Finding the Win in the Total Fail

This is an amusing and inspirational talk about terrible tragedy and miserable failure. Okay, if you don’t believe me, imagine watching a movie about nice people who were always successful and never had any trials or troubles. Unless that movie was entirely about puppies, it would likely be pretty boring. Just as conflict makes movies entertaining, tragedy and failure make each one of us complex, interesting individuals.

In my presentation, I’ll discuss how terrible things can ultimately have a positive effect on our lives. I’ll talk about how we can learn and grow after failures of our own doing. Many of us were taught to fear failure, so we try our best to avoid it. But if you fail, it means you tried. If you avoid ever failing, you’ll also avoid taking risks that could turn out to be your greatest successes.

I’ll also talk about unexpected positive outcomes that can arise out of terrible tragedies that happen through no fault of our own. It’s easy to be successful when everything is going well, but we learn who we really are during tragedy. Terrible things happen to all of us throughout our lives. We don’t get to choose what terrible events will happen to us, but we do get to decide how we will respond to them.

These points will be demonstrated through stories about incredibly successful people who also failed miserably, as well as amusing stories from my own life, such as the time I didn’t get the job I have now, the time I was in a horrible car accident, and the time I got type 1 diabetes. Hopefully this presentation will be good, but if I fail, we can still all learn from this experience!