hey good evening everybody first of all
I want to set your expectations my
speech is not gonna be nearly as much
fun as Pierce’s because I’m gonna talk
about failure and daring to fail and
what I mean by that is that I dare you
to strive for goals that are so high
they seem out of reach that you don’t
think that you’re gonna be able to make
it because any high achievement comes
with failure if you’re not failing
you’re not trying you’re not striving
high enough and when you fail taking the
time to really digest dissect why you
failed to learn the lessons from it
turns failure into a valuable and
powerful tool for self development and
when failure can help make you better
it’s not nearly as scary so let me
introduce myself the pictures that you
saw on the last slide was me three
months ago I in August of this year I
finished almost 10 years with the US
Army unless sunday would have been my
ten year anniversary so over that time I
was a combat medic I was an intelligence
officer I saw the beautiful countries of
Iraq and Afghanistan amongst mothers and
I got to do all the cool stuff you
associate with the army I jumped out of
helicopters I drove tanks shotguns I
worked on injured patients but I also
got to do a little bit more I know one
time I almost crashed a tank into a
helicopter while the helicopter was
flying and if you buy me a beer I’ll
tell you that story but I got to do a
little bit more I spent a few years
working inside of the American
intelligence community I have done work
at the CIA the NSA the FBI pretty much
all the places that you’ve seen in
movies I worked with an incredible group
of people on amazing projects we did a
lot of great things it saved a lot of
good people’s lives I also did some
things that took out some really bad
guys it was really rewarding work but
why am I telling you this
they agreed to do the stock so I could
stand up here and tell you that I have a
cool resume no
what you don’t see if you look through
my LinkedIn or my resume is the painful
failures the crushing self-doubt and the
days that I just wanted to quit that
went along with all that success so let
me tell you a few stories so five or six
years ago I was in Iraq and I was the
senior intelligence officer for a combat
unit it was an infantry unit if that
means that I think do you guess so at
the time we’re pulling out the awards
just about done we’re trying to get
everything out of the country all the
people and all the equipment and this
was a pretty dangerous time because with
that drawdown meant fewer resources for
security fewer resources for
intelligence and just fewer resources
for everything so my job was to study
the study identify predict and prevent
attacks that was my job figure out where
the attacks are coming from stop them
before they happen
so I spent long long nights looking at
maps reports every piece of data it was
possibly available and after a period of
initial success a bomb went off hit a
vehicle now the vehicle did what it was
supposed to do but the guy that was on
the top Manning the machine gun got
pretty badly hurt
and I took this very very personally cuz
that was my job my job was to be there
to find these things to stop them from
happening and I had failed I wasn’t
smart enough I’d been out I’ve been
beaten and somebody else paid for my
mistake that was tough another example
last year early part of 2015 I tried out
for the US Army it’s called the Special
Forces Green Beret if you’ve ever heard
that term it’s the Army’s most elite
organization I prepared for this for
months
countless hours in the gym countless
miles Ronnie and spending weekends
walking through the woods with a pack
with 30 kilos or kilograms or more on my
back studying everything I needed to to
prepare for this so I get there and one
of the events is I’ve got to do some
pull-ups and I’ve got a climbing rope
and then it was a really really tall
rope and all fairness so I get up there
on spar and I pull with all my might and
I hear a sound that sounds like a shirt
tearing
and then a second later I feel the
shooting pain my arm just went dead i
torn a lot of the ligaments in my left
arm and that was a hard day because i’d
spent eight years of my career working
towards the skull i’d spent months and
months and months preparing and some of
the most painful ways for this i talked
it through with my family this was gonna
be my life but it was gone in that
moment I had failed I wasn’t strong
enough I wasn’t good enough I couldn’t
do it so I’ve got lots of these stories
I could go on forever about times that I
screwed up but what I want to tell you
is that I learned along the way that if
I could face these things head-on and I
could really really go back and figure
out what exactly I had done wrong I
could be even better than when I started
so this sucks to do this is horrible for
us to really look at ourselves and say I
was overconfident I didn’t know enough I
underestimated the other guy to really
really admit to our failures we always
want to say I failed that test because
this question teacher didn’t teach to me
or I didn’t get the job because the
interviewer didn’t like me because he
didn’t like my tie or something like
that this is a painful thing to do I
don’t really like standing up on stage
telling you guys about you know the low
points in my life but it’s important so
what does this look like in practice
so go back 2,000 miles few years back to
Iraq started going through the
information again reanalyzing and really
working it through and what I found out
what I saw is that I was so focused on
the past the historical reference that I
didn’t spend enough time thinking about
how those threats could evolve how they
could change I didn’t spend enough time
thinking about what was possible when I
got hurt last year that was a little bit
different I couldn’t go back and fix it
because I was getting a little bit older
I was getting a little bit too high in
rank those uh
I couldn’t ever try again for that
program but I knew it wasn’t gonna be
the last thing I wanted to do and it
wasn’t gonna last time I tried out so I
still had to learn and two important
things came up one is that I spent so
much time training what I was good at I
can run the long distance so I would go
running because I felt successful I can
walk a long time with a lot of weight on
my back so I would do that because I
felt
successful but I didn’t spend nearly as
much time training where I wasn’t
successful because it hurts because it’s
painful and then also at the very last
moments and getting nervous for this
evaluation someone gave me a
recommendation that about if I hold my
arms further apart rather than close as
I had been training it might make it
easier when I panicked and I took that
advice for reasons I still don’t fully
understand and I think that contributed
so I’ve got three great lessons first of
all don’t focus on what has been only
has been focused on what can be – I got
to train my weaknesses as well as
training my strengths that’s where I
need the most work and three when the
deadline comes near I’ve got to trust
myself
I gotta trust my planning and I have to
trust the things I’ve done those lessons
and others have been so valuable in my
time of the military my time here at ABS
and they will continue to be into the
future so failure can be a powerful tool
and it can be not so scary when you
learn how to when you learn how to deal
with it so I’ll give you a finish with a
quote by the American President Teddy
Roosevelt it means it means a lot to me
because it’s about being involved he
said it’s not the critic who counts it’s
not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles but the credit goes
to the man who’s actually in the arena
whose face is marred by sweat and dust
and blood who airs and comes up short
again and again because there is no
effort without error and shortcoming who
at the very best smells a triumph of
high achievement and who at the worst if
he fails they’ll while daring greatly so
that he will his place will never be
with the cold and timid souls but no
neither triumph nor defeat and you know
I moved three months ago I moved to
Germany country right never been I don’t
speak the language to get an MBA study
business something I know nothing about
I have no experience in because I want
to trace my dreams here and I may very
well fail at it but I’m not afraid of it
thank you [Applause]