Sam Demma

Transcript

I was forced to quit the sport I loved after two knee surgeries ended my career and the fact of the matter is I was lost all my friends were athletes I spent all my time training and throughout high school I sacrificed everything to pursue that dream it might mean nothing to you but understand to me it was all I had and I seriously could not envision a world without soccer but fast forward to my senior year of high school by that time instead of being a pro athlete I became a pro at hiding my emotions I remember my first day of grade 12 no one

around me knew how much I was struggling inside to find myself and discover that new purpose you see when something like this happens every waking moment reminds you how much of a failure you are and I didn't know but it was during those moments on my first day of class that I was one teacher away later that afternoon at 1:40 p.m. I walked into my last class of the day world issues I took a seat and from my desk that's when I saw mr. loud foot this mountain of a man standing at six foot five with short gray hair and this nice big bushy mustache

many people told me he was a Corky man for all the unusual things he did but he had this relentless passion this aura of energy that lit a fire within my soul many times during lecture he would stand up in front of us yelling who has the power in the hope that a few of his students might mumble under their breath saying he was a teacher who deeply believed in the power of young people in fact he believed in me after I stopped believing in myself and through all of this there was one lesson he taught me that I will never forget April 2017 he

was speaking about figures in history who have massively changed this world people like Malcolm X Martin Luther King Gloria Steinem Gandhi the list went on and on and he took these figures and began breaking down their lives trying to figure out what enabled them to make such a massive change we found they had many traits that made them each different and unique but there was this one thing this one thing that was common among them all they all took small consistent actions that led to these massive global changes you see it was not their greatest March or their biggest moment that made the difference but

rather the thousands of smaller actions that led up to it that lesson changed my life it granted me the permission I had been waiting for to break free from my past and write a new story that year I took my teachers theory and I put it to the ultimate test I started my own social enterprise that had a massive impact on the environment I was named one of Canada's top environmentalist under the age of 25 I was invited to deliver a TEDx speech and my initiative was featured all over national news but before all of this I was one teacher away from losing myself you

see we are surrounded by teachers every single day and those teachers will start to appear when you are ready and I'm not talking about the formal educators the teachers in the classroom I'm talking about our students I'm talking about our children our neighbors the stranger on the bus the cashier the doctor your husband your wife your partner your spouse every single person on this planet every one of you is one teacher away from transforming your life and I'm so grateful and honor that the one teacher who changed my life my cloud foot is sitting in the audience here tonight mic all the success I've enjoyed

this far in my life I owe to you thank you

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Transcript

every morning I would wake up at 6 00 a.m with bloodshot eyes and a sore aching body I would drag myself under freezing cold water just to wake up following my shower I would visualize Journal eat breakfast and make lunch before leaving for school class ran from nine to three and directly at the bell I would rush to my car and begin my hour and a half journey to Sofia practice ran every night for two hours and I would typically get home at around 8 pm the remainder of my night from 8 until 12 would be spent doing homework until routine me falling asleep with

my laptop by my side this was a day in the life of high school said for 1 424 days I repeated that routine four years I sacrificed everything to pursue my dream of playing professional soccer but at the age of 17 everything changed mid-november one week before the biggest tournament in my life I tore the meniscus in my left knee I felt defeated mentally and physically because I just missed the opportunity I had been training for soap emphatically but I'm going in this dream so badly so I got to surgery I got back onto the field and just as things were beginning to improve I

tore the meniscus to my likely a second time this time I broke down on kitchen will be crying in front of my family friends and teammates I didn't understand my life was beating me to the ground for no reason I then had a second surgery and even took a fifth year of high school to keep my dream alive and just when you thought things could not get any worse it happened again this time in my opportunity forcing me to quit the sport I loved at that point in my life I had so deeply attached my personal identity to the sport I played my bedroom was

full of trophies jerseys and posters of my favorite teams and my email was soccer stand 99 soccer was all I knew and I feared that I would be worth nothing without it but all this was going on I had right now realize it was a very pivotal person in my life a high school teacher who helped me take my passion for soccer and fun of it down another Avenue the reason he was so magnetic was that he taught his class with so much passion and through his teaching he unconsciously convinced me that I possessed the ability to take the biggest risk in my life to

let go of the only thing I ever knew it was time for me to reinvent myself time for me to redirect all of that energy and passion without taking that risk I would not be the person I am today I may have never channeled my energy purposefully and started reading books or found in my own volunteer organization and I definitely would not have built up the courage to be standing on this stage tonight now I can go on and tell you about the other risks I've taken in my life but I'm only 18 years old the truth is my life experience is limited my life

alone may not be enough to convince you that taking risks is necessary but let me ask you a question by a show of hands how many of you wish you had the knowledge you have now when you were 18 years old my teacher told me that I didn't have to wait for life to happen that I could tap into this kind of knowledge by studying the lives of amazing figures from history through their impact I will prove to you that taking risks is necessary imagine if Martin Luther King decided not to take the risk of stepping outside of his front door and voicing his opinion

every single day during one of the most racially segregated time periods in America imagine if Malala decided the risk of being shot and killed by the Taliban outweighed the reward of gaining some freedom for women in Afghanistan and Pakistan a military Thomas Edison decided after 999 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb that the risk of being labeled a failure outweighed the reward of light I mean if it were for him I would not be able to see all your beautiful faces here tonight and these are only three people from history that are ultimately no different than you and I you see they're just human

beings who decide to take risks in the pursuit of their dreams and it allowed them to change this world you see the risk I encourage you to focus on is the same as these three examples to follow the innate desires that are deeply embedded within your hearts to be who you are truly meant to be living in a world where we are constantly conditioned to believe we can't live out our dreams the biggest risk we can all take is to follow our hearts because once you follow your heart and find that passion and align that passion with your purpose they're in why is the magic

equation the reward of risk you become Unstoppable and when they become Unstoppable like Dr King Malala and Edison YouTube can change this world

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