In February 2016, an extraordinary group of students and I (much less extraordinary), organised what is now known in our college as the Business Day. We invited past WIT alumni to return to WIT and talk to a room of 150 students and inspire them to be ambitious by talking about how they have gotten to where they are today after they graduated from WIT. One speaker who has gone from success to success gave a presentation, from which I am "borrowing" the title. Why? Because she taught me that while you succeed in one area, you can fail in another, and if you learn from your failures you will go on to great things. "Who is she?" you may ask. All I'll say is that persistence and infectious optimism is her secret weapon.

It is day 6 of fund raising and already competition is fierce. I currently stand on €200 donated and I owe a huge thank you to all who have donated thus far, every euro will make a huge difference. My "fist pumps" are credited to the challenge set; for every €1 donated before the 1st December, I will have to do one rep of 70 kg in training. This brings me on to my first "f*ck up". I initially started out wanting to do €1 = 1 squat rep of 70 kg. I began training to prepare for this challenge on Monday 14th, and before long I realised that my goal was much too ambitious. With only two and a half weeks to be ready, I simply do not have enough time to be fit enough to squat 70 kg for 200 reps. My tail between my legs and my ego bruised, I changed one detail; deadlifts instead of squats. While I am currently not able to do 70 kg deadlifts for 200 reps, it is feasible to become fit enough to do so with the time that I have to prepare.

And so I returned to the gym and started training. As I write this I can tell you, I am happy I am sitting down, as I have never been so sore from training in my life. But as I keep telling everyone: #ThisIsForTheKids.

"Train for Temple Street" is the name to my fund raising campaign, and describes exactly how I intend to, not only reach my target of €1,000, but to "crush it" in the words of Gary Vaynerchuk. You might be asking, Why did I decide to take this approach to my 100minds journey? The answer is that I may not have ever been a patient in Temple Street Children's Hospital, but I can relate to the children in their care.

When I was 14 I was diagnosed with Scoliosis, a condition were my spinal chord grew in an S shape, as opposed to the regular straight line. The reasons why this happens is still unclear to the experts in the area, and so my family and I just had to accept the situation we found ourselves in. I had an operation to correct my condition, where a surgeon opened my back and attached a metal rod to my spine. The recovery process took a full year until I was fully healed, and involved almost 2 weeks being bed ridden in hospital. I was unable to walk on my own until 3/4 weeks post-op.

The time I spent in hospital is only a fraction of the time the children spend in Temple Street, and I can tell you, despite the hospital staff and your family's efforts to make the stay in hospital as comfortable as possible, it is truly one of the toughest things I have ever gone through, so I can only imagine how these children feel.

The first event in "Train for Temple Street" will be "Shane's Train". I will be sending messages around to my networks asking people to donate online to my 100minds profile. On the 1st December I will put 70kg (my body weight) on a bar and deadlift 1 rep for every €1 donated up to that date. So if €100 is donated by 1st December then I must deadlift 100 reps of 70 kg in one session, and so on. I will video the session and put the video up on my 100minds account and all social medias attached, for all to see.

The next event planned for the "Train for Temple Street" campaign will take place in the 3rd week of January. This will be a competition held in a local gym, where I will organise teams to take part in the competition. It will be 3 people per team and the competition will be a timed circuit training, so the team members will train the circuit and the team who achieves the fastest time on the day will win the prize. I will contact local businesses to sponsor the prize for the event that the winning team receives. Each team member will be given a sponsorship card to raise donations from their network as well as collecting donations on the day, from those who are watching the competition.

I will be updating regularly on:

Facebook: Train for Temple Street: https://www.facebook.com/trainfortemplestreet/?fref=tsInstagram: trainfortemplestreet LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/shanephillips15

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence" - Hellen Keller