I watch a lot of TED videos. If you aren't familiar
with TED, go to
www.Ted.com and see some of the thousands of great
videos. In recent years, they expanded to a program called TedX allowing and
encouraging people all around the world to use their format to hold their own
Ted conferences and videos. Many of them are priceless. I found yet another
today that I thought I would share with you because I thought it was a powerful
idea and use Ted's theme of
ideas worth spreading.
Below is the video link if you would like to watch
it. It is a 15 year old ballet dancer named Juliet Doherty and in the six minute
video she talks for about two and a half minutes, then shows some of her great
dancing skills. It was her words that got my attention and the idea that jumped
off the screen at me was to stop competing and just do, enjoy, be yourself, be
great. Here is the majority of the text of her awesome talk with text in bold
that stood out for me:
She begins with two photos of herself and stating,
"this is me being great when I'm at age 2. Here I am again at age 4. You may not
see it, you may not recognize it, but I'm being great. We are all great.
We are all born that way. . ."
She trained from a very young age and her mother was
her coach. She was about to go to a big competition and it was at this point
that her parents told her this:
"It's time for you to stop competing. Now
is the time for you to just dance; to just perform; to enjoy yourself.
You will still be in the competition, but now it is time for you to go and just
dance.
It's time for you to stop judging and
evaluating yourself. That's not your job. Everyone else in the world
can and will continue judging and evaluating you. It's just what people do.
Especially the judges. That's their job.
But you are the only one that can authorize
yourself being great. You are the only one who can own your own greatness.
That's your job.
So this is what I've come to understand: I love
dancing, but if you love to paint, then go paint. If you love science, go
experiment. If singing is your thing, belt it out. Be yourself and be
great.
We all get so busy playing this excellence game
that we forget that. We have all bought into excellence. Now while it's
important to work to achieve what we want, excellence isn't greatness and it
never will be, like red will never be blue.
Our satisfaction doesn't lie in our
achievements or our rewards (though they are fun!), it lies in remembering who
we are; when we connect; when we see ourselves in each other; when we remember
who we are.
So if I have something to leave you with today,
it's go remember who you are, and who you are is GREAT!"
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