All my motivational words speeches, will be split into distinct pages when it gets too big.

Do Good not Evil

(26 june 2018)

Do Evil or Good have a place in humour?

What's the difference between the two? Which one is better suited for a joke?
There probably must be benefits and downsides to using each one of them.

A woman walks into a library, asking the librarian for books on paranoia.
The librarian replies: They're right behind you!

Who decides what is Evil and what is Good in a joke?
Is there an ethics commite that gathers each year to discuss which actions are just and which are unjust?
A group of Judges? Politicians? Some religious group? Maybe an old manuscript?
Or simple people maybe?

A blonde and a redhead have a ranch. They have just lost their bull. The women need to buy another, but only have $500. The redhead tells the blonde, "I will go to the market and see if I can find one for under that amount. If I can, I will send you a telegram." She goes to the market and finds one for $499. Having only one dollar left, she goes to the telegraph office and finds out that it costs one dollar per word. She is stumped on how to tell the blonde to bring the truck and trailer. Finally, she tells the telegraph operator to send the word "comfortable." Skeptical, the operator asks, "How will she know to come with the trailer from just that word?" The redhead replies, "She's a blonde so she reads slow: 'Come for ta bull.'"

You see, evil and good are both human inventions. Used to give meaning to different actions.

Humour is a great example of intermixed good and evil notions. The punch line is never known. The intention is to change the perspective and worldview by making people laugh.

And God said to John, come forth and you shall be granted eternal life. But John came fifth and won a toaster. Henceforth he was known as John the Toastmaster.

And he has had many speeches since then.

Mastering Anything with Consistency

Who doesn't want have a great life? We often envy successfull people wishing we had the same luck.

Can anyone achieve success or fame that easily by just having some good luck?
Everything in life built upon hard smart work.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. One step at a time with consistency.

Beginner

Science tells us that we need around 66 days to form a new habit.
This is VERY important to know. If that behaviour or habit gets interrupted then you need to start al over.

The first hours and first steps in ANYTHING are crucial.
At the beginning, our brain doesn't have anything to relate a new concept or idea to. This means it's working hard to make connections by using a lot of energy.
We get distracted easily.
When learning something new we need to focus 100%.

How can we achieve 100% focus? We need to plan our time dedicated to each task.
Spending 1 hour a day to master a given subject is better than spending 8 hours on saturday or sunday.

Consistency is the key to beginning any skill.

Midway

You've read a few books, followed some tutorials, did some courses. You've ammased the basics.
But what do you do now? At this point, most people get lost. If consistency hasn't rooted in they won't know what to do next.
Experimentation is the answer.
Try new things, combine ideas, just keep the consistency of 1 hour a day even if you don't feel much improvement.
The improvement will be visible in time.

Mastery

A master in any field has spent somewhere near 10.000 hours working on his skill. This is not a mythical number. It's rooted in reality of becoming an expert.

For 1 hour a day it will take 28 years before you become an expert in any given field. If you feel overwhelmed then you can speed up the process by spending more time.
3 hours per day results in 9 years. If you would work full time you can achieve this in 5 years.
It's possible you won't need to become an expert in that field, so a few thousand hours will suffice.

There is a saying

Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

Don't forget to stick to 66 days of uninterrupted daily work to hardwire your brain. If you don't have 1 hour a day, 30 or even 15 minutes will do it.

Thank you. And good Luck.

We all have 24 hours a day

(Presented on 13th March)

We all have 24 hours a day.

Everyone has the same amount of time. Not more or less.

Some say that time is money, but is time really equal to money?

Money can be made and squanderd (lost). Lost time can never be regained again.
So in this context we can easily come to the conclusion that time is MORE valuable than money.

Time, is the most important asset we have.

You see, Today is the tommorow you didn't plan for yesterday.
Without planning, we have procrastination. and we all know that procrastination is the number one enemy of time.

How can we use time and propper planning to our advantage?   

The first thing we need to do before we can answer this question is to analyze the statistics.
How much time do we spend on which activities.
It's estimated that a person "wastes" around 7 years and 8 months watching TV in their whole lifetime.
Social media takes 5 years and 4 months.
By comparison Eating and drinking takes 3 years and 5 months.
And real life socializing takes 1 year and 3 months.

What could you do in 5 years and 4 months if you spent your time on other activities?
We could read 3000 books and watch 1600 documentaries.
Or you could walk the great wall of china 3.5 times. The length of the wall is 21.000 Km.
This means you would walk for 7 hours a day and still have plenty of time for other activities!

To use time to our advantage we need 3 things:
First we need to plan our free time.  This includes breaks, sport, holiday, socializing.

Then we need to plan our uninerrupted focus time. This is the time we use to study and work.

And lastly, we need to Decide what's important in life and try to do one thing at a time.

Planning and prioritizing can help us achieve most of our 24 hours.

I propose to all of you to take the time and read a book written on this subject.
It's only 70 pages long and it can be downloaded for free from the Gutenberg project.
It has been written more than 110 years ago but it still very accurate.
The book is entitled " How to live on 24 hours a day" by Arnold Bennett.

Compliments

This was My first Motivational Words speech ever, presented on 30th of January.

As the Godfather used to say

“I’m going to make you a compliment you can’t refuse”

But what is a compliment?

Well it’s moderate mix between praise, congratulation and encouragement.

But compliments don’t have to be about abstract notions. They can also be about appearances, things we own or accomplishments.

Mark Twain said that he could live for two months on a good compliment.

This can only mean that good compliments help our self esteem.

But why is it that we rarely compliment others?

Unfortunately, it’s not something we have learned. It’s quite the opposite. We can easily point out the things we don’t like but it becomes much harder to say the things that we do like.

Another thing is that we’re afraid that it might sound dumb or embarrass us.

Do not despair there is a solution.

Alan Pease said that there are 4 components of a great compliment:

First call the other person’s name to get his or her attention.

Second deliver the compliment.

Third continue by giving a short explanation of why you like it.

The last step is to ask an open ended question about the thing you’ve complimented.

Then the other person will probably start talking and revealing information about themselves.

This way it’s less likely to have the other person dismiss your compliment.

Hey John, I really like your new watch. It’s elegant yet simple. What made you chose this one?

So now I’ve shown how “to make a compliment you can’t refuse”.

Now it’s your turn.

Thank you

Hey toastmasters, I really like your meetings, because they’re fun and timely.

Why do you come here every week.

[name], I like your [x], because of [y]. Open ended question about it.