How I Visualised My Dreams Into Reality: Maria Rahajeng (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Maria Rahajeng’s talk titled “How I Visualised My Dreams Into Reality” at TEDxYouth@SWA conference.

In this TEDx talk, Indonesian beauty pageant titleholder Maria Rahajeng shares her experience of visualizing and manifesting her dreams into reality. As a visual learner, Maria created a dream board at 16 years old to visualize her desired life using the law of attraction. Despite her father’s traditional upbringing and her initial studies in broadcasting journalism, Maria pursued her love for fashion and worked hard to achieve her goals.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Growing up, I was always a visual person. I grew up with a visual learning style. This meant that I preferred seeing something on a chalkboard rather than the teacher saying it with their words. And I preferred reading something from a book rather than listening to it.

I’ve also read that visual learners, amongst other things, are known to be, one, very quiet and shy, two, we love to scribble and draw when bored, and three, we love to make lists and plans for the future.

Now growing up, I would say I was all of the above. I was so quiet and shy. I actually loved going to school and was a good student. But I had a hard time speaking up in class, and I especially hated public speaking. So something that I’m doing right now, speaking in front of a large group of people, that was not my thing at all.

I hated all that attention on me, and I would be so nervous. And I would forget everything that I was about to say, and I would just embarrass myself in front of everybody. Now I also really loved to sketch and draw. I especially loved fashion design, and I would do this every single day.

I was obsessed with fashion.

I would take home all of the fashion magazines, and I would look at all of the beautiful models and photo shoots. And it would transport me to a completely different world and completely different reality.

Now on to the third point, love making lists and plans for the future. I actually didn’t write down what I wanted to be when I grew up. But I would draw what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I would call this my dream board.

I want to talk specifically about a dream board that I made when I was 16 years old. But before that, what exactly is a dream board? Well, a dream board or a vision board is a collage of images, pictures, and affirmations of one’s dreams and desires designed to serve as a source of inspiration and motivation and to use the law of attraction to attain these goals.

Now as a 16-year-old girl, this is roughly what I drew. I wanted to work in the fashion industry. I had the words passion for fashion written on it, and I wanted to have a house of my own to travel the world. And I wanted to become a TV presenter, so I drew myself with a microphone.

Now as a 16-year-old girl, I never thought in a million years that any of these things would come true. But I put that photo in my room, and I would look at it on a regular basis, and looking at these dreams and these affirmations on a daily basis, it would eventually change my life because I learned that change begins with yourself.

It begins from within, and when looking, trying out for this dream board, you know, there are specific questions to ask yourself. Now beforehand, I’d also like to mention that what I love about this dream board, the notion of it is that it begins with you. It completely begins and ends with you, not what your parents want you to do, not what your superiors want you to do, but what you want to do.

Now these are important questions to ask yourself, and what I asked myself, how do you visualize your life? What do you wish to achieve in life? What inspires you? What motivates you? Because at the end of the day, before we even begin to achieve anything in life, we must first and foremost have the courage to dream and to visualize it.

Now going back to the definition of a dream board, it also talks about the law of attraction. Now I’m a huge believer that what we think on a daily basis, our thoughts, what we focus on, these are all things that help us to attain what we want in life. The ability to attain things based on what we’re focused on. So in other words, if we’re focusing on the good, then positivity will come, and if we focus on the bad, then negativity will come.

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Because the law of attraction is one of the most powerful laws in the universe, because it is happening every single day. It’s happening every single second, and it’s happening right now. We are all in control and creating our realities with each and every single one of our thoughts, which in other words, either consciously or subconsciously, we are all creating our futures with each and every single one of our thoughts. Now please keep that in mind.

Keep in mind the power of visualization and the power of the law of attraction. Now this is what I had in mind when I was 16 years old. I wanted to work in the TV industry. I wanted to have a house of my own, travel the world, and I wanted to work in the fashion industry.

And so I let this vision just guide me in my life and in my career. And so the next year, I was 17, I went up to my dad and I told him, I want to study fashion design. And at that time, fashion design courses, they didn’t offer a bachelor’s degree. In my dad’s eyes, this was a huge no-no. He immediately said no. He said, you have two options. You either become a doctor or a lawyer.

And so as you can see, he was a very Asian dad, very typical, right? But I decided to stand up for myself. And I said no, because there was not a single fiber in my body that wanted to become a doctor or a lawyer. So I decided to stand my ground. And this affected our relationship.

We didn’t talk for about a month, and I felt like a complete disappointment in his eyes. And that didn’t feel great at all. But at the same time, I knew that I didn’t want to give up on my dream. And I didn’t want to give up on my vision, so I decided to stand firm. And miraculously, one day, he decided to compromise.

He said, okay, you don’t have to become a lawyer or a doctor, but you do have to study something that will give you a bachelor’s degree. And so I said, okay, I can work with this. And so I decided to study broadcasting journalism in the hopes that maybe one day I would become a writer and work in the fashion media industry and hopefully become a TV host like I’ve always wanted. So that’s exactly what I did.

And so I experienced my years of university, and this is the period of where I truly came out of my shell, where I changed, where I tried new things, I took a lot of risks. And for all of the university or college students out there, I guess it’s my number one tip for you all is just to try as many things as possible.

Even if you think you’re not good at or if it’s not for you or you think you’re going to fail, just try it, because you never know what you’re going to like, what you’re going to dislike. And this is the time for you to just try new things. And one of the experiences that really did that for me was when I tried out for Miss Campus in my university. So this was basically like a pageant, except on university style.

And at first, I didn’t want to try it at all, because I thought it was not for me. It was completely out of my comfort zone. I was completely going to fail and just embarrass myself. And I just listed all the things of why I can’t do it. But fortunately, at that time, my twin sister, she was also at the same university, and she forced me to join. She forced me to join, and so I did. And that experience really opened my eyes to what I was capable of.

And I thought, okay, maybe I’m good at it. Maybe I do enjoy this kind of thing. And that really had an impact on me. And that had a change in me that led to other opportunities. And by the way, I did win Miss Campus, which was crazy to me. But that ended up having me have another opportunity, which was Miss Indonesia, and I tried that.

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And I won that in 2014, and I had the opportunity to represent Indonesia at Miss World 2014 in London, which was an amazing experience. And again, that was a life-changing experience that I really realized that I was coming out of my shell. I was more confident. I had a voice and a platform that I could use to make a better change. And that led me to another opportunity. That led me to my first TV hosting job.

So my TV hosting audition, the first one that I’ve ever done, I completely failed. I bombed it. I went in, and I forgot everything that I was going to say. And basically, again, I embarrassed myself, and I failed. But I didn’t let that stop me. And I tried and tried again, and I finally, I got my first TV job hosting a fashion show.

Yes, I was hosting a fashion show, and it was great. I learned so much, and it was a great milestone for me. And that led me to another opportunity. So in 2015, my sister Elizabeth, she also works in the fashion industry, she had a chance to go to New York Fashion Week. And at that time, the TV network, the media partner, was E! News Asia.

For those of you who don’t know, E! News is a network based in the U.S., and they also have one here in Singapore. And basically, we grew up watching E! News, right? It was our dream network to work for. But unfortunately, at that time, they were not scouting for any new hosts, so we just had to wait. And it was kind of like a back and forth of meetings and just a lot of doubts here and there.

But Elizabeth, she pitched them the idea of working with Indonesia for the first time and having twin hosts, she and I. And so we just prayed that they would be keen on the idea. And so they said, okay, you should send in your audition tape. And that’s exactly what we did. And again, we prayed and prayed and prayed. And then finally, we get the call. We get the call from the producer, and he said, we’re flying you two to Singapore. Your first job ever is to host Singapore Fashion Week for E! News Asia.

And the first person you’re going to be interviewing is that iconic fashion designer, Diane Von Furstenberg. And our minds were blown away. We could not believe it. We were so excited. We flew to Singapore, and the rest was history.

Now, I want to go back and show you guys my dream board. You remember me. I drew myself with a mic as a TV host. But what I didn’t tell you was that at 16 years old, I drew the iconic E! News logo. And seven years later, that dream came true, and we became the first E! News Asia hosts from Indonesia.

Now, afterwards, we not only focused on TV hosting, but we also focused on content creating on Instagram and for our website. And in 2016, we were presented with an opportunity to write our first book for Grand Media, which we took. And after two years of writing and creating this book and almost killing each other many times, we published our first book in 2018 entitled Becoming Unstoppable. And this was another example for me of how I could use my voice and my platform to make a change in someone’s life.

And that’s something that I will never take for granted. Now, looking back at the journey and what I’ve gone through and all the ups and downs, there was always one constant in my life, which was the practice of visualization. I’ve always had a dream board ever since I was 16. I had one when I was 18 and onwards in high school and university and up until now as an adult.

And I want to share with you guys my dream board in 2018. This is what it looked like. As you can see, I printed out pictures from the website and also from magazines, but I want to focus on the upper half of my dream board. As you can see on the upper left-hand corner, there is a woman who is enjoying a wonderful, a beautiful hot air balloon in Cappadocia, Turkey.

And in the middle, there are pictures of Liverpool, which is my favorite football team, and dreams of me going to Anfield one day and watching a game and them winning the trophy. And then on the right-hand corner, there are the words, buy a home. And there are keys, pictures of keys to a house. And ever since then, in 2018, I went to Cappadocia, and I went on that amazing hot air balloon ride, and it turned out to be one of the most amazing trips of my life.

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Last year, I ended up going to Anfield for the first time and watching a Liverpool game in person, live with my sister, and it was amazing. And after 30 years without winning the league, this year, 99.9% they are going to win. Yes. Are there any Liverpool fans out there? Yes. For football fans, you know what I’m talking about.

And then finally, last year, after a lot of hard work and saving up and praying, we bought our first home. Now, these are all just examples. No matter how big or small your dreams are, it doesn’t matter. As long as you believe in it, as long as you believe in yourself and that you work hard until that dream becomes a reality. Because guess what? If you can visualize yourself achieving something, chances are you will.

Now, if you don’t go home today and make a dream world of your own, I hope that you at least take the time to just close your eyes and to visualize some of those dreams and those goals that you want to achieve. Just imagine it as vividly as possible, with as much detail as possible. And maybe it could be graduating from your dream college or getting that dream job that you always wanted to do, or starting that business venture that you were always so scared to start.

Or even just watching your favorite artist in concert with a friend, or making a change in someone’s life, or helping a loved one out, helping a friend out. Whatever that change it is, I wish that you would visualize it and to visualize it on a regular basis until it becomes a reality.

Now, I know that when there’s something that we really want to achieve or there’s a dream that we really want to happen in our lives. It’s so easy to think about all of the ways that it’s not going to happen, or that we’re not good enough, or it’s too big of a dream to come true. And what tends to happen is that all of this negative space, it becomes too big that we even fail even before we try. And that’s one of the worst things that could happen.

So I would love to see you all, just before we even think of all that negative space, how about we focus on all of the ways that we’re going to make that dream a reality? How hard are you going to work? What sacrifices are you willing to make? And what risks are you willing to take so that at the end of the day, all that positivity will outweigh that negative space?

Now, when someone tells me, be the change, which is today’s wonderful theme, it always reminds me of the notion that whatever change we wish to see in this world, it must always, always begin with us. Because if there’s anything that I’ve learned in my journey is that whenever we change, when our perspective changes, when our mindset changes, when our vision changes, everything changes. Our life changes.

Now, I’d like to end this talk and leave you all with a quote from the book that my sister and I wrote, Becoming Unstoppable. And it goes like this. Visualize what it is that you want and then go after it with everything that you have. Because if you can imagine it, then you can envision it. And if you can envision it, then you can create it. And that will lead to you becoming it.

Thank you.

How I Visualised My Dreams Into Reality: Maria Rahajeng (Transcript)

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