Empowering the Next Generation Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it. He did. He watched the caterpillar grow and get into a cocoon for the last stage of its development. One day a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly slowly started to emerge. At first the boy was excited, but soon became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out. It looked desperate. It looked like it was making no progress. The boy was so worried and decided to help. He got a pair of scissors and snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged. The boy was surprised to find that the butterfly had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He hoped that the body would shrink and the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand. But neither happened. The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with the swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly. Why was the butterfly not able fly? In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. The struggle is nature’s way of making the butterfly strong enough to fly. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. You, my dear children do not need someone to cut open your cocoons to come out. You can and should do it yourself. All you need is the right conditions to be able to do so. That is going to be the theme of my lecture today. The dictionary definition of ‘to empower’ is to give someone authority or power to do something. It is not doing it for them, but giving the knowledge, skills, confidence and courage to enable them to do it themselves. Just like the butterfly, we need challenges to realize how strong we are. We need obstacles to realize how badly we want to travel the path. And we need problems to realize how capable we are. In 1990 I won the award for the best results in advanced level bio stream. That was the culmination of a very successful school life for me. There were many individuals who empowered me to be the best, who were the wind beneath my wings. My parents, my teachers and many others who wanted nothing but the best for me were there to be that beacon of light in a dark stormy night. None more inspirational than my grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Samarasingle.
When she wrote this in my report card, way back in 1980, it not only inspired me to be the best, but also put me under a lot of pressure due to the expectation she had created. That pushed me to raise the bar and place my standards rather high, not only for me, but also for everyone around me. Of course, my children are no exception. Last year, when Kavishka brought the report after the first mid-term test, I nearly had a heart attack. Yes, he has not been top of the class material, but he hardly ever brings even Cs, not to mention a D. 34 marks for mathematics with only 10 months for the first real test of his brains. How could this happen? I had my reputation on the line and the legacy of a brainy family under fire. The lowest I had ever got for math was 94 and only on three occasions had I missed the perfect 100. And on top of that, my mother was an excellent math teacher. I simply could not let things drift. I had to resort to some drastic measures!
Of course it was not what happened, even though I was tempted, to be honest. It would have been the easier option as well. But I took the road less travelled, the
difficult road not taken by many parents. Rather than accepting the responsibility for his results, I set out a plan to get him to accept the responsibility himself. Of course, he needed help. I spent a lot of time planning the future actions. I sent him to the grandparents’ for two weeks during April holidays. And above all I placed unwavering trust on him, so that he could trust his own abilities. During second term he bounced back with a 90 and 79 for the subject and I could breathe a sigh of relief. But for the mock exam, with less than a month to go for the exam, again he had missed the A for math. And in fact had only two As altogether. I had another opportunity to panic and take matters into my own hands and tell him what to do. But, I resisted the temptation and put the ball back in his court. All I did was empowering him, to believe in his own abilities and to find a way for him to make maximum use of those abilities. And at the exam, he produced this.
Those were two real life examples of how empowerment works and how it can create unbelievable results. Now if I were to talk about how to empower the children, I would be addressing only the teachers. But I would like to spend the next 30 minutes on how to empower yourself, so that all of you could benefit.
Identify, utilize and maximize your potential At a time when the industry is aggressively seeking confident young adults to transform their businesses, we find that thousands of our youth are suffering from an overwhelming dose of apathy and underachievement. This is NOT an exaggeration. Being a Human Resource professional for close to 15 years, this is the miserable truth I have to face time after time when looking to recruit young blood to the organization. The problem isn’t necessarily an undereducated workforce. It’s that they lack the required amount of ambition to maximize their potential in life to experience success. We undoubtedly produce some of the best graduates in the whole world. However, when we seek individuals who are capable of meeting the high standards of leading organizations, all what we see is a whole generation of youth who have not honed on their potential, because of complacency and laziness.
How many of you love to get this opportunity – to speak in public. Not many. In fact, if you dread it, you are not alone. About 75% of the world population is suffering from glosso-phobia, which simply means fear of public speaking, in varying degrees. Do you think I am an exception? I have seen my father struggle to communicate due to a somewhat severe stammer. Believe me he is my hero, my role model. But this is one quality that I did not want to inherit. But, I did. Being handicapped with this deterrent, I never took up public speaking at school. I used to admire my friends who were in the debate team and announcing at school functions. In fact, I looked up to them as supermen. During the weekly class meetings we used to have in grade 7, I finally had to face my demons. I don’t remember what I said about Sir Henry Steel Alcott, but I vividly remember how I felt. The dry mouth, trembling hands, shaking knees and the butterflies in the tummy. Without really knowing the potential, I closed that door for me for years until I was required to put myself in public humiliation again, this time at the university. At my second attempt at public speaking, for some unknown reason, I did not feel the discomfort, the pain and the agony. I was at
ease and delivered a flawless speech for 15 minutes in front of all the batch mates, lectures and professors. That re-opened that door for me and I have never looked back. In order to determine how best to utilize your personal dose of potential, you must first recognize that you have it. In order to keep up with the greats, you must first be willing to go along for the ride. It is not just a cliché, you can and will evolve into the person you aspire to become. Now what is the use of having potential, but not using it fully? Being born with potential can be considered a gift and a curse. When, once wealthiest man in the world, Warren Buffet was asked about his success by a group of MBA students, he beautifully explained the difference between potential and output. He is someone without much formal education and certainly with a limited potential, but he uses his potential to the maximum effect. Whereas the MBAs, with their superior academic knowledge, have much higher potential, but they only use a fraction of that potential. It is one thing to have potential, but a totally different thing to really utilize that potential. Like uncle Ben tell Peter Parker, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. I believe that all of us are given a talent to make our own little contribution to the world. For me, it is the ability to convey a message convincingly to others. It’s high time that you identify what’s yours and more importantly put it into use for a better tomorrow for you, your family, your school, your country and the world. And for those that don’t utilize their potential, unfortunately, they’ve waived their first-class ticket to greatness. A major factor that inhibits so many people from achieving the success that they desire in life is thinking that there is no room for growth and improvement. Once you have realized that you have potential, you must recognize that maximizing it happens when you take calculated and unpopular risks. The reason the 1% of the world is at the top isn’t because they’re all brilliant. It is because they decided to go against popular opinion and make tough decisions based on their unwavering faith in their own potential. Maximizing your potential isn’t something that can be taught in a classroom, read out of a book, or even gathered by word of mouth. It comes from the development of resilience in the face of controversy and critique. Life will unapologetically test your resilience and faith to determine if you’re worthy of greatness. If you want to reach greatness, you will have to face all the challenges
that are put in front of you, and more importantly, go looking for greater challenges to test yourself. I was a good athlete at school, winning 100m, 200m and the long jump regularly. I had the speed and the strength to be a sprinter but never the stamina and endurance to be a long-distance runner. When I started jogging to keep myself healthy a few years back, I could not complete the CINEC jogging track. I had to stop a couple of times on the way before completing the 4.6km track. Even though I was in better physical shape than most of my colleagues, I used to take at best 37-38 minutes to cover distance. A few months back I wanted to challenge myself after hearing that one of my friends, who is a national level motor car racer, was doing 5km in 30 minutes. In July I broke the 8 kmph barrier. Not willing to hold anything back I was able to break the 9 kmph barrier in August. I know that if I push myself further I can do even better. When Roger Banister broke the 4 minute barrier in the one mile event in May 1954 and 16 others broke the barrier in the next two-and-a-half years, they proved that there is no barrier for human achievement. When Sergei Bubka bettered his own world record in pole-vaulting 35 times, he proved that there is no barrier for human achievement. When Thilakaratne Dilshan scored 21 centuries at an average of 47 during the second half of his career as opposed to 1 century at an average of 28 during the first half, he proved that there is no barrier for human achievement. So my dear children, keep pushing yourself, beyond your comfort zone. That is where you will find the true satisfaction of living up to your potential. Every morning is another opportunity to look at yourself in the mirror and ask the most urgent and pertinent question, ‘How can I improve?’
Work on Boosting Your Self-Confidence One of the things that held me back from pursuing my dreams for many years was fear of failure, and the lack of self-confidence that I needed to overcome that fear. When I had a great new idea, I thought that others might just laugh at it. When I had to meet an important client, I thought that he might reject me. It’s something we all face, to some degree. How often do you hide in this abyss of fear and shrink with uncertainty when you want to walk up to a teacher to clarify a doubt, take up a sport you’ve never tried before, or even stand up against someone who is bullying you? Quite often, right? The key question then is, ‘How do you overcome that fear?’ By working on our self-confidence and self-esteem. That’s exactly what I have been doing over the years, and that’s what helped me finally to overcome my fears, and finally pursue my dreams. I still have those fears, undoubtedly. But now I know that I can beat them, that I can break through the wall of fear and uncertainty and come out on the other side. I’ve done it may times now, and that success will fuel further success. If you are low in self-confidence, is it possible to do things that will change that? Is your self-confidence in your control? While it may not seem so, if you are low on self-confidence, I strongly believe that you can do things to increase your selfconfidence. It is not genetic, and you certainly do not have to rely on others to boot your self-confidence. If you believe that you are not very competent, not very smart, not very attractive, etc. that can be changed. You can be someone worthy of respect, and someone who can pursue what you want despite the naysaying of others. You can do this by taking control of your life, and taking control of your self-confidence. By taking concrete actions that improve your competence, your self-image and your self-awareness, you can increase that self-confidence, even without the help of others. When going into battle, the wisest General learns to know his enemy very, very well. You can’t defeat the enemy without knowing him. And when you’re trying to overcome negative self-image and replace it with self-confidence, your enemy is yourself. Get to know yourself well. Start listening to your thoughts. Start writing a journal about yourself, and about the thoughts you have about yourself, and analyzing why you have such thoughts. Think about who you are deep within. What makes you unique, what is your physical identity, internal identity, what are your values, how you see yourself in relation to others and so on.
Then think about the good things about yourself, the things you can do well, the things you like. All those achievements, how small and insignificant they might look, that has brought you joy and happiness and will continue to do so in the future ads well. Also start thinking about your limitations, and whether they are real limitations or just ones you’ve allowed to be placed there, artificially. Are they due to mental barriers like in the case of one mile runners in the 50s? Are they due to a physical barrier like short stature? Or are they due to social barriers like those dreaded words ‘who do you think you are?’ Whatever the limitations, you need to be aware of them if you are to overcome them. Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor, in his bestselling book ‘Man’s search for meaning’ wrote that everything that can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of situations, to choose one’s own way. You have to learn to be aware of your negative self-talk. The negative thoughts that you have about yourself and what you are doing. Those little voices in your head that keeps reminding of all the mistakes you have done and failures you were able to score. When I was running, sometimes my mind would start to say, ‘This is too hard. I want to stop and go watch TV’. Well, soon I learned to recognize the negative selftalk, and soon I learned a trick that changed everything. I would imagine that a negative thought was a bug, and I would literally squash it in my mind. Mind is a mysterious thing. It can never stop thinking. Let me demonstrate this. Close your eyes and observe the random thoughts that run through your mind for 10 seconds. There would have been plenty. What is he talking about? When will this torture end? That girl has a new hairstyle today. Or at least ‘why am I not getting any thoughts?’ Your mind will never be still. One of the things I learned when I started running was how to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. Once I squash the negative thought bug, I replace it with a positive thought, such as ‘Come on, I can do this. Only half-a-kilometer left.’ With this tiny little skill, I was able to improve myself from someone who could not walk briskly for half-a-kilometer, to someone who could run 5 kilometers in less than 40 minutes. You are what you think!
It is not only thinking. More than just thinking positive, you have to put it into action. Action, actually, is the key to developing self-confidence. It’s one thing to learn to think positive, but when you start acting on it, you change yourself, one action at a time. You are what you do, and so if you change what you do, you change what you are. Act in a positive way, take action instead of telling yourself you can’t, be positive. Talk to people in a positive way, stand tall, smile, speak slowly and get active. You’ll soon start to notice a difference. Let me demonstrate that to you as well. Can all of you put your head on the chair in front of you please? While doing that experience the emotions you are feeling, the energy you have. Now can you all stand up please? Take a deep breath and release it out saying ‘yes’, with a smile on the face. Again experience the emotions and energy. Did you experience a difference? That is exactly what positive posture, gestures and movements can do to you. Another aspect of acting positively is grooming. This seems like an obvious one, but it’s amazing how much of a difference a shower and a shave can make in your feelings of self-confidence and for your self-image. Dress is also important. If you dress nicely, you’ll feel good about yourself. You’ll feel successful and presentable and ready to tackle the world.
Because at the end, what matters most is how you see yourself. Empowering yourself is one of the best strategies for building self-confidence. You can do that in many ways, but one of the surest ways to empower yourself is through knowledge. By becoming more knowledgeable, you’ll be more confident,
and you become more knowledgeable by doing research and reading. The Internet, of course, is a great tool, but so are the people around you, people who have done what you want. Also there are these things called books, magazines and journals. The other side of the coin is skills. How do you feel more competent? By becoming more competent, of course. And how do you do that? By learning and practice. If you want to be the best in your chosen field, find out what the best in that field are doing on a daily basis and do them yourself. Just do small things, and do them right. If you do this consistently over a period of time, no one can stop you from becoming an opinion leader in the field. If you want to be a more competent writer, for example, don’t try to tackle the entire profession of writing all at once. Just begin to write more. Journal, blog, write short stories. The more you write, the better you’ll be. The better writer you become, more confident you’ll feel about yourself.
Cultivate eagerness to create change A 1876 internal memo of Western Electric said ‘This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication’. The Chairman of IBM in 1943 said ‘I think there is a world market for may be five computers’. An IBM executive in 1959 said ‘The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most’. One can never predict the future accurately, or even anything remotely close to it. If we get stuck in the present without having the flexibility to change, we are going to lose the capacity we have to create the world that we want. As Arthur C. Clerk once said, the reality is going to be much more amazing than fiction. Charles Darwin said ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives. Nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. If we can adapt to change better, the chances are high that we would succeed. A group of scientists placed five monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with some bananas on the top. Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the others beat up the one on the ladder. After some time, no monkey dare to go up the ladder regardless of the temptation. Scientists then substituted one of the monkeys. The first thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder. Immediately the other monkeys beat him up. After several beatings, the new monkey learned not to climb the ladder even though never knew why. A second monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The first monkey to be substituted also took part in the beating. A third monkey was changed and the same was observed. The fourth was substituted and the same beating was repeated and finally the fifth monkey was replaced. What was left was a group of five monkeys that even though never received a cold shower themselves, continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder. If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to go up the ladder… I bet you the answer would be ... ‘I don’t know, that’s how things are done around here’. Does it sound familiar? Don’t you see similar things happening around us? Making short notes because it was the way people use to study for centuries, not knowing about mind maps. Trying to by-heart things because it’s how it is done by all your friends, not knowing about SQ4R method. Spending all of you study time reading because it is what you’ve been told, not knowing how to use MCQs as a learning tool.
So my dear students, it is high time you challenged the status quo and started to ask the question ‘why?’ always. Of course, changing the world is difficult. It is something all of us would want to do, isn’t it? But how many of us are really willing to change ourselves. All of you would raise your hands if I ask you ‘Who wants change?’ But none of us would raise the hands if I ask ‘Who wants to change?’ It is human nature to resist change. Newton’s first law of motion explains this beautifully. Who can tell me what that is? It says that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Even in nature change does not happen freely. The eagerness to change comes from a sense of curiosity about the possibilities and a sense of courage to face the uncertainty. Look at new possibilities with hope, as opportunities to make things better. Look at uncertainty with confidence, with the strength to face whatever that might come your way. It is even worse when it comes to the question ‘Who wants to lead change?’ Being able to lead change is one of the keys to success in the corporate world. We are constantly in the lookout for people who can create change. The reason why many of us do not get into this is because it is not easy. Many of us would prefer to do the easy thing, not the tight thing. But the future belongs to those who are willing to lead change. If you want to lead change, first you will have to be prepared to ask tough questions. It would be easy for someone to come in and tell you how things should be done. When that solution is someone else’s, there is no commitment to see it through. It is when people feel an emotional connection that they truly move ahead. In order to get the buy in from people, you need to let them come to their own conclusions. Even a question as simple as ‘What is it that you want?’ can be hard if you are not the kind of person who is used to listening to others. When making change happen, it is not always voicing your opinion, it is also asking the right questions and listening. Then, you should be willing to be accountable. Now what is accountability? It is not responsibility for sure, which is simply giving an explanation of your actions. But accountability means a willingness to answer for the outcomes of your choices, actions, and behaviors. When you’re personally accountable, you stop assigning blame and making excuses. Instead, you take the fall when your choices cause problems. For you to create change, you need to be willing to do just that.
Finally, you should be patient yet persistent. Change does not happen overnight. To have sustainable change that is meaningful to people, it is something they will have to embrace. But many can get frustrated that change does not happen fast enough. If you want to be a change agent, you have to develop these two qualities. The best example I can think of to highlight this point is the story of Chinese Bamboo. Like any plant, growth of the Chinese Bamboo Tree requires nurturing – water, fertile soil, sunshine. In its first year, we see no visible signs of activity. In the second year, again, no growth above the soil. The third, the fourth, still nothing. Our patience is tested and we begin to wonder if our efforts will ever be rewarded. And finally in the fifth year – behold, a miracle! We experience growth. The tree grows 80 feet in six weeks. Without patience and persistence, we won’t be blessed with such a majestic tree. Before I wind up, let me summarize what we discussed over the last 40 minutes. First, you should aim to reach your potential. Second, you have to build self-confidence. And third, you should strive to create a change. Now all this will just be washed down the drain if they are not converted to actions. Like someone said, if you want to achieve results you have never achieved before, you have to do things you have never done before. Let’s take these messages to heart and create a better tomorrow for you, your family, your school and the country. Good bye and good luck to all of you.