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Friday, June 13, 2008

My BFF

This past Wednesday was my most recent Toastmasters meeting. I had the opportunity to prepare a speech for this meeting and took the chance to try out a newer style of speech and speaking. Many of you have commented and shared your stories when I had previously posted on topics such as Faith, Dreams and Imagination, so I took this new found confidence on fairly vague yet inspirational subjects and used it!

In my speech, I talked about my BFF...best friend failure! Yes, I talked about failure! But I talked about it in a positive light. Now, when I teach classes I always emphasize that no matter how much my students might learn from me or from each other, it isn't until things go wrong that they will truly learn the lessons. I point out how failure can be turned around into success and how I have learned many things through failure.

It was a great speech, and now I have to work on actually writing it out. You see, when I create a speech, I tend to write out my opening and my conclusion, but everything in the middle are bullet points that I expand upon. But now, I think this might become a contest speech and I would like to have it written out...

Anyways, once I write it I will post it here, but until then...how to you get past failure? Do you pick yourself up and try again, or do you just leave it behind you and not look back?

3 comments:

Eva said...

Not to be a bummer in the first comment, but my marriage was a failure. To my credit, I tried everything I could think of to save it, but the other half of the equation didn't work on it. So I am moving on, trying to learn from it in some way. And trying not to remain too sour on love and relationships in the process. I think failure is a good thing as long as you tried your best to succeed. Does that make sense?

Matt said...

That absolutely makes sense. Yes, it might have failed, but you tried to make it succeed, and after it was over you learned something, grew in someway. So in that sense, to me it wasn't a total failure.

sari said...

well, all failures help you learn. I think that my BIGGEST mistake in life (and that mistake, truly, in the grand scheme of things, is not that big of a deal) led to my moving to Arizona where I met my husband and now have my three boys, so it turned out for the best.

you just have to slog through the crappy parts, right? ha ha

I'm looking foward to the non-bulleted speech.