Connor O’Leary
Here is the full transcript of cancer survivor Connor O’Leary’s TEDx Talk: Focus is a Muscle at TEDxUIUC conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here: focus-is-a-muscle-by-connor-oleary-at-tedxuiuc
TRANSCRIPT:
So when I was asked to give this TED talk, I really had to think about my topic. I mean, I’m not Jeff Bezos, and you guys can see that I’m obviously not Sheryl Sandberg. So what can a 22-year old kid tell a smart group of people that will actually change their lives?
So I decided that I would talk on focus, not because I can change your lives but because focus has actually saved mine. Focus is a muscle. Standing here, looking out at all of you, a lot of you look pretty comfortable. And I can see some of you sitting with your arms folded. So try this for me. You have a natural way that your arms fold. Everyone, fold their arms. OK, now unfold them and try folding them with the opposite arm on top. You have to think about it, don’t you? It’s harder than you would have guessed. It takes a little focus.
But if you decide that you’re going to start crossing your arms with the opposite arm on top, pretty soon it won’t take any effort at all. And that’s because you will strengthen your focus muscle.
When I was little, I loved riding my bike. Walking seemed like a waste of time when all I had to do was hop on my freedom machine. And I didn’t know it at the time but cycle would ultimately become my passion and the singular focus of my time and energy. Now I began racing bikes when I was 13. And I immediately fell in love with the sport. And I quickly worked my way up the cycling ladder, going from the junior national team to the U-23 national team and ultimately racing for the best professional development cycling team in the world.
And as I progressed in the sport, my days were filled with hours and hours of training. I usually spent between four to six hours in the saddle a day. I had to concentrate on not only riding but eating well my nutrition, resting. I know that sounds really hard. And an overall focus on improving my performance. And that doesn’t even include the races themselves. While my high school friends would be living it up, I had to make myself get in bed at a decent hour so that I could wake up early, go down to the basement and ride for a few hours before school started at 7:30.
All my friends would go out to a movie and they bring this big bag of candy and I never ate it. Well, I almost never ate it. Because I knew that if I did, I was going to feel it on my ride the next day. Now it sounds pretty extreme and, to be honest, it is. That’s because you have to be focused every second you’re in a bike race.
Let me paint you a picture. This is you in the saddle. You’re riding down this steep narrow road at over 60 miles per hour, on tires that are 23 millimeters wide. That’s about the width of your thumb. And it’s not like you’re on an awesome newly paved road. The ground is full of unknown obstacles. There’s rocks, potholes, gravel and occasionally wildlife. You guys may think schools are harmless but you really have no idea. And it’s not like you’re alone. There could be as many as 200 other riders, all just riding inches away from each other. And we haven’t even factored in the weather.
If you lose focus for even one second in this race, you could not only potentially harm or kill yourself but others in the peloton. It was a necessity to force me to hone my focus muscle for these races. And so I worked and worked out for years. And little did I know that my ability to focus would not only help me in my cycling career but it would ultimately end up saving my life.
I was 19 years old and I was racing with the US national team in Europe. And everything was great. Our team is doing really well and I was living in Belgium. I mean, how could things not be great? But I had this nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right. And I thought to myself it’s probably just the intense race schedule wearing me down. And so I brushed it off. But ultimately I did end up going to the doctor. And the last thing on earth I expected to hear was ‘you have cancer’. There’s something that happens when you get news like that. It’s like your heart stops pumping blood for a second, making your blood freeze in place, making your entire body feel like it’s completely dead. Just for a split second you go numb and then it hits you. Your new reality is cancer — a word so foreign, you have no idea where to even start.
Now I really felt like my body had betrayed me. For seven years, I had focused on training well, eating well, putting all this time and enduring all of this pain. I had focused on being healthy and fit. And at first, I was determined to keep training, to do it have been working for me for so many years. But not long after I started my treatment, I felt like I couldn’t think it all, never mind focusing on racing, training or even getting strong. I mean, I could not focus on anything. But I was determined that cancer wasn’t going to change me.
So I tried to keep going, with school, with racing, and with getting well. The days really did seem never ending. For seven hours a day, five days a week I set tethered to this chair in the infusion room at the Huntsman Cancer Center while I watched the chemo drip through my veins through this port that I had surgically implanted into my chest. I desperately tried to hang on to that awesome life that I’ve had just five months earlier but my focus was diminishing.
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