The value of challenge | Kimberly Saguilan | TEDxTustin
Transcriber: Huỳnh Thị Thến Reviewer: THANH LIEM HUYNH Hi, everyone. Welcome, welcome. So my presentation today is on the value of challenge. But what I want you to do first, when I say “I am”, you say, “Ready.” I am. (Audience) Ready. Oh you guys can do better than that. Come on. Better. Let’s go, let’s go. Really get this going. When I say, “We are”, you say “Ready.” We are. (Audience) Ready. All right. Now we're really ready. Now I’m really feeling it. And this is the last one we’re gonna do. I’m gonna say When I say we love, you say challenge. We love. (Audience) Challenge. Oh, yes. I love the voices. Okay, we can go to the next one. So today I’m going to talk to you about challenge. And probably you didn’t expect that K-pop would be up here. So this is my year that I actually decided to embrace my inner K-pop queen. Yes, my K-pop queen. And I'm going to tell you why. Okay, so my daughter, she’s 13 and she tells me: “Mommy, I love water polo.” “I’m very dedicated. I go five days a week for three hours every day.” And I said: “Okay, right.” So 13 year olds. And she’s like: “But I want to try something different.” “I want to add something to what I already do and I want to do K-pop.” And I said: “Okay, so what do you need from me?” And she says: “Well, you’re coming to the class with me.” Because she said: “I don’t want to do it by myself.” And I said: “Okay, yeah. I can do that support system, right?” Like me and my husband, we go salsa dancing. No problem. This is going to be easy. I’m going to rock it. I’m going to crush it. We get to the class and I’m like: “All right, okay, choreo okay counts.” “Wait a minute. The counts are different than salsa.” “Oh, um, yeah, this song is way too fast.” So I thought I was crushing it. And by the end of the class, my daughter said: “Gosh, Mommy, thanks for coming. Because guess what?” “You made me feel better about myself because you were terrible.” And I said: “Oh, well, at least you got that right.” And, you know, one of the things that I was thinking about is, well, my inner Godzilla was starting to destroy my mentality of, oh, “I don’t want to try this anymore.” “Oh, I can’t do this. Oh, I don’t want to.” I’m just going to leave it aside, right. And we all have those emotions. We all have these things that kind of creep up into us and start destroying things like Godzilla does, right? And those are the things that really get us down. They stop us from actually trying new things. And sometimes, when that challenge feels too hard, it’s like, well, let me stay away from it because I’m not good at it. And then I start to create a mentality of, “I’m not good at it.” “I’m not going to do it. I can’t do it.” And then I say to myself, Well, now I’m not moving forward. Now I’m not becoming the person I’m meant to be. Because really, it’s all about repetitions, right? It's all about really getting to the point where I'm going to learn how to jump and say yes to that jump. So when I think about it, I’m like, “Yeah! I’m going to skydive out onto these new places and new things in my life.” Because you know what? Why not? Why not say yes to that K-pop class? Why not say yes to other things in life that are going to help me move forward, right? And yeah, sometimes it’s scary, right? Uh, I have a parachute on here and maybe the parachute is my safety net, but sometimes I’m like, you know what? Let’s just do it, right? And every time I do that, it becomes easier. It becomes easier for me to say yes to something new. It becomes easier for me to feel encouraged to do it. Because you know what? Let’s just try it, right? And that was the first thing I had to learn. I had to learn how to jump to how to learn how to manage my Godzilla emotions, to say, you know what? It's okay. That first time was rocky, but I'm gonna do it again. And honestly, when I think about jumping, it’s, well, I’ve learned how to be a mom. Right? Jumping into being a parent. That's scary. Uh, jumping to be a teacher. I started in a classroom with 35 students, and that was scary. But I did it, right? I got there. Uh, I also had the opportunity to jump into a principal position, and I was like, “Okay, we’ll see how this goes, right?” And if I didn't say yes to those things, I wouldn't be where I am right now. I wouldn't be a professor at USC. I wouldn’t have the opportunity to open my own business and consult schools, right? So that was check one. Okay. Boom. I know how to jump. But then I learned quickly. Mm. I didn't land so well. Maybe I tumbled, stumbled, rolled. And in the K-pop dance class, my hands were that way, my hips were that way. And I had no idea where my feet were. And sometimes it's like that. Learning how to land is going to be one of the things we have to learn how to do in inner Godzilla again is going to come, right? But actually, what I started to realize is every time I jumped, a seed was being placed, and every time I jumped to do the same thing, like practice choreo, right? Root started to take place. And every time I started to be a little more persistent, consistent with it. Give it time, prioritize it. Right? It started to grow and it became something that became a part of me. And yes, my inner K-pop queen is growing to be a little bit more, right? I'm hitting the notes, I'm getting that beat. But then I even think it’s not really about being that inner K-pop queen. It’s actually being who I’m meant to be and who I would like myself to grow to be. And then I started thinking: “Huh, How could I continue this in my life, right?” Challenge is something that yeah, it feels uncomfortable, right? That inner Godzilla is really good at destroying things. But how do I learn how to manage? How do I learn how to then take those emotions and put it as a fuel to say yes to jumping? Yes to landing. Because sometimes we just need to know how to land. And here's the thing if we don't jump, we won't get a chance to land or learn how to land, right? And so then it gets into this part where I'm running towards challenges because I like that growth. I'm running towards doing cartwheels over challenges because I want to continue growing. And then it's finally I get to a place where, you know what? I'm okay with how I land. I'm aware that yes, it does feel uncomfortable, but it's okay because I'm acknowledging it and learning. Then the next steps on how to even be a little bit more for myself. But at the end of the day, it actually shares with other people as well, right? I don’t know if you know this, but all of the people who actually created this are people in high school. Yes. Yeah. We can give them a round of applause. First and foremost, because yes, it's their hard work to face this challenge of coming up on stage, looking presentable, doing all the things in the back and realizing, you know what? “I’m going to put myself out there. I’m going to learn from this.” “I’m going to now add this to what I’m going to do, maybe in the future.” And yeah, it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to have those feelings and be nervous and have all those things. But now I get to see it. I get to see that challenge has made me that much better for myself, right? They’re not doing it for anyone else. They’re doing it for themselves. And so I leave you with this, right? So I’m really thinking about, “Okay. First, jump. All right.” So I’m going to say, “Jump”. And you’re going to say, “With compassion” Jump. (Audience) With compassion. You guys are good at this. All right. Um, now I’m going to say land with Grace. You guys are going to do the “With Grace part.” Land. (Audience) With Grace. Oh, yes. And then finally, we have the learn part, right? Because this is the part that we actually will take with us everywhere we go. All right. So we’re going to say, “Learn” and you’re going to say, “to grow.” Learn. (Audience) To grow. Learn. (Audience) To grow. You guys are fantastic. Thank you so much for the time I’ve gotten to spend with you today. And it's been an amazing experience watching these kids go through this challenge from mic setup to the screen not working earlier, right? Because now they have this moment and experience to help them grow, move forward and just love what they do. Because you have amazing, amazing talents that are going to make huge impact moving forward. All right. Thanks everybody. Thank you!