TEDxYouth@Toronto 2011 - Haroon Mirza - The Power of One Moment [APPLAUSE] Haroon Mirza: [INAUDIBLE] I'll talk to you about the power of one moment. What's the most powerful ability that we all have? If you think about it, it comes down to the ability for us to choose our thoughts. We can choose to be happy. We can choose to be sad. We can choose to be optimistic or pessimistic. We can choose the way we think. You all chose to be here today. You could have chosen to sleep in. You could have chosen to hang out with your friends, but you chose to be at TEDxYouth@Toronto. So what's a moment? A moment, by definition, is a brief instant in time. It can pass by in a heartbeat. And moments contain potential power. There are big moments in our lives, such as graduation or winning a race, but then there are defining moments that can change the trajectory of your life. These are those moments that come up where you're going along a path in your life, you hit a defining moment, and it changes the very trajectory that you're on. Today, I'm going to share with you four defining moments from my life. It all starts with reading an email. Seven years ago, my dad forwarded me an email, one of those typical email forwards. And it contained an interesting story. The subject was a carrot and egg and coffee beans. And I almost didn't read it because it just seemed absurd, the subject. But I figured, OK, I'll read this. And it turned out to be one of the most powerful stories that I'd ever come across in my life. And I'm going to share that story with you. It starts off with a young girl, and she's crying. This young girl runs home to her mom, and she's complaining about the world. She's saying that she's not going along with her friends. Nothing's going fine at work. She's not getting along with people at school. Grades aren't going well. Just nothing's going right in her life. And she wants her mom to make everything better. The mother looks the daughter and says, follow me into the kitchen, and just watch. The daughter's crying, doesn't understand, but she goes into the kitchen. And here's what the mom does. She takes out three pots, fills them up with water, and puts them on the stove to boil. Well, the water starts boiling. Then one by one, she first of all takes out a carrot, takes out an egg, takes out some coffee beans, and then one by one she puts each into the water and lets the water boil. The daughter, still upset, is crying, confused, doesn't understand what's happening. But the mother just says, watch. Now after a few minutes, the mother takes out the carrot. She gives it to the daughter, asks her to take a bite and describe it. Daughter bites it and says, OK, that tastes like a nice, soft carrot. Then she cracks open the egg, gives it to the daughter. The daughter eats it and describes it as tasting like a hard-boiled egg. Then the mother takes a cup, puts it into the actual pot, takes out the water, and gives it to the daughter. The daughter sips it and says, that tastes like a nice cup of coffee. The mother looks the daughter says, did you know that there was a lesson to be learned here? Daughter didn't quite understand. She said, take a look at this. All three face the same adversity, the same challenge that was the boiling water. But look at how they all responded. The carrot started off strong, went into the water, and came out weak. The egg started off with a soft, malleable heart. It faced hardship in that water, and it came out hardened and rigid inside. But what did the coffee do? The coffee changed the water, changed the very adversity into something pleasant. Now, the mother looked at the daughter and said, listen, in life we can make decisions. We can choose. Ask yourself a question. Do you want to be like that carrot that faces hardships and becomes weak? You want to be like the egg, that when you face hardship, you become hard inside? Or do you want to be like the coffee beans, that when things are at their worst, when the water boils at its hottest temperature, you become your best, and you change that water into something pleasant. You changed that adversity into something great. What I learned from this email was to always be the coffee bean. The next moment was hearing a new idea. I heard this idea a few years ago, and it went something like this. Think of the six people that you're closest to in your life. Count your entire family as one person, though. OK? Count your family as one. Think of the six closest people in your life, and think about their characteristics, their values, their belief systems. Think about how you feel when you're with them. What you're thinking about there is not those six people. You're thinking about a reflection of yourself in the future. And if you don't like what you see, change those six people. I remember this hit me, because I thought about my six people, and I realized-- and this'll sound harsh-- that some of them were poison. They were bringing me down. They were draining my energy. They were holding me back. And I cut those six people, and I changed them into ones that reflected the type of characteristics that I wanted to embody. And all this came from hearing an idea. The next moment was seeing passion. When I was in grade 12, when I was in grade 12, I was confused as to what I wanted to study in university. I figured computer science or business. I kind of narrowed it down to these two things, and I was unsure as to what I wanted to do. So what I did was this. I started university, and then I tried to study both at the same time, and my goal was I'll figure out what I want to focus on after my first year. As time was progressing, I start getting great grades in computer science, and I was getting OK grades in business. So I figured, logically, I'm getting better grades in computer science, I should probably focus on that as the path, or as my path. But then this is one weekend, I was at my cousin's home in his basement. And this is a picture to kind of reflect him. It's not him, though. He was programming. He was programming games. He was programming applications. And I realized that he loved programming. In his free time, he would program. He was passionate about computer science. And I just looked at him and I realized, I do not like computer science the way this guy likes computer science. And then I looked within myself to figure out what do I love? And I thought about it, and I realized that I love the idea of starting a business. I love the idea of building a company. And what that did for me, seeing my cousin's passion, realized that it was not my passion. And I realized deep within myself and I looked inside, it was about business. And then a really important learning point for me was just because I'm good at something doesn't mean that I have to do that in my life. I should do something that I love, and I loved business, and that's what I decided to study. Now, for my fourth moment, it was a late night at my first job after university. I was working away at the computer, and all the lights on the floor went off. I kind of put my head up. There's the glow of the computer screen hitting my face. And I realized that, wow, it's late. No one else is here. And here I am, working away. And I was working hard. I was working smart. And then something hit me. Everything I'm doing is helping the company that I'm working for become more successful, but I wasn't helping myself. You see, I had to find success in my mind-- if you remember in university-- to do something, which was to build a company. And I was building a company here, but it wasn't my company. And I realized in that instant, when I asked myself a couple questions, am I happy, and am I following my dreams? The answer was no, I was not. And it took this moment, late at night in the office, to realize this. So this is what I decided. I'm going to get out there. I'm going to start a company. And I was very, very excited and passionate about it because my heart was all into this. But then I realized something else. I had no idea how to start a company. It's kind of confusing, actually. If you don't learn it in school, you don't learn how to become an entrepreneur. So how would I do it? And when this happened, I felt alone. In fact, I felt kind of scared because when you're going to start a company, if you become an entrepreneur, it can feel lonely, and it can feel scary. But then I remembered something Steve Jobs had once said. "Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people." So I thought, well, who's on my team, or who could I get onto my team? I thought about this and realized, well, I don't have to start my business by myself. I could find great friends of mine, that could become co-founders. Then on top of that, I needed to figure out a way to learn how to become a successful entrepreneur. And I realized, hey, I could get out there and I could seek mentors and advisers to show me the way, people who had been there and done that. And before I knew it, I realized I wasn't alone at all. I was surrounded by a team of people who could help me succeed. I didn't need to know all the answers because I could go to my network of people to get answers, and to get guidance, and to get encouragement. And it was that night in that office that helped me realize that I wanted to go pursue my dreams, and then I began my entrepreneurial journey, which was one of the most exciting journeys of my life. So now that I've shared my four key defining moments with you, I ask all of you to think. Could today hold a defining moment for you? A moment could be something as simple as hearing an idea or meeting a person. And these moments contain, if you remember, potential power. But how can we take moments and turn them into defining moments? When I'm in a moment, I remember this quote. "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me." When you are in a moment and you remember this, it's all about what you do. It doesn't matter if you just think and you don't take action. You have to do something about it. And this quote, it's a funny story of where I've even heard it. I was watching a movie about an inspirational figure a few years ago. And this figure in this movie said this, and it hit me. And i always remembered it. I'm like, man, it's all about what I do. And I'm sure it's pretty obvious who this figure is. Because if you figured out that it was this guy, you'd be right. It's Batman from Batman Begins. You'll never know where you can find inspiration. So what I'll leave you with is three of my favorite words in the world, "Anything is possible." Believe this, and remember it, because when you believe that anything is possible, you can find power within moments. You can turn those moments into defining moments, which can then change the trajectory of your life. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]