Jamie Oliver’s Global Seasoning

Every so often I’m totally blown away by someone who is so passionate about changing the world that they go out there and really make it happen. This week I saw the most inspirational video that I’ve ever seen but why I find it inspiring is not because of it’s message, but because it was a perfect example of how one person can change the world. I’m talking about Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize Award speech.

I’ve been a huge fan of Jamie’s since I first saw his cooking shows on TV from his days as the Naked Chef. I’ve always thought cooking was such a chore and in his programs he just simplified everything and actually made it look fun. Love his work! From there he branched out with a couple of more shows but soon found himself in the business of food by starting up his pet project Fifteen. For those of you who don’t know, the Fifteen project takes 15 young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds and trains them in the restaurant business. It’s a really inspiring project and I guess it marked the beginning of Jamie’s world changing efforts.

After the success of the Fifteen project Jamie started to move into bigger things. In 2005 he embarked upon a program called “Jamie’s School Dinners” which was all about changing the way school children ate while in school. The food they were serving in canteens at schools was very unhealthy and Jamie wanted to shift people’s thinking to get them to start serving healthy meals. Jamie faced a LOT of resistance and it was amazing to see that even some parents couldn’t care less about what their children were eating. Jamie triumphed in the end and the British government agreed to address the issue on a national scale. Kids all around England are now starting to see the importance of healthy eating because Jamie stood up for something he believed in.

Following A few more projects on healthy eating, Jamie went over to America to see if he could tackle the same obesity related health problems. “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” is an eye opening confrontation of the realities of the world that we are just not caring about what we eat and it has turned into a real problem over in America. Some of the stats that he talks about in his TED Prize video are quite alarming. e.g. more people are dying in the US through diet related causes than homicide! Also I’ve never seen kids not know what basic vegetables are. It just totally blew my mind the lack of basic education in the world today. What are parents doing???

The reason why I love Jamie’s efforts is that he is a clear example of one person who looked beyond the realms of their job. He’s a trained chef and he can cook up a storm but he didn’t just stop there. He looked towards developing a message and then forming a big picture idea. Imagine if you did that in your job? Success guru Robin Sharma always talks about the concept of “Leading without Title” and Jamie is the perfect example of that.

So going back to TED. For those of you who dont’ know, TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and is an organisation dedicated to spreading ideas that change the world. Each year they reward someone who has a wish to change the world with a cash prize of $100,000 and a forum to speak at the annual TED Conference to highlight their wish. This year Jamie won the prize and his wish was:

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity...”

Real world changing stuff. Jamie’s prize speech totally blew me away. His message was already strong but the way he delivered it was just amazing. For those 20 minutes he was on stage, he really changed the world for the 1000s who attended and through natural justice, that passion will spill out to the networks of each one of those people and conversations start to happen and ideas begin to form. It’s a beautiful process.

Anyway without further ado this is the clip of his TED Prize Speech:

One thing I really took away from Jamie’s speech is his level of passion about this topic and it got me thinking, what if you could bring that level of passion into anything that you did and hence appears this week’s challenge.

I challenge you to bring the same level of passion that Jamie has into something that you do. So if you’re in sales I want you to sell like you were on the world stage. If you’re a writer, then write as though you were addressing the world. Do something different in your meetings to make things more interesting and the discussion livelier. No matter who you are and what you do I want you to bring some amazing passion into some element of your day to day job for the entire week and see the results that it brings you. Let me know how you go by posting a comment below.

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

p.s. For my readers in the USA, please help Jamie out with his crusade by signing his American Food Revolution petition. Help him make kids live longer so they can continue to Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

Author: AJ Kulatunga

Category:

dream, build, jamie oliver, food revolution, TED, TED Prize, passion