One Of The Greatest Motivational Speeches Ever | Priyanka Chopra Jonas | Motivational Compilation

0:05 i'm gonna take five or six minutes of your time to just speak a little bit about the work that i have had the privilege of doing with unicef i'm to say a few names of some incredible girls that i met you may not know them but i do omayama bharti tendai tendiva niyasa now these are not just names in my posts on instagram or twitter or newsmakers in my travels through india zimbabwe south africa jordan these are girls that live with me

0:53 that always will as do all of the children that i have met in my 11 years of work with unicef as a goodwill ambassador for unicef along with my other colleagues what is our job what does a public person like me actually do well we use our voices and our platform by bringing light and attention to these children that may be forgotten so that the world sits up and takes notice we use thank you we use every opportunity and every platform that we have been given to show these children that the world has not forgotten about them that we all of you sitting here

1:40 care with unicef i have traveled throughout all of these places thinking that i'm going to be giving back to these kids you know these young ones i'm going to be giving them inspiration hope or something but at the end of it i was the one who did all the receiving material or non-material so this is a diamond ring that was given to me by a girl called omayma in jordan at the zatari camp that mizoom was just talking about this is a bracelet that was given to me in jordan and her majesty sitting right here queen rania of jordan who i happened to meet

2:28 while i was in amman seba gave this to me and these are like two or three of the precious possessions that these girls might have right they don't have too many worldly possessions but they took this off of their hands and they gave it to me why she had only both of them actually had only one request do not forget me and these girls looking into my eyes not crying not upset just greeting me and saying do not forget me in fact every image that i took away was a smile was a happy handshake

3:15 a laugh a hug and an occasional bollywood dance step of course because you know i i come with that territory gotta do it somewhere especially in zatari but i saw hope everywhere that i went i expected despair and i saw hope i saw smiles where i should have seen tears i saw joy where rightfully there should have been just sadness i saw a determination to constantly better their lives to empower themselves with skill sets the long years of war abuse rapes that these girls have suffered did not

4:01 break them it left deep scars definitely but it did not define them or stop themselves from rebuilding themselves and this is all i want to share with you is what i took back my takeaway from all my years of trips with unicef in 12 years around the world has been hope the ability to make a rainbow within gloom to constantly work towards building a better future we all of us sitting in this room and we can acknowledge that ourselves we live in an extremely privileged world and it is our responsibility as privileged society to give back because we have

4:49 we owe them and by them i mean these kids our support in building their future because we can because we have these children are our future we all know that but they are not just the future of a single continent whether it's asia whether it's africa whether it is europe these kids are the future of our world we tend to forget we only have one and these are the kills that are going to be the generation that take us forward so now what is our role going to be it is to ceaselessly work towards empowering

5:34 educating and creating opportunities empowering them with skill sets where they can where we can be catalysts of change and they can be catalysts of change within their societies to help them build their own world if possible a safe one if possible a world where their dreams can become a reality war is not an option and if we want to build a safe world for our children because it is them eventually who suffer the result of conflict which has been decided by adults they are our responsibility yet these children dare to dream have hope no matter what their

6:20 circumstances it and that is truly a miracle of god what i also know is the impact of the global goals on every girl every child everywhere is going to be tremendous i have seen a girl called sadhna 15 years old in a village in india learn tailoring for survival and then imparting that skill to a larger set of girls therefore economically empowering numbers of women around themselves in villages in rural india self-efficiency works towards achieving many many goals be it elevating poverty or giving much needed dignity to women which we all know women need

7:09 this will this determination is the unifying factor for women all over the world why is it okay why is it more important for us to focus on girl children over the boys because did you know that girls are affected by conflict 2.5 times more likely than boys they are pulled out of school more likely than boys equality begins here we need to understand the whys and address them hold their hands and tell them let them tell their stories change their ends to happily ever afters for which every girl needs to be given

7:54 the same opportunity as the boys i have been witness to their ambition to their grit to their determinations which is why we just have to be a helping hand and the rest they will manage your investment today is money is time is ideas is whatever you want to give in return they will build a working world yes the scale is large in fact there is an urgent need to gather all the data regarding all the girls this is being addressed to by our tireless volunteers but until then we should not give up once their stories are in join me in listening to them and just like they did for

8:40 me they will change something in you forever thank you for giving me your time and i'm going to conclude just with with a saying mahatma gandhi said once if we are to teach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war we have to begin with the children there's only one you okay because there's no one like you i'm talking about the core of you who you are inside your values your beliefs your flaws and once you understand who really that person is you would have made taken the first step in finding your unique self and that is the best version of you most

9:27 often we don't allow ourselves the ability to dream beyond our imagination we don't allow ourselves to think about the future because we are afraid of change we are afraid to move away from what is familiar either that or sometimes you know we are too rigid to let our dreams evolve loosen up you know shake it off a little bit change is the only constant thing in life and you are never too old or never too experienced to learn something new believe that you have everything already as your brahmastra in your will to be able to be and achieve your dreams be fearless i know i wanted to become an aeronautical engineer what am i today i'm an actor i'm a singer i'm an author i'm a

10:14 producer i'm an artist how did i go from becoming an engineer to all of these things i made choices the choices that i wanted for myself so that is my rule number two let your dreams fly give them wings be who you want to be just by being fearless now opportunities that's another important part of being fearless they're a very funny thing aren't these opportunities they don't come very often they come far and few in between but when they do do we recognize them our job is to recognize them and make the most of them i look back on all the things that i've done and i marvel at the opportunities that came my way miss india miss world when i was

11:01 in barely an army school my first film offer my first music single the first film i actually produced there was never a plan ever more like the universe sort of guiding me towards these opportunities all i had to do was recognize them and make sure i worked so hard that i squeezed every drop out of these opportunities this ladies and gentlemen is called drive it's called ambition so no matter where you are in life rule number three is you have never arrived enough to explore new opportunities and there's nothing wrong with being ambitious ladies listen to me [Music]

11:48 now for all of you guys who like everything in life i don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to have the whole cake and eat it too nothing wrong i want everything and there is nothing wrong with that as long as you're not harming someone or doing something wrong don't be scared to want more for yourself than you ever thought you could i want to dream of everything and i'll have everything so rule number four be greedy be greedy for your ambitions be hungry for it don't live on someone else's benchmarks who can tell you who you should be don't let anyone or any situation dictate to you

12:33 who you are and who you can be i know it's very much easier said than done i know that because i've done it but fight for your dreams because no one else is gonna fight for your dreams except you i've turned down so many roles opportunities because they did not fit into what i thought at that time was the right thing for me so today my path is just my own it belongs to no one my failures my successes all of it mine my journey all of it is mine so rule number five do not compromise do not settle on your dreams now who likes to fail what what and you like to fail well i'm not

13:19 talking to you guys then i'm talking to those guys who hate to fail because i hate to fail it's really as simple as that it takes tubs and tubs of ice cream lots of tissues lots of tears lots of dramaazi my mother my best friends my family everybody making me feel better about it but the one thing that is as certain as night and day ladies and gentlemen is that you will fail it's just how it is and there is nothing that you can do to stop that it's what you do after that will define where you go when something i've invested in my heart and my soul which i do with everything that i actually put my mind to

14:04 if that fails i don't just wallow in self-pity i roll myself in it i roll around in it i wrap myself in it head to toe self-pity self-pity self-pity it's not a pretty sight i can tell you that my mother who's sitting right here has witnessed it many times but then i get up cry a little dust myself off and dive straight back into life because the only way to push failure aside is to move ahead not ignore it analyze it and learn from it always remember you will never truly enjoy success until you have tasted failure and trust me when i tell you it tastes like

14:50 really does so rule number six fail fail fail again and then rise like a phoenix now what is life without a little bit of a risk right no i'm not an adrenaline junkie i'm not telling you to go off roller coasters or anything i've always believed that you have to take risks calculated educated risks to evolve because if you've not truly explored the full extent of your possibilities you'll always remain stagnant people have written me off several times in my career sometimes they didn't agree with my choices when i played a negative character in my film etras very early in my career i was told i'll be a vamp and no one will cast me as a heroine when i took on a female-centric film

15:38 called fashion again very early on in my career i was told that was not norm when i signed a u.s tv show at the height of my film career in india each time the risks were huge the stakes were high and the repercussions could have been to say not the least career ending thank god they weren't and i'm still standing in front of you i i really appreciate god i don't know what will happen going forward but as of now i can say that my risks and the gamble was worth it you know why because i backed up those risks with my hundred percent so rule number seven be bold and take these risks now

16:24 friends family the people you work with the people around us are our greatest influences in your journey to success so you have to choose very wisely rule number eight surround yourself with the right people who do not stab you in the back now who's into social media who's on social media raise your hands yeah we like it i like it we can raise our hands alright it's almost everyone now keep your hands raised if you have ever been upset by like a bad comment that you may have read on a photograph or like on facebook or when you've posted something and sometimes you know it's like why do people have to be mean yeah so there's a lot of you right guys

17:11 please let me just tell you this no matter what you do someone will always be unhappy always [Applause] especially in this age of social media it's so easy for us to be confused between the voices that actually matter and the opinions of faceless people writing behind the anonymity of what the web offers they don't matter so rule number nine you can never please everyone all the time and the biggest favor that you will all do to yourselves will be to laugh at yourself

17:56 at situations find a moment to appreciate every single day this funny thing called life and that's my most important rule number 10 don't take yourself too seriously we're not making rockets all right calm down have fun and just enjoy this beautiful journey that we've been put on i do that [Music] in the meanwhile hi rules it's really not that hard in my experience to be kind to be compassionate to be human you will never know someone else's full story so don't be

18:42 quick to judge my mother who's here tonight with the rest of my family she taught me when i was very very young that there is always someone who will be less fortunate than you always so give back wherever you can there's a huge reason i started my foundation i lend my voice to unicef girl up and causes that i'm associated with because we have one world and it's ours and we need to heal it and that starts with us [Music] [Applause] so that is my rule number 11 give back and finally the most important one

19:29 always remember where you came from it's truly what defines you so i'm a proud indian and army ki betty [Applause] daughter of two doctors with a middle class upbringing and ginormous families who i love on both sides we've seen good times we've seen bad times we've seen hardships we've seen pain laughter sadness but that is what has made me who i am and i wear that with pride every day and everywhere that i go so last and definitely not the least rule number 12 don't ever forget your roots and where you came from [Applause] i read this somewhere and kind of stuck with me and i hope it'll stick with you

20:16 life's journey is not to arrive at your graveside safely in a well-preserved body but rather to skid in sideways completely worn out and say holy that was a ride that is how i want to go so in life you know there are moments when you stop and ask yourself how did i get here like why am i standing here well this is definitely one of those moments for me and i find myself going back to the beginning back to my roots i was born to incredible parents amazing parents who served as doctors in the indian army i was the first born and as far back as i can remember

21:02 i made my parents very proud and happy 99 of the time okay slight exaggerations of personal achievements are allowed from time to time don't you think my brother was born a few years later and even then nothing changed for me we were both given equal opportunities and i want to emphasize this i want to really emphasize this for you because i don't think a lot of people might understand that being equal might seem very normal but where i come from india and a lot of developing countries around the world more often than not this is an exception it's actually a privilege my first experience of the glaring disparity between boys and girls came at a very

21:47 very young age i grew up in a middle-class family with extremely philanthropic parents who constantly reminded me and my brother how lucky we were and how giving back to those who were less fortunate was not a choice it was a way of life simple i was seven or eight years old when my parents started taking me on these visits in a traveling clinic to developing communities around and villages around the city that we lived in called vareli we were packed into this ambulance and would my parents would provide free medical care to people who couldn't afford it my job at the age of eight was assistant pharmacist so i would count all the medicines put them in an envelope and give it out to patients and i really took my job very

22:33 seriously very seriously but the more i went on these expeditions the more i began to notice the simplest things that distinguished a boy from a girl or a man from a woman for example girls were pulled out of school when they hit puberty because they were considered ready for marriage and babies that's 12 and 13 while boys still enjoyed their childhood our basic human rights such as health care were denied just because they were women let this let's call this whole experience trigger number one for me fast forward a few years and many many triggers in between like a producer director for example early on in my career i must have been

23:20 about 18 or 19 telling me that if i didn't agree to the ridiculous terms or painfully low salary in his movie that he would just replace me because girls are replaceable in the entertainment business that was a memorable one made me decide to make myself irreplaceable but i think what really moved the needle for me and ultimately led me to create the priyanka chopra foundation for health and education and around the same time partner with unicef was an encounter with my housekeeper's daughter about 12 years ago i came home from set early one day and she was sitting in my library reading a book and she must have been eight or nine years old and i knew she loved reading so i asked her i was like this is i mean

24:06 it's a weekday why aren't you in school and she said oh i don't go to school anymore. so i went and asked her mother and i said you know why isn't she in school and her mom said that her family couldn't afford to send her and her brothers to school so they chose the boys the reason she would eventually get married and it would be a waste of money i was completely blown and it shook me to my core eventually i decided to cover the cost of her education so that she could continue to learn because education is a basic human right

24:52 and a huge necessity especially today from that point on i was determined to make a difference in as many children's lives as i could in whatever big or small way that i could contribute there's a really really beautiful quote that i read recently and i think it's absolutely appropriate to say to explain what i'm trying to say today the hand that rocks the cradle the procreator the mother of tomorrow a woman shapes the destiny of civilization such is the tragic irony of fate that a beautiful creation such as a girl child is today one of the greatest concerns facing humanity [Music] girls have the power to change the world

25:40 it is a fact and yet today girls are more likely than boys never to set foot in a classroom despite of all the efforts and progress made over the last two decades more than i'm just going to give you a stat more than 15 million girls of primary school age will never learn how to read or write compared to 10 million boys primary school it's the beginning of our future over the last 11 years i have witnessed first hand the incredible work that unicef does for children around the world especially victims and survivors of child marriage displacement war sexual violence but there is still so much work to do and for me that is the fuel to my fire

26:26 the reason i am so committed to this cause and that is where my passion stems from because i know that a girl's education not just empowers families but communities and economies a result of her education we all do better it's just as simple as that as entertainers and influencers sitting in this room i feel that it's our social responsibility to be a voice for the voiceless which is why i applaud each and every woman in this room for being such a badass for using your platform and your voice to contribute to change and for ensuring that there is not even one lost generation as long as we are alive i'd like to thank variety and all of you

27:12 for encouraging me and all of us in this room to keep going and fighting on thank you so much