that sounds odd doesn’t it let me
elaborate keyboards have lots of
sometimes enter capitalized letters and
most notably delete but honestly the
most underrated key on the keyboard is
the escape button at this point you’re
probably thinking wow that’s a really
cheesy way to somehow connect your
speech to the TEDx topic thank you
anyways back to the keyboard imagine
waking up knowing that no matter what
happened or what you thought you could
escape at the click of a button delete a
mistake you made or maybe even emphasize
your triumphs wouldn’t that be nice
like really really nice but why do I
really want this keyboard so that in
addition to all the self-correcting and
all the self reflecting I can escape
this negative cycle in my mind my
crippling quest for perfection and
appreciate what I’ve done right
perfectionism leaves me feeling empty
and undeserving a major cause of
perfectionism is atychiphobia or the
fear of failure psych central states if
you went to school then you have almost
certainly been trained to fear failure
from an early age and here’s why getting
the right answer the first time is the
only thing rewarded in most schools in
fact getting the wrong answer is
punished in a variety of ways including
low grades scolding and contempt from
teachers and peers this has students and
later on adults believing that the only
way to be successful is to never fail
but these perfect computer like people
can’t slow down because no matter how
hard they try it seems as if the person
next to them is always doing better a
perfect example of this would be at a
speech and debate event I had to go to
when I had to deliver a speech in front
of a large audience I worked for hours
on that speech and had to argue a
position I completely disagreed with as
I was walking on stage I was literally
shaking from the amount of fear of
public speaking I have yet I pushed
through afterwards although there were
no major mistakes and everything went
fairly well I couldn’t help but focus on
the tiny slip-ups that had occurred I
focused intensely on minor
mispronunciations for example during the
not funny at all speech I was giving the
audience began murmuring and chuckling I
couldn’t for the life of me figure out
why until afterwards when a friend was
kind enough to explain to me that I
addressed my female opponent as sir
because of this I watched a video of the
debate over and over and over again
until I could pinpoint exactly where it
went wrong it turns out that since I was
speaking so quickly the words sure came
out as sir and to this day that memory
haunts me I felt that no matter how hard
I tried and no matter how well I seem to
have done those petty slip-ups ruined my
opportunity to enjoy the experience
looking back it’s easy to see how these
fallacies dominate people’s perceptions
I know personally how hard it is to
escape this never-ending loop of
negativity and anxiety but sometimes no
matter how well you believe you did or
did not do you must accept the fact that
it’s over
there’s no magical keyboard in real life
I am my own worst enemy and it will be a
constant battle to befriend myself while
also learning that tiny slip-ups our
learning experiences that enable human
growth professor Carol Dweck has found
that people with a fixed mindset believe
intelligence and talent are hardwired
and they were born with almost all the
natural abilities they’ll ever have they
tend to avoid challenges and are
unwilling to exert too much effort for
fear that any failure will prove to
others that they’re not really good
enough and there is nothing they can do
about it these people tend to be very
outcome focused both success and failure
caused extreme anxiety for them failure
in particular tends to induce a state of
helplessness or perfectionist paralysis
making it difficult for them to learn
from their mistakes
eventually they give up this sort of
mindset began quite a while back for me
at a robotics tournament in middle
school where my teammates and I were
competing to join the National robotics
tournament as soon as I arrived I
immediately looked at the opposition
high school kids that could completely
crush us our robot was a tiny simple
claw BOTS that could score one point at
a time compared to mega mechanical
multitasking giants it was David against
Goliath every match we were the team of
new kids with little to no experience in
robotics randomly thrown together
because all the other teams had been
formed yet throughout the year our coach
pushed the expectations of nationally
ranked teams on to our own I had to win
or else I felt I would have thrown away
not only my coach’s respect but my own
self-respect
finally the buzzer rang and our robot
launched forward seeking to score one
last point
which would advance us to Nationals and
with our fingers crossed it failed we
were failures or so I believed that’s
kind of dark considering I was 11 I had
set myself up convincing myself that
winning was the only option and so while
my teammates were celebrating how far
we’d come I couldn’t help but focus on
the things I believed I could have fixed
which I believed cost us the match but
it wasn’t like this was anything new
since the beginning my teammates one of
them more so than others had been having
a fantastic time while I had only
focused on winning this was the first
time that I had a significant level of
failure and I couldn’t handle it
so I quit I didn’t join robotics again
until freshman year it took me four
years to understand that although I
didn’t succeed I still could have had a
great time just like my teammates if I
didn’t focus on the things that didn’t
matter in the long run oh and when I say
four years I mean it took me until I was
actually writing this speech to figure
out that it wasn’t as traumatizing of an
robotics was extremely important to me
and I quit was this going to be a
pattern could I let perfectionism
control me when I was two years old
barely old enough to remember anything
happening around me my father died from
brain cancer since then I have been told
amazing stories about him and what he’s
done
for the world from his friends
colleagues and my mother because of this
throughout my childhood my vision of him
was absolute perfection and anytime
someone would tell me you’re just like
him
I’d think how far I was from it it only
made it worse when I discovered that my
passions were his suddenly people saw
him in me but I didn’t see him in me he
was perfect
so I strived to be an exact copy of the
father I never knew in order to prove I
could be successful when you were young
you forget to do the reality check
he had faults to overcome too but when I
listened to those two minute stories on
him and his inventions I choose to omit
that just because the stories took a few
minutes to tell doesn’t mean it took
little to no effort for him to succeed
it took lots of trial and error and
certainly wasn’t as easy as everyone
puts it out to be but I chose to forget
that only recently did I bother asking
how long it took to actually make any of
his inventions robotics was important to
me because of my father
I followed it because of him success
takes time and effort and perfection
well I can still try I’ve realized that
although I might be at the club level
now I have time to work my way up to the
pedestal I put my father on we all want
to be perfect but being able to accept
our failures and appreciate what we’ve
done right is instrumental for future
success when we’ve completed something
we have a choice we can either focus our
energy criticizing what we’ve done wrong
or except what we’ve done right no
matter how minuscule we think it is
don’t think I’m not keeping track right
dr. talbin Shahar shows us that we need
to take action towards goals we never
tried for fear of failure and accept the
fact that it might take more than one
attempt to reach that goal failure is
something that happens not something you
are this has always been me and I know
there are maybe a little bit more than a
few other people out here in the
audience tonight who can relate I am NOT
alone around the age of eight I was
given a gift a gift I use constantly
when I’m feeling stressed or anxious or
nervous but before I get there I need to
give you a warning take out your cell
phones because this is something you
want to write down just type that into
your cell phone this mantra omana
pasenadi is a mantra of wisdom a few
words in tibetan it has the power to
guide me when I feel nothing else can
does it make you laugh probably well
that’s okay
all that matters is it feels good thank
you
[Applause] you