“Life doesn’t go from A to B — it’s messy,” says sailing legend Tracy Edwards. In this inspiring talk, she tells how she went from teenage misfit to skipper of the first all-female crew in the toughest race on the seas — and how she now helps young people around the world achieve their dreams, too.
Stop Being a Bystander in Your Own Life
DO YOU HAVE THE "WRITE" STUFF? If you’re ready to share your wisdom of experience, we’re ready to share it with our massive global audience – by giving you the opportunity to become a published Contributor on our award-winning Site with (your own byline). And who knows? – it may be your first step in discovering your “hidden Hemmingway”. LEARN MORE HERE
If we are used to “throwing us down”, if we follow “inner voices” that diminish us, we will tend to be resigned and disheartened. We will see life with pessimism, and we will also approach possible relationships with fear, instead of trust.
Above all, we will tend not to question our limits, to believe that they define us, and that we cannot escape them: but it is not so.
Power and responsibility are closely linked: if I have no responsibility for a situation, I don’t even have the power to change it. Unfortunately, often we don’t realize this connection; nor of the fact that by refusing responsibility for our condition, we automatically put ourselves in a position of impotence. Thus, denying one’s responsibility inevitably puts us in a position of powerless passivity.
What matters is having qualities to offer: the more qualities we have, the more results we will get. So if we want better results, we must devote ourselves to increasing our qualities.
Life is continual change, and we ourselves continually change: therefore improvement is always possible.
But we must be careful: improving does not mean “becoming another”, but becoming a better version of ourselves. In other words, improving means becoming what we are meant to be, expressing our full potential and don’t let us go, as many people who live only a small part of their potential.