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Overcome Your Obstacles | Tracey McCann | TEDxBallyroanLibrary
As a child, Tracey loved to talk and was born with an innate stubborness to face every obstacle head on. When Tracey was 8 years old, her life took a massive turn when she was diagnosed with a disability known as Rapid On-Set Muscular Dystonia. Although Tracey has experienced many moments of negativity, social isolation and self-pity, she has also experienced positive moments and is now actively involved in spreading her message on the importance of self-empowerment and positivity. She is a two-time bestselling author, international motivational speaker, life coach, disabled advocate, and Amba...
About Tracey Mccann
In a 2019 TEDx talk, Tracey McCann discussed her experience with a rare muscular condition, rapid-onset muscular dystonia with parkinsonism, which she said she developed at age eight. She stated that doctors predicted she would die within six weeks or be bedridden for life, but she described herself as still active. McCann said she is a two-time bestselling author, with her first book becoming a number one Amazon bestseller within 48 hours, and that she spoke in China in early 2019. She encouraged the audience to "overcome your obstacles" and "face everything head-on," asserting that people have free will and should take responsibility for their lives.
Transcript (11 segments)
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Tracey Mccann0:10
How many of you have ever felt as though you are stuck in a box, as though there is an obstacle hindering your progression? You are trapped and unable to escape. Allow me to tell you something fairly obvious to us all: we cannot simply just sit around and visualize ourselves to success. As beings of this planet, we are supposed to grow, to develop both physically and mentally. We are never supposed to feel trapped. We as human beings differ greatly from most other species on this planet because we have the ability of free will. We are moving all the time, sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards.
Allow me to ask you this: have you ever felt as though you were standing in front of an immovable obstacle, one that in order to face would make achieving your goal feel like an absolute roller coaster full of twists and turns, ups and downs? An obstacle that makes your goal seemingly unachievable. You probably do not even know where to begin. It is frustrating, and to make matters worse, even if you try, you fail and ultimately end up feeling defeated.
If you do, it is human nature. But what you must do, what we all must do, is to defy our human nature. The other thing that can happen, which we are all guilty of I am sure, is a lot of giving out to ourselves. This self-destructive behavior makes achieving our goal much harder. That little voice in our heads that spends its time repeating over and over again that it's too hard, I won't overcome it, I can't do it. Again, you are left feeling frustrated because of this, because of the voice's lack of belief in you. You are aware that whatever it is that you are trying to achieve is possible, but you just cannot seem to get there.
Useless thoughts float around in your head: I'm no good, I'm useless, everyone is better than me. You start feeling more and more weighed down by your own self-pity, and the feeling of self-worthlessness consumes you. We have all been there. Ask yourself this: do you think that by cursing yourself, that is going to assist you with figuring out how to overcome this obstacle, or do you think it will delay or even bring to a halt your progress? What is it do you think that you must do to overcome this obstacle and to actually enjoy this self-growing and self-learning process?
Conditioned to accept as unavoidable, and yet even though we all as individuals have managed to build up a resilience towards these day-to-day obstacles, we still fail to face the ones that could serve us. When you look at me up here, I am sure you can tell just by looking at me that every day more or less I am faced with obstacles. Well, allow me to tell you about my obstacles that I have dealt with from a young age, and most importantly, how I overcame them all.
As I have stated at the beginning, my name is Tracey Mccann, and I am honored to be here with you all this evening to talk to you about how to overcome your obstacles. You see, I am a person who loves nature and having fun with amazing people like you all here this evening. My biggest passion is and has always been to help and inspire people via my own life experience. A number of years ago, I questioned the how: how can I help? How can I inspire others when I have a physical disability which affects my ability to speak properly? Let me just say from the get-go, I was not born like this. You are looking at a person whose life completely changed at the age of eight unexpectedly.
Hit within the space of just a few days, I went into a horrible locked, extremely painful and contorted spasm. I subsequently lost my control over literally everything. I could no longer feed, dress, or wash myself. And again, I was only eight and just grasping how to be more independent. It was so terrifying. To make matters worse, I lost my ability to verbally communicate properly. Thankfully, my mom knew what I wanted; she could read my eyes. I am sure that most of the time while she was doing this, I looked absolutely terrified, but I managed to keep my head together.
Not feel as though I was fully in my body. Nobody knew what had happened to me for a number of months, and the doctors at the time actually blamed my mom for it, which was totally wrong. I was given the best mom ever, and because of that idea that the doctors had come up with, my mom was not allowed to see me unsupervised. I was under 24-hour watch. I was not even allowed to be hugged by my mom or be left alone with her. It was so stressful. After many months of this, eventually and thankfully, the doctors realized my life-changing disability was genetic and began putting the necessary work in.
I retrained myself to firstly do the simple things such as touch my nose with my finger. This was important because I lost a lot of my coordination. I went to an endorphin release clinic where the man there, a lovely man by the name of John Kathi, helped me so much. I came on a lot over the following years. I gained my independence back to some extent. Then throughout my teenage years and early twenties, I went through social isolation. Feeling so lonely was horrible. Nobody having the time to be my friend was worse. I had friends throughout school, but after school, they moved on.
Now I am telling you all of this with good reason. I am now a two-time best-selling author, with my first book being released last April and becoming a number one Amazon bestseller within the first 48 hours. I am an international motivational speaker. In January just gone, I had the pleasure of speaking in China. If I can do what I have done within the past few years alone, what's your excuse? What's your obstacle? Whatever it is, you can overcome it. Face everything head-on. Unfortunately, I developed this condition at a young age, and it has been one hell of a journey, but I am here to tell you that you can do it too.
I am Tracey Mccann, and I love to prove people wrong. I knew that my old way of life was not for me because I am here for a reason, just like you all are. Discover your why or your purpose and keep working hard towards it. Make sure to stay strong and knock your obstacles into next week. Show them who the boss is. It is your life. Own that fact, take responsibility, and always strive to be the best version of yourself.