Toast Masters Speech: Get to the point: [Being Purposeful]

Being Purposeful

Mr. Toastmaster

Ladies and Gentleman

My Speech today would be about “Being Purposeful”. You know it is amazing how much information you can get from a dictionary,

Purpose when used as a Noun is an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions. The key word here is “an anticipated outcome”.

When used as a Verb, Purpose is to Propose or intend or to Reach a decision

The key word is to reach a “to reach decision”

My purpose tonight is to follow up on my Bucket List Speech which I have given previously and to try my very best to suggest a way of living that will give more juice to your life.

My outcome would be that each and every person in this room would know the importance on being purposeful and how to really achieve that habitual quality.

After this speech 3 questions that would be answered and they are

1)      As an individual what does being purposeful mean?

2)      What can the habit of being purposeful do to your life as a whole?

3)       What can the habit of being purposeful do to an organization that put this practice at heart?

If I ask you to rate your life, honestly from the scale of 1 to 10, 1 being that life suck and 10 being that life is amazing and if you were to live it again you would do it one thousand times all over. What is the rating that you would put on your life now?

Can I have a show of hands from the people who want their life to be at 10?

For those of you who have rated your life as 10, congratulations because there are not much people who are satisfied with life, but if you have rated your life as a 10, have you tried to ask for feed back from your friends or family members that if they were to live your life what would their rating be?

For those who have rated their life to be below 5, have you ever stop to wonder why, and to really devise a plan on how to make your life to be at 10? Each and every one of us has been given 24 hours a day, why do some people achieve more than others? It definitely cannot be some kind of special physical ability to refrain from sleeping; well then what is it that makes the achievers seem to have an edge to life. And how do we get the edge?  

Part of the solution to this is in understanding on the concept of “Being Purposeful at every moment of your life”. This concept is what enables the quality time that you will enjoy with your spouse, children, family, friends and collogues. This concept is what that would have your career be fulfilling.

Have you ever set a new years resolution to spend more time with your parents, or perhaps to spend more time with a particular group of friends? Well how did it go? I am very certain that for some of you it didn’t go well, cause when you are with them, your physical body is there but your mind would be thinking of so many other things and as a result of this you didn’t manage to achieve that new year’s resolution at all. Have you ever stop to wonder why is this always a re-occurring pattern? Let me ask you one question?

What is the purpose of spending more time? Think about it, some of you may argue so that I can have more quality time with them, ever stop to wonder what quality time means for both for you and the participants of your so called quality time sessions?

It is not about spending more time; it is about your commitment to them when you are physically with them. At the moment when you are with your parents or with your friends you need to decide your intended outcome, if your outcome is to have a good time while you are spending time with them, then you need to summon all your strength and might to the commitment of creating a good time. You will know that you have achieved this outcome, when you look at their faces, this my friend is the essence of quality time.

To have a fulfilling life you need to decide on what intended outcome you want from each moment in life, and commit yourself to creating that outcome, that is the concept of being purposeful.

The concept of being purposeful applies to work as well, if you are there typing a mail or if you are there building a particular software, have you ever stop to ask what is my purpose in creating this software? I am not sure how many of you have experience this, when we collect requirements from users, they will tell us what they want, but we are the ones who is liable with the responsibility to create software tools to fulfill user’s needs, so do you create what they need or do you create what they think they want?

Imagine if we could create what the users need and not what they think they want, not only will the users benefit from the creation of better software, but we as the individual would gain powerful consultation skills a.k.a. genuine working experiences, because when it comes down to experience of work, it is not about the years you put in to the industry but more about the work you have done. If you do genuine and honest work, you will build genuine and marketable skills.

Imagine if we were to put this as one of the organizations core value and every one is to operate from this value, imagine the amount of things we could achieve as an organization.

There is this book that I am reading now called “Chasing Daylight” Written by Eugene O Kelly. This author is the CEO of KPMG, one of the big 4 accounting firms of the world, he is infected with brain tumor, and was told he have 3 months to live, and in these 3 months he have written this book.

There was one section in the book where he talked about life in KPMG, as a highly stressed environment where work life balance is impossible, and people are leaving the company because of the sheer amount of stress and work, at that time being the CEO of KPMG, he wanted to take up this challenge on creating a profitable & competitive company in which it’s employees are having fulfilling careers & at the same time achieving work life balance, he wanted to leave a legacy in his tenure as a CEO.

He resorted to hire training consultants to seek advice on how to go about this issue. The consultants gave training to the staff and to all the senior management of the company, and he remembered vividly in one of the training sessions where the consultant talk about the meaning of commitment.

Because in a company how people access commitment of staffs is via the hours they put in to work, and because of this the staff would want to project that image of being highly dedicated to work by slogging in the hours, this is a wrong perception of commitment.

Commitment shouldn’t be measured by time, and if you subconsciously measure commitment by the hours you put into work, then the culprit behind the reason why you are not having work life balance is your subconscious believe and the company that is to be blamed.

The trainer that is hired by KPMG challenge the organization to measure commitment by accessing the outcome of the work that is completed. Because the point of an organization is to acquire profit by getting things done, so it is only appropriate that we measure commitment by work achieved and not by the hours of work that is put in.

Doing this would also have the staff focus more on doing real work rather than putting in more hours.

It is important that you decide each and every outcome you want in the moments of your life, not because time is precious but rather life is precious, and life is precious because we all have a shelf life. To put more juice in our life we need to create more memorable moments.

Thank You.

Organized Speech - The Bucket List

Mr. Toastmaster

Ladies and Gentleman

Today I will be talking to you about bucket list. Does any one know what a bucket list is?

Can I have a show of hands, who have watched “The Bucket List” Movie? This movie is about 2 old man, who have got cancer, and they are only given 3 months to live. With this they started to write out a list of things to do before they die.

Do you have a bucket list?

You see Bucket list is just one of the mechanics for us to discover the purpose of life. I cannot stress enough on to the importance of this Authentic Question “What is the purpose of My Life?” What is the reason for being? [Pause 2 seconds]

What are you going to tell your children or the young ones in your family when they ask you what should they do when they grow up?

This is an authentic question that is being studied since the time of Plato and many other philosophers and thinkers before him, from that date till now, this very authentic question is about 2 thousand years old.

6 minutes is impossible for me to tell you about the history and literature on the attempts by thinkers and philosophers who tried to answer this question. I do not have enough time to talk to you about ontology and existentialism.

So I will go directly into one of the mechanics that you can use to discover your life’s purpose. Which is writing your very own “Bucket List”, which is a very simple thing to do, imagine it as just a TODO list but instead for daily, you have it be for your whole life. But if my speech is just to teach you how to write it then it would be shorter than 6 minutes. J

So I will stress the importance of the concept in finding your life’s meaning, which would justify for the exercise of writing and maintaining your life’s bucket list.

You see all of us have a shelf life, some longer some shorter.

My Take on life’s purpose is the picture and film analogy, for example if you have a picture of an axe and a tree, you cannot derive the meaning of the picture, except just naming the content of the picture, but supposing you have a series of picture put together like how a film in a video clip would, then you have a moving movie clip that shows the axe chopping the tree.

Analogous to life is that we have a lot of moments in life and in each moment is rich with certain experiences either good or bad. When we stream all these meaningful moments together at the end of our life, then only could we find out the totality of the meaning of our lives.

But listen and observe, “It is only at the end of our life’s that we stream the moments together that we would be able to derive the meaning of our life’s”. What is the problem in this statement?

Well if your discovery is a positive life’s purpose, then good that now you can rest in peace, but what if your discovery is a negative one? It is too late to make any amendments though, because you are already at the end. Isn’t it a bit scary to only discover the meaning of your life towards the end of it?

In short life is a one way street.

You see discovering life’s purpose is not only important for your self, but also for those whom you are leading. Which means this is important to fathers and mothers, managers, and team leads. The stick and carrot principle does not work any more, I am not sure weather you have notice this or not.

The current generation is motivated based on will. I will prove this by talking about 2 books “A Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor Frankle” , “Drive- By Daniel H. Pink” and about a person John Goddard.

“A Man’s Search for Meaning” has had a big impression on me during my down times. Victor Frankl is one of the surviving prisoner of war in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Germany, during world war 2, he is a father of a family, a loving husband and a psychologist.

Conditions were harsh in the concentration camp, a prisoner could die any day and any time at the whim of the guards. Prisoners are rationed with only 1 piece of bun with a bowl of very diluted soup a day as food, imagine having only that and being forced to do hard labor.

Life expectancy of prisoners were estimated to be 2 weeks, before either they commit suicide, become insane, become sick or killed by the guards. In this circumstances Victor Frankl, see the meaning to his suffering, and he will to live so that he could tell the story and ensure that this inhumane and cruel event in history will never ever repeat itself. Most of the surviving prisoners would either commit suicide in 1 month or would go crazy, because they cannot lead a normal life after the experiences in the camp.  

But Victor Frankl found freedom through thought in the camp, in fact he felt more freedom than the guards. Some of the guards in the camp committed suicide because they felt stuck and find no meaning in the work of torturing the prisoners.

Victor Frankl invented Logos Theraphy, in that he argue that the Abraham Maslow who invented the “Hierarchy of needs” stating that Human beings main motivation is based on the “Will to Pleasure” is inaccurate, because there is also another greater need which is the “Will to Meaning”.

One strong example on how Victor used Logos therapy on his patient was Victor’s account with a patient who had just lost his wife, this patient fell into depression and have no reason for living. Victor ask the patient to find the meaning for his wife’s death. At first it was hard, as the patient kept holding on to the taught that it was unfair, and this shouldn’t happen to him, but when asked again, the person search from the perspective of love. What the person said was “The reason for my wife’s passing is so that she don’t have to bear with the feeling of loosing a love one”, with that the patient not only came out of depression but started to see the meaning for his own suffering.

The reason that I am telling you about Victor Frankl Story is to illustrate that with a clear life’s purpose one actually strengthens one’s spirit, and a strong spirit is important in facing the challenging circumstances of life that will come and knock you off the ground, and I don’t think the challenges of your life would equate to what have been faced by Victor.

The second book,  “Drive- by Daniel H. Pink” have confirmed that people are motivated by “Will to Meaning” one very such example is the case study of Atlassian. The company created a policy which is to allow the 20% of the staff’s daily working hours to choose and work on projects that they love or create the features that they would like to see in the current software system. The finance department was totally against this, because they think that people would take advantage of the allotted 20% time. But it turned out that not only did the programmers did not misuse the 20% time but as a result hundred and hundreds of profitable projects are started by this initiative. You see people don’t need to be hit by the stick and to be shown a carrot to move, you just need to help them realize their potential and purpose, show them, in the scheme of all things, what are the cause and effect of their work’s contribution.

I have shown you books, you may challenge me with the idea that yes the books says that discovery of meaning matters, but does the bucket list mechanism works. Then it is time I tell you about this person “John Goddard”. He have a bucket list which he called it a “Life List” it contains 127 items, when he passed on he achieved out of which he achieved 109 of them. Those were not simple or easy goals. They included climbing the world's major mountains, exploring from source to mouth the longest rivers of the world, piloting the world's fastest aircraft, running a mile in five minutes and reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica." I will choose his top 10 goals that relates to me.

John Goddard’s Goals
No.	Achieved	Goals	Comments
1	Done	Explore Amazon River
2		Climb Mt. Everest
3	Done	Become an Eagle Scout
4		Appear in a Tarzan movie
5	Done	Publish an article in National Geographic Magazine
6		Read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica	(Has read extensive parts in each volume)
7	Done	Light a match with .22 rifle
8	Done	Circumnavigate the globe	(four times)
9		Visit the moon	("Someday, if God wills")
10	Done	Live to see the 21st century

You see the purpose of having a bucket list is that you could use it as a your life’s engineering check list. What you can do or will do is only limited by what you dare to imagine.

A quote by William Jennings Bryan “Destiny is not a matter of chance, but of choice. Not something to wish for, but to attain”. So the bucket list is a great place to start choosing the moments that would lead to your destiny. I urge you to start designing and creating your life now.

Thank You.

I will share with you my Bucket List:-

1) Celebrate 130 Marriage Anniversary with My Wife

2) Earn a Real Estate License

3) Be a real Estate Guru

4) Own 10 Shops to be rented

5) Run a 40 KM marathon

6) Join an Iron Man Competition

7) Earn a Aikido Black Belt

8) Earn a Judo Black Belt

9) Own a property in Perf Australia

10) Earn a Brazillian Jiu Jit Su Black Belt

11) Own 10 Factories to be rented

12) Own 20 Apartments to be rented

14) Want to own a bungalow

15) Learn Carpentry Skills to Build a Rocking Chair

16) Build A Buddhist Temple and Organize a Non Profit Buddhist Organization

17) Be a Manager in an MNC

18) Start a Martial Art School

19) Start a chain of book shops

20) Earn a Cert in CFA

21) Earn a Cert in CPA

22) Be a Master at meditation

23) Become a Speaker teaching values of Mastery and Meditation

24) Have all my family members Learn Martial Arts

25) Start Orphanage Homes

26) Have 5 children’s

27) Earn a PHD.

28) Stay in Tibet for 3 months under the teaching of Dalai Lama

29) Have a conversation with The Pope

30) Start a School

31) Earn a psychology degree

32) Earn a philosophy degree

33) Write 50 books.

34) Be a politician to serve the country

35) Visit the seven wonders of the world

36) Want to own a Hummer Car

37) Live to the age of 150

38) Join a 4 Wheel Challenge

Toastmasters Ice Breaker Speech

- Beginning -

Mr. Toastmaster

Ladies and Gentleman

What would you want you life to be about, when you die one day?

What would you want to be engraved as your epitaph? [Pause 3 seconds]

For me I want it to be, “Here lays a man of power, love and courage”.

Power in that I have the power to influence and inspirer people to be more than who they can be.

Love in that I want people to experience the loving kindness and the goodness of this world.

Courage, in that I want inspire people to stand up for what they believe in and have courage to speak their mind and speak the truth.

6 Minutes is impossible for me to cover everything about myself, so I will focus on 3 related events of my life that have shaped my character and cause me to be who I am today.

The first event of my life was the encounter with a fortune teller when I was age 6. Each and every one of us have our own faiths and believes, some are Muslims, some Christians and some Buddhist, well for my family we are partly Buddhist and partly Taoist. Hence the prophecy of the fortune teller is really taken into serious account.

In a Chinese family back in the 70s and 80s boy were considered pride of the family, and in my family there was only me and my sister, with that my family have high hopes and expectations me, that is the reason they brought me to the fortune teller, but to my parents dismay, the fortune teller said that I would amount to nothing because the markings I have at my face and hands.

At the tender age of 6, I thought to myself well that really suck, I have no choice on how the markings are on my hand and my face, and it is not fair that I have to live my life of no achievements just because of the stamp. [Hit the fist on the Hand]

From there on I have decided that in life I will always end what I started, and I will never, never, never, never give up no matter what. That my friend is the first lesson of my life, to never give up.

The following event that changed my life was when I was 17, right after I graduated from High School, S.P.M, I went straight to work. Guess what I was working as ? [pause 2 second]. I landed a working opportunity as a construction laborer, yes you have guessed it, hard labor under the scorching sun, side by side with the Indonesians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the African Indians, mixing sand with cement, laying bricks, transporting sand and bricks from one location to another. 

I got RM 600.00 as my first month salary, I was ecstatic, high from the abundance felling that I have derived form the amount of salary, but being a good and loyal son, I gave all the money to my mother. Motivated to find more money, I constantly ask myself how can I earn more from this labor job. One day the opportunity came, when the construction site supervisor announce that the site need overtime workers as there is a rush to complete the project, and of course I volunteered immediately.

I started work at 9a.m. till 5 a.m. at the next morning, each day only having 4 hours of sleep, Guest how long I lasted? [Pause 3 seconds] I only lasted for 3 months then I collapsed, this is the time I learned the second lesson of life, “Know your limits”. I asked a stupid question that worked against me.

The tragedy in life is not that you couldn’t find the answer to a question, but rather that you used up all the time in your life concentrating on the wrong question.

I repeat and this is important, listen, “The tragedy in life is not that you couldn’t find the answer to a question, but rather that you used up all the time in your life concentrating on the wrong question.”

Instead of asking how much more I can earn from this labor job, I should ask “How can I use my existing skills and talents to be of service to more people and in turn earn more money”.

Which brings me to the 3 learning event of my life, asking the question about my talents and skills, the only option for me was to expand in them, so that I can be of service to more people, at my time while I graduated from my High School, Information Technology was the thing, it was the trend, there are a lot of job offers under it, and one day as I was listening to the radio, their were airing an advertisement about APIIT open day, so without delaying I went to the openday.

I was really concern about the fact that I am going to learn this new thing, which I was not exposed to, not even when I am in the secondary school, yes, I don’t event know how a mouse looked like, seriously. They staff of APIIT ensure me that that is no issue there is no computing background required, well that is really not true. I remember the first day when the lecture ask us to fill in our email address at the attendance list. At that time I was the first student in the batch to ask the first question, “What is an E-MAIL? Yes that was what I asked, every one laughed, one guy was kind enough to interrupt the class and offered to teach me at break time, he thought me step by step how to create a hotmail account, I am using it until today. I studied earnestly, going to school at 8a.m. in the morning and leaving the college at 8p.m. trying to pick up, trying to chase the rest of the students, guess what, I got a second class upper degree as a result.

The result made me proud and was my pride, I feel proud not because of vanity, not because now that I can use it to compare with other people, but because I have proven the fortune teller wrong, because I have defy fate in my family’s believe and have been victorious against it.

This my friend was the most important lesson of my life, “YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE NO MATTER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES YOU ARE IN !!!”.

When the going gets tough the tough gets going, a person’s true character can only be revealed via challenging circumstances, if you get past an obstacle your capability grows, and the more obstacles you get past the more capabilities you accumulate. The more capabilities you accumulate the more people you can serve, when you can serve a lot of people with your capability then my friend you need not worry about being able to provide for your family.

With this I conclude my speech, thank you.

 - Ending -