The forum featured the first Sri Lankan to conquer Mount Everest, Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala, who spoke about the challenges and adversity she had to overcome to reach her goals and achieve greatness for the country.

The forum comes on the back of new island-wide research conducted by Lanka Market Research Bureau (LMRB) which reveals that when it comes to important things that we want to do on a daily basis, we Sri Lankans make four excuses on average.

The number one reason was ‘lack of time’ mentioned by 80 per cent of respondents, followed by ‘fear of failure’ or ‘doubting the ability to achieve it’ (45 pc), ‘not worth trying’ (38pc) and ‘I don’t know how to do it’ (26pc).

Founder of the Foundation of Goodness, Kushil Gunasekera, said these findings highlight that for the country to move forward everyone needs to work together to inspire Sri Lankans to adopt a positive mindset to achieve their goals.

Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala empathized with the fact that one of the main excuses is “fear of failure”, which should not stop people from trying to fulfil their ambitions.

The Foundation of Goodness works with rural communities and part of their work focuses on helping people overcome their inhibitions, so that they are in the best position to succeed.