Empowering the Next Generation: BREAK THROUGH
(Transcript of the Zoom Webinar held on May 08, 2020)
Good afternoon to all the participants of the second Empowering the Next Generation panel discussion conducted by Leaders of Tomorrow Online. I am Dr. Prabath Karunanayake, and I will be your moderator today.
Five years ago, I founded the "Leaders of Tomorrow" program to empower the next generation into becoming competent, confident and compassionate adults. Up to now we have conducted 13 workshops. I also conduct leadership development programs at schools and universities mainly sharing my message of personal leadership and life skills. In total, we have been able to reach more than 3,000 students.
All these are outdoor, activity-based programs. We conducted our last workshop on the 21st of February and were planning the next workshop on 15th of March. We all know what happened after that. We could no longer ask you to come to our programs, but instead we decided to come to you. This is the first in the series of many online knowledge-sharing sessions. I welcome all of you to sit back and enjoy the next 90 minutes.
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 in one go. 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. 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 which is 10 kmph. In July 2018, 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. Yes, a bit of practice helped improve my performance, but most of it was inside me from the beginning. I conveniently labelled myself as a sprinter and made myself believe that I could not run long distances.
The idea of this panel discussion was conceived when I came across this story I just shared, in one of the articles I had written. I knew there are many more similar stories of breaking through barriers to reach excellence. Today I am delighted to have three young achievers who have faced different challenges in their lives and overcame them with courage and dedication.
Let me ask you a simple question. Are you being the best you can be in life? If you thought yes, think again. Being the BEST is not being better than someone else. There is no point in comparing and competing with someone else and winning, because there will always be someone else who is better than you. To be the BEST you can be, you need to compete with yourself. If you become the best version of yourself there will be no competition left.
Wilma Rudolph, was considered the fastest woman on the planet during the 1960s. She won three gold medals, the 100- and 200-meter individual events and the 4 x 100-meter relay at the 1960 Supper Olympics in Rome, Italy. Even though these were outstanding achievements in their own rights, we have to look at her childhood to realize the true greatness of her feat. She was born prematurely, as the twentieth of 22 siblings from her father's two marriages. She suffered from a series of childhood diseases and at the age of 4 contracted polio. Even though she recovered from the disease she lost strength in her left leg and foot. She wore a leg brace and could not walk properly until she was twelve years old. After coming out of the leg brace, she explored the depth and breadth of her new-found freedom. This led her to try out many sports which culminated in becoming the fastest women on the planet.
Nimna Withanage – If there is WILL, there is a WAY
Have you ever had a situation where you felt like you were tied down by some unbreakable iron shackles? And those shackles completely draining of your willpower to fight? These are the impediments to desired self-growth, personal development and peace of mind. You who face challenges on daily basis cannot deny how paralyzed you feel when you want to do something.
Now let me shift back to the question I asked at the beginning. Have you ever felt as if you want to run the marathon of life, but some shackle is holding you back? I have.
This disastrous phase of my life started in 2016. The most common thing I ever heard from everyone was ‘You can’t do this.’ Being the kid who weighed more than 70 kilos, what I always got to hear from my colleagues, teachers and even the moms of my colleagues was that I can’t do anything that other kids could and why was that? Just because I was obese and looked unattractive.
Days flew by, but these hurtful words never did. Gradually, these words turned into action and people around me started to do things that hurt me deeply.
It was our annual ‘I Can Sing’ competition where all the other participants complained to the teacher to put my item last because I would ruin the event going first. I thought the teacher would see things differently and allow me to go first, as planned. But that’s just what happened. And even worse, just before the item I was participating at the annual concert, the teacher marched towards me and with an evil look said, ‘You look so odd when compared to the other girls in this row, so I insist that you shift to the back row.’ I shifted backwards looking down, with eyes full of tears, because I was afraid to speak out for what’s right.
On some days where we had physical education, we used to have games like relays. I knew I could run, at least as fast as many of my classmates. I wanted so much to be the team captain just for this once, but none of them ever gave me the chance. They were afraid of losing if I were the captain, which happened anyway even though I wasn’t the captain. I was left to sit and wonder what if, all the time. I was rejected by many things, without even being given a chance.
Honestly, these events really had a deep impact on me and for once I started to believe that they might be right. Maybe I am incapable of doing anything. Maybe I am not worthy enough to be even given chance. Negative thoughts filled my mind. Sometimes, on the verge of giving up trying to do what I love, I felt as if everything around me was falling apart.
It was the year 2017 and one night during our vacation, I didn’t feel like crying myself to sleep as usual but started thinking about what I must do next. Trust me, going through drastic experiences in life can really change a person. You go through the trauma until you learn that you must fight. That’s exactly what I did.
I decided to make full use of the vacation to do something about the situation. I was a foodie and I loved food. First thing I did was to cut down on all my bad eating habits. Replacing all the carbs and fat with healthier options like fruits and salads was so difficult. Letting go of one of my life-long habits was not easy. I also started to work out relentlessly. Not being very active and athletic the whole life didn’t help the cause at all. However, the memories of being bullied at school gave me enough motivation to keep going until I succeeded. After vacation I entered the school as a whole new person.
Those who said ‘You can’t do it’ were shocked to see me. That feeling of satisfaction when you realize that you’ve finally done it, I must say, is beyond words. Eventually, I became an inspiration to other people who approaches me asking for weight loss tips. I could motivate many of my friends to get in shape, and to achieve many more things.
Fast forward to the present, I am now a person who is fearless in the pursuit of what I want. Not only pursuit, I make sure that I achieve it as well. And, of course, public speaking is one of those things.
We learn most things the hard way, but at the end of the day what could be more satisfying than seeing yourself as a free bird who flies beyond barriers. As the famous quote says, ‘Try and try and one day you can fly’, believe in rising against all odds, but most of all don’t stop until you are proud of what you have achieved.
In 1982 Colin Croft accepted a place on the rebel tour of apartheid-divided South Africa, in violation of an international ban on sports tours of the country. The rebel players were granted ‘honorary whites’ status by the South African government to allow them access to all-white cricket playing areas. One day he was kicked off a whites-only carriage of a Cape Town train because of the colour of his skin. Croft, a firm believer that politics and sport should not be mixed, was willing to forgive the perpetrators. He accepted the apology of the South African government and continued with the tour. That tour would have ended abruptly, had Croft and his colleagues gave in to the social discrimination.
Kavishka Karunanayake – Its all about what YOU think
It’s great to be here with all of you. The funny thing is, I wouldn’t be here, talking with you, if it weren’t for some vital decisions and learnings I gained over the course of my life.
Growing up, I was never the most outgoing kid with a million friends. I was perfectly happy being on the sidelines with my tight knit band of friends. At the same time, I loved learning new things (as I talked about in the last LOT online discussion). That’s why, when my school announced that it was organizing a play, I jumped at the opportunity.
Maybe it was hubris, maybe it was just plain laziness, but when the big day came, I still hadn’t memorized my lines. So you can imagine what happened when this introverted kid who hadn’t spoken to a group of people, much less an audience, went up onstage: the lights came on, I saw a sea of faces all looking at me hungrily to deliver the first line. The other actors were posed to begin. I completely blanked out.
I can’t remember how exactly I stumbled through the first act. But I vividly remember how I ran to my parents as soon as the curtains fell and spent the rest of the evening crying on my parents’ shoulders.
Even worse was the next week, when I went back to school. The other kids in my class didn’t hold back with the pity party. Words like, ‘I’m really sorry that you embarrassed yourself’ and ‘Now you know you can’t do this’, were falling like rain around me. I’m fortunate that I had those dear friends around me, otherwise I don’t know how I’d have coped. I was just eight years old. Those words hit me like bricks.
I wouldn’t so much as set foot on a stage until after four years, when I volunteered as an announcer for the school concert. I assumed that the stage drama fiasco would have vanished from people’s minds. Luckily, that seemed to be the case.
A few days before the event, they gave me the announcing script. You would think I’d learned my lesson and practiced the lines religiously, right? Wrong. In all the idiocy my twelve-year-old brain could muster, I came to an elegant conclusion: if I have the script with me, why should I bother? It’ll be like reading a book – and I’m a pro at that!
I went up on stage in my little blazer and without so much as 15 minutes of practice. The lights came on, and I started announcing like I was born for it. Thing were going great. That is, until I got to the part where we welcome the chief guest. This stern looking lady had a long Tamil name that I had no idea how to pronounce. I simply butchered her name.
I spent the rest of the evening covering behind the lectern, trying my best not to meet our principal’s steely gaze. I went back to school expecting an earful from my classmates and I was not disappointed. I heard my name being mispronounced by everyone, people giving mock speeches of which I was the target, and everything in between. Looking back, these were playground insults and nothing more. But to a twelve-year-old, they hurt.
This was where I truly messed up. I let everyone’s words box me into a sad little corner. I made the mistake of letting all this negativity set up barriers around me. For another three years, I wouldn’t so much as look at a stage.
The winds of change arrived in the form of my father joining a Toastmasters Club. He was impressed by the program. Looking to get me into the same, he dragged me along to a Gavel Club, which is essentially Toastmasters for kids.
I say dragged because, first of all, no kid in their right frame of mind would want to give up their Saturday evening. Secondly, the bruises from my last public speaking debacle were still fresh in my mind. I wasn’t in the least bit anxious to get back on stage. The good old social barriers seemed to be there to stay. All of this manifested in me pulling a long face and being frosty on the whole drive there.
But when I got to the meeting, and the other kids started chatting with me, I thawed out a bit. Eventually I had enough of sitting around and went up to do a Table Topic. For those of you who don’t know, a Table Topic is a speaking activity in Toastmasters where you go up on stage with no clue what you’ll be talking about. You get a topic, and with all of five seconds to prepare you’d deliver a speech.
I froze. No surprises there.
But this time, I didn’t find myself being backed into that corner of introversion and silence. Something about the warmth of the Gavelliers, and my father’s insistence, made me want to give this thing another shot.
This is the first nugget of advice I want to give you. Ideally, the strength to overcome social barriers should come from within you. But life is far from ideal. I honestly didn’t have the maturity nor the confidence to break through those blocks. It was the strength I got from this supportive circle around me that made it possible.
So, I ask of you: if there’s someone dear to you who has become caged by pressure from others, reach out. A kind word goes a long way. Society is what creates all those barriers, and it’s the love and kindness of loved ones and friends that keeps us going.
It’s through their support that I found the strength within myself. I started thinking that these people around me have a point, that the words from all those years ago don’t have to mean anything – unless I give them meaning. I leaned to not give meaning to any words that might drag me down. The moment I made that mental shift, the social barriers melted like ice and things took a turn for the best.
I put in a lot of effort into my Gavel Club. I even got elected as the president of CIPM Gavel Club, and that experience let me touch the lives of many youths in incredibly positive ways. To say that I’m grateful for that opportunity would be an understatement.
On the other side of the Gavel experience is the competitive speaking aspect. I rose through the ranks of speakers in my club, ending up on the All Island Best Gavel Speaker stage as a finalist – not once, but twice. Ironically, one of the two occasions was for a Table Topics contest.
Ladies and gents, young and old, social barriers are made of nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Break through yours. Help others break through theirs. One day you will look back and realize that you couldn’t even have imagined the amazing journey you’ve been on.
Roger Banister is a British athlete who competed in the one-mile event in the 1950s. The record for the event stood at 4:01 for almost a decade. Experts had said for years that the human body was simply not capable of a 4-minute mile. It wasn’t just dangerous; it was impossible. However, on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier, running the distance in 3:59.4. It was an achievement not only for him, but for the whole world. Within 6 weeks, another athlete ran a sub-4-minute mile and by the end of 1957, no less than 16 had achieved the feat. What happened during those two-and-a-half years? Did humans suddenly got stronger? Did they discover a revolutionary new training method? Or did they find a miracle drug to give them strength? No. What Roger's achievement did was to lift the barrier so others could believe in their abilities and strive for the impossible.
Gethmi Adikari – Conquering your MIND
How many of you have thought about giving up on something at a particular moment? Not seeing it through to the finish? Those activities and projects that never saw the light of day? I’ve got plenty, and I can say that ‘I have been there and done that’.
Where I have given up the most is during my sports career, but on the other hand it is also where I have achieved the most as well. This sounds quite contrasting right? Let me share my story.
Even as a small child, I was pretty active and energetic and didn’t want to stay in one place for a long period. Due to this very reason I fell in love with sports by the time I got enrolled in school. I tried many sports from badminton to hockey to table tennis to cricket, but all these sports continued up to a maximum period of 6 months, badminton lasting for 6 weeks. The reason for this was because I did not want to commit myself to stay after school for 2-3 days per week, then go home late and do homework till late night. This was way more than the amount of trouble I wanted to undergo in my life. The only sport I continued was swimming because that required once a week practice.
Amidst this habit of abandoning sports one after another, one goal remained in me and that was to become an accomplished sportswoman in school and to have the shiny school colours pinned on my blazer. I knew I had the talent, but I couldn’t get myself to continue with one sport long enough to really get good at it. Or maybe, I haven’t found the right sport for me.
Then, while in grade x, just for the sake of doing a sport in school, I started to play wushu. The fact that doing a martial art was considered to be cool, especially for a girl, also helped. I am pretty sure that during the entire first year of my wushu practices the coach had no idea that a girl named Gethmi existed even. I was just another girl who would drop in for a practice session here and there. I was not at all regular for practices and when was present, I was never keen enough to give my hundred percent.
After some time, as a kind gesture by the coach maybe, I was given the opportunity to take part in a tournament. But by the end of the day I was left only with participation while most of my teammates went home with certificates and medals. I even noticed that the juniors were faring better than I was. “This is not done, how am I going to be what I want if this goes on like this?”, was what I thought to myself.
I stated trying a bit harder and was slowly improving. It didn’t come easy for sure; it took years of hard work. As my performance improved gradually, so did my confidence. I was ready for my next tournament. After some time, I was again given a chance of participating in tournaments, and this time I proudly walked off with both participation as well as achievements and a school color also.
2018 was the year that hit me with hardest times. This year I was appointed as one of the house games captains and much was expected from me. In the same year, 2 days before one of the tournaments I injured by back. But now, I cannot step back. I went to the tournament and unfortunately all four of my events were crammed up into one single day. Did I have any choice? Yes, I had plenty. I could have either not taken part at all or dropped one or two or take part in all four. I chose the third option. I did three of my events and after each and very one of those I was on the floor screaming with pain. As expected, I did not score in any.
Next was the group event and I was about to be replaced, but I was given the chance after constant assuring and begging. I gave my hundred percent and seeing me doing it with my injury and exhaustion was an inspiration to others as well. We somehow did it, we were the champions. For months after the event I heard this story being narrated to my teammates, by my coach and peers. It was quite funny but then I realized I was not the only one who was inspired to break boundaries and not to give up, but others were being inspired too.
Looking back at my sports career, what I see is that in every situation I had plenty of choices but every time, one choice was constant – giving up. It was up to me to decide whether I want to stick myself to the constant or to other alternatives. Fortunately, I ended up with the other alternatives.
While most of my colleagues were struggling with talent, strength or stamina, I was never short of any of those. All I had to do was to put my mind to it and I ended up with all the certificates and medals I hoped for and above all those shining colours on my blazer.
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