Just a quick survey. Who likes competition? I mean: to compete with others. I guess the majority don’t like it. But why is it, we have the best speaker, best in table topics, best evaluator? And, competition is everywhere, at home, in school, in a workplace and even on Facebook. Why it exists even if we don’t like it? Charles Darwin, the one who formulated the “Theory of Evolution”, explained that it is our basic nature as a living organism to compete in order to survive. Thus, whether we like it or not, we need to admit that life is a race. It is either we lead or we follow.
Madam Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters, and guests, good afternoon!
According to Newton’s Law of Acceleration, how fast the object moves depends on two factors: the force applied to the object and the mass of the object.
Likewise, if you want your career or your life to get going, there are two things you need to do:
First, enhance your strength
With a little push, the car moves. Do you think that the same force can move the table? It can’t because the force applied could not compensate for the weight of the table.
And so, if your goal is to become a leader and you believe so difficult to achieve, then, improve your skills, learn more techniques and acquire additional knowledge. These are the ways to enhance your strength and make you stronger. In such a way, you can push your goal with power. Remember, leaders are not born, they are made.
Second, lighten your load.
When I was a kid, it was my daily routine to fetch water from a public faucet into our home. I had 4 containers filled with water. With a purpose of carrying all 4 at one time, I had two on each hand. Since I could not hold the two containers for a long time, I need to stop and relax my hands many times before reaching home. I get used to it until one time my mother saw me, struggling in carrying those containers. She commented, “Ohh no! That’s not the right way of doing it, my boy. Just carry only one container in each hand.” On the next day, I did what she suggested and Yes, she was right, I completed the same task with ease.
It is reasonable to have several goals in life. Goals like to get a good job; to get married and to have kids; to be good looking, to become skinny; to be a public speaker, to become a manager and even a goal to be rich. It is normal to have these. What we need to avoid is to try to achieve all these goals together at one time. We are humans, not machines and so our capacity to do things are limited. With this, we need to focus on one goal at a time.
Applying the law of acceleration into our life would not make us great. It only gives us a way on how to handle our goals and challenges in life at ease. By enhancing our strength, it would make us more efficient to work on the tasks to achieve our goals. And by lightening the workload ensures that we are not overloaded with tasks that would drain our strength to get going.
Fellow Toastmasters and guests, yes, I agree that life is a race. But, we need to understand that whether we lead or we follow does not matter. What matters most is we continue moving until we finish the race. Our ultimate purpose here on Earth is to have life and to survive with others harmoniously in the midst of trials and difficulties that come on our way.
