Never Allow Anyone Elses Opinion Block Your Future
hello
for the last couple of weeks i have been
sitting
with my new notebook in a room quietly
with a new pain
thinking how am i going to write this
ted talk
what am i going to put in this how am i
going to get my message across to
everybody
as the weeks went on and the notebook
continued
to be empty
i decided the only way i’m going to get
my message across to everybody
is to not think about what’s in the
notebook and actually see it from here
so my name is granny mccoy and welcome
to my first ever ted
talk i’m going to take us on a journey
um and the journey is the journey of me
back we’re going back till i was 11
years of age
um during school wasn’t for me
it wasn’t for me i knew from a young
girl people used to say to me oh you’re
the girl with the rosy colored glasses
or you’re a dreamer or another good one
you’re in her head
because i knew i was different and i
accepted that from a very young age i
knew i wanted something different out of
life
i instead of school books in my backpack
i actually had sweets bottles of
lucazide
crisps where i used to sell them in the
schoolyard
now as an 11 12 year old young girl this
was this was
what i started thriving on i i knew
right okay there’s a business woman in
me
at that age now that business went
really really well and i didn’t
until i nearly got expelled yes
obviously i’m not meant to be making a
profit in school and meant to be
learning
but that was my type of education i was
learning
about my path of where i wanted to be
and what i wanted to do and it was a
business woman and i knew this
but things changed um
at the age of 15 um my life was about to
change forever
i was about to take on the biggest job a
woman could ever ever ever take on
and that was becoming a mother so yes at
the age of 15 i became pregnant
i kept this a secret for 29 weeks
six and a half months six and a half
months i had my first scan
i am i knew that
this was going to change my life but
this is where the one rule of my life
came into play and that was the rule
that i was going to
that was going to create my path the
rest of my life and that was
not allowing others opinions to block my
future
now saying this um after
telling my mother and my parents
obviously it didn’t go down too well
but it was accepted and 10 weeks later
ryan was born
now at 15 years of age going through
gcses
um not being allowed to set me to access
education wasn’t my strongest point
reading a book it was not for me i also
knew that to be the successful
businesswoman that i wanted to be
the 11 year old me wanted to be
i had to have some sort of education so
four weeks after having ryan
um i decided you know what i’m gonna go
back to school
to the horror to one my teachers because
i hated it and two my parents
um because they didn’t think it was the
well they didn’t see whether i would
stick at it
now going back to school at 15 years of
age to
a lot of younger people now because i
was a year behind
and getting the oh god did you hear
about granny mccoy or
oh she’s a mother um or taking my son
into school which i was very very very
very proud of um
was a big step for me now the one
number one rule was obviously to always
not care what they thought and this was
going to help me get through the year
the very very very tough year of not one
or not only being a mother
but also repeating fifth year i got
through it
didn’t get many gcses but i still got
through it i continued on my journey
as a mother as a single mother knowing
that i wanted to be successful in life
i decided when i was 21 after working my
way up through the retail sector
with no education single mom becoming a
manager of a store i knew i wanted
something different i wanted really
i wanted to be creative i wanted to
create something different i started
getting into makeup
so from my makeup journey i decided that
i would go to london one time and i
asked my mother i i contacted her one
day and said
could you look after ryan for a couple
of weeks i’m really going to try this
dream
she’s like no granny that’s ridiculous
you can’t do that but then the number
one rule
popped back into my head that i was
going to take with me for life
don’t let other people’s opinions stop
you just block your journey or block
your future
so i went to london i continued my
journey as a makeup artist
to everyone’s surprise it started
growing very quickly
i started working for google i started
working for youtube i love to talk so
i continued my journey in in london
until one day
i decided i’d seen a hairdresser on a
certain show called the bbc apprentice
on this journey i told a few people that
i was going to take part in this
i laughed they laughed they thought it
would never be possible a young girl
from a young little village where we
don’t even have a shop how could
somebody like that
get on such a big show to get over 300
other thousand people that apply for
this how can i do that
but again i took that one one life rule
journey
with me and that was to not allow other
people’s
opinions block my future i got on the
show
i got on the show and i
got to the semi-final now believe it or
not
i know that i could have popped that
extra little bit
more in and got to the final only my
biggest fear was talking
so getting to that stage i knew i would
have to do the the stand in the middle
of the audience and talk to everybody so
i knew i took a couple of steps back
that was my biggest failure i think
in the show was not pushing myself that
extra little bit more
further i should have listened to the
grania
from years ago the granu who would have
taken that number one rule
right by the hand and told herself to
push herself further
further and don’t allow the opinion of
others to block me
but i did anyhow i continued on
now as a semi-finalist as lord sugar’s
apprentice
i have became a very successful talker
hence why i’m here standing on the red
dot today i
am continued my journey and followed my
dream as a makeup artist
i have now a successful business in
retail
i have a fantastic son who is now
a working chef with a drive and a drive
to be nothing but the best of himself
in his own version i continued to
build my dream and my career
and when i was asked to come on this
talk and stand on the red dot
dot and give my talk i question myself
thinking
what is my message and i continue to see
it throughout this talk
imagine the change that you could do if
you could just stop comparing yourselves
to others
if you could actually block out the fear
of what other people would think
if you wanted to start a new job if
your daughter did end up pregnant at 15
if you wanted to start a relationship
with somebody but the fear
of actually making that first step into
any of these situations
stopped you my message today is very
simple
stop allowing others opinions to block
your future
because when this is done
your life can be so much easier a whole
life can be completely different
you can create the dream the destiny and
the life that you actually want
if we just ended up and stopped doing
this one thing
thank you very much