8th speaker Yuya Kubota
"The Recipe for Success"
Why he delivers his speech
We sometimes tend to look away from our mistakes, without noticing the fact that we could’ve learned something from them. And I believe that doing so is a huge loss for us.
Today, I want to share with all of you what I’ve learned through my 4 years at University.
I graduated from university this March, and became a part of the society. Looking back, I noticed that what I’ve learned at University is what we can call “The Recipe for Success”. It is a small tip which could apply not only to students, but to all of us.
Let’s change our perspective against failure by having a little bit of courage.
Script
“Failure teaches us how to succeed.” This is a phrase which I’m sure all of us take for granted but are often likely to forget. We understand the importance of facing our mistakes and making ourselves better as a result. But sometimes, we just can’t. We don’t feel good about ourselves when we face up to our weak points. I think many of you understand this fear of facing your own mistakes, and it’s a fear that I want to share with you today.
To tell the truth, when I was young, I was the type of guy who couldn’t stick at anything. Studying, sports, music…I tried many things in my childhood and teenage years. But in all of these activities, when I faced a wall, I quit. I made an excuse like, “OK, I’m giving up. I’ll find something else I can do better.” Even when I confessed to a girl I really loved but she rejected me, I said to myself “OK, I’m giving up. There would be a much better girl who would accept me!” Well, such a girl never appeared… I always thought that making a mistake just brought me shame.
But at university, I experienced a huge turning point in my life. After entering Waseda, I joined a club named “ESA,” the English Speaking Association. And I encountered something that completely changed my life: making speeches.
As a freshman, I had an opportunity to take part in a speech contest. I did my best, however, at the awards ceremony, my name wasn’t called. Not only did I not rank the “first”—actually, I ranked the “worst”! The judges pointed out so many faults in my speech about pronunciation, logic, choice of topic…and the list went on and on. But I just didn’t want to listen to them.
After the contest, I said to myself. “OK, I’m giving up. I’ll find something else I can do better.”
A few months later, a change happened in my life. One of my seniors came to me, and said; “Yuya, why are you looking away from your mistake? Making a mistake is a lesson―a valuable lesson. Embrace your mistake, and learn from it. If you keep on running away from everything, you’ll never achieve anything.”
With his words, I realized that I had been avoiding the challenge of facing my mistakes ever since I was young. That was the biggest mistake of my life.
After this conversation, looking up on the website, I realized that my fear against mistake could be explained from a psychological perspective. A certain psychologist, Carl Rogers, says that we tend to suffer from a gap between what we want to be and what we are. It is called the “Ideal Self” and the “Real Self” in the psychology field. It’s just like looking at ourselves in a mirror. We want to be great, we want to be praised by others, we want to be like a superhero. But the reality, the image in the mirror, shows our faults and shortcomings. This is the gap between the “Ideal Self” and the “Real Self.” We don’t feel good about recognizing this gap, and we tend to regard making mistakes as a “bad” or “shameful” thing. However, nothing will change if we just look away from the mirror.
What I had to do was to accept my “Real Self”, and try to improve myself. So, I changed my way of thinking, and decided to return to making speeches.
I set my goal high—to win the All-Japan Speech contest—and started to learn from my mistakes: improving my pronunciation, acquiring logical way of thinking, searching for interesting topic…I had many tasks to bridge the gap between my “Ideal Self” and my “Real Self.”
Now, it’s tough to keep on making a big effort for a long time, don’t you think? So, every time I made a certain step forward, I praised myself. I gave myself a small gift like a little bit of expensive chocolate as a token of praise. By doing so, I felt confident, and that gave me the power to take the next step forward. Actually, Elizabeth Hurlock, a psychologist, tells us that praising has the power to motivate ourselves.
So here’s the recipe: (1) Embrace my mistakes. (2) Praise myself when I’ve made an improvement. From this “Recipe for Success,” I’ve managed to get much closer to my goals. And at the end of my third year in the ESA, I finally reached the top of the mountain: I managed to win the All-Japan Speech contest.
Through this whole experience, I learned the importance of embracing mistakes and making continuous efforts. I took this method over into other areas, like job hunting. I learned from tough experience, receiving dozens of rejection letters--but I was finally able to get a job that I really wanted to do. I did the same in my new job. I learned from the experience of being scolded by my boss, and I was chosen as a member of an important project. This recipe for success really changed my life.
Our lives will always be full of mistakes, whether in work or relationships, financial decisions or future plans. But, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to remember the recipe for success. When you have made a mistake, (1) embrace your mistake, (2) praise yourself when you’ve made an improvement. Failure teaches us how to succeed when we use this recipe for success.