2006/11/07 John's A4 Speech

Speech title: An optimist

Speech Project: the moral of the story(A4)

Time limit: 4 to 6 minutes

A person who is optimistic is an optimist. On the contrary, a person who is pessimistic is a pessimist. Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist sees the donut. A pessimist sees nothing but the hole of the donut. An optimist sees the sweetness of the chocolate. A pessimist sees only the calories of the chocolate. Ladies and gentlemen, do you believe your attitude can change your life?

John is one of my best friends. He is also a member of toastmaster club somewhere in this island. John is an excellent speaker and optimist. Actually, he is an incredible nature-born optimist. John was born in a poor family. When he was still a little John, all the kids in the family could only get red eggs as birthday gifts. When John’s sister received a red egg on her birthday, she cried because other kids in the neighborhood got more and better gifts on their birthday. However, when John received his birthday gift, still a red egg, a weird thought came to his mind. “Where there is an egg, there must be a chicken! My mother must have prepared a fried chicken dinner for me”. Neither John nor his sister had the fried chicken dinner on birthday. But John was happily waiting his fried chicken, his sister was crying on birthday.

As I mentioned earlier, my friend John is now an excellent speaker. But he wasn’t a nature-born speaker. He really sucked before. He blew up his very first formal presentation when he studied at the graduate school in National Taiwan University. It was in a big conference room, all the people in the graduate school, the professors, all the PH.D candidates, his classmates and including a beautiful girl who John had admired for a very long time were all there. And John was going to present his research in two years to all of them. He had prepared a 30-paged material and the time limit was 15 minutes. When he got on the stage and looked at the audience, he saw nothing but hundreds of eyes staring at him. At the moment he knew he would be finished because he was totally frightened by the audience. The air was shattering and he was stuttering. Then he started mumbling. After ten minutes, he was still on page 2. When the time was up, John only finished 3 pages of his 30-paged material. John was defeated from head to toe in the presentation.

After the presentation, my friend John was very sad. He might loose the respect of his classmates, the trust of his professor, the beautiful girl’s heart and even worse, his master degree. It was all because of his bad performance in the presentation. But I told you he’s a nature-born optimist. Only after one day, another weird thought came to his mind. “Can it be worse? No, this is the worst result of a presentation. And if it can not be worse, I can only be better next time!” After he got straight of this, John was happy again. Because he’d been through the worst, it can only be better next time. He started working really hard for his next presentation. He believed that it could only be better next time because he got nothing to loose. At last, he succeeded in his next presentation, earned his master degree and won the beautiful girl’s heart as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, have you been through setbacks which may change your life? If you have one next time, please calm down first and then think what will happen. If it is not the worst, congratulate to you my friends, because it is not the worst. And if you’re in the worst shape, congratulate to you my friends, because it can not be worse. It can only be better next time. Work harder on it, and then you will win the victory eventually.

Toastmasters!