Project 5 - The Persuasive Leader - Are you a DAY DREAMER or an ACHIEVER?

AC - Persuasive Speaking (Project 5)
The Persuasive Leader
September 12, 2008


Introduction

Close your eyes for 5 seconds and think about THE ONE BIG THING that you want to achieve in your lifetime. How many of you want to start your own business or be an executive in a big corporation? How many of you want to travel around & visit places? Now, be frank, how many of you used the 5 seconds that I gave for a short nap (snore here)?

We all have goals to achieve in our life. But, we hardly do anything about our goals. It is like aiming to climb Mt. Everest, but GASPing (demo here) to climb even a staircase. We postpone things to tomorrow. We give ourselves an excuse "I don't have time". But the fact is "WE ARE LAZY".

Lazy to Wash Clothes

At times, we are too lazy to do even simple things... like, washing clothes. During weekdays, you postpone to do the washing over the weekend. The much-awaited weekend comes. You say to yourself, "I will wash clothes as the first thing on Saturday morning". Saturday comes. But, you wake up only around NOON. By the time you have your breakfast it is 3 pm. You get a call from my friend - "Hey! Want to go for a movie, in the evening?" Your mind starts to weigh the options - "Wash & Iron the clothes (or) Watch Iron Man?" Your mouth makes the decision before your mind does. You say, "Yes" for the movie. You convince yourself "I have the whole day tomorrow. I can do the washing on Sunday". Sunday comes & goes. Finally, you postpone doing it, to the next week.

This happened to me once. I had two weeks of dirty clothes piled up like a HUGE mountain. A guest who visited me asked, "Is there a dead rat in this house?" I felt very embarrassed to tell him that I've two weeks of clothes to wash.

Lazy to Prepare for Exams

Let us see what we do in school. When the academic year starts, we all aim to get good grades. But we postpone to prepare for the exams until the VERY last day. Finally, the night before the exam comes. You take your book and start preparing for the exam. You count the number of pages (carefully excluding Table of Contents, Foreword, Index etc.,). You think, "There are 200 pages in this book. I can complete the whole book in 4 hours" You look at the clock. The clock shows 8pm. You start reading.

The clock strikes 10, you had just covered 20 pages and yawned 200 times. You are drowsy. A debate begins in your mind - "Should I continue to read (or) sleep now and get up fresh in the morning and read". Guess what! Sleep wins. Immediately, you close your book and set your alarm clock to ring at 4 in the morning. You get into a deep sleep. Your alarm rings like a SIREN at 4 am. Your eyes are still closed. Your hand searches for the alarm clock & BANG... the alarm clock dies. You say to yourself "Let me sleep for 5 more minutes". You sleep for 5 minutes & wake up again. The clock shows 4.05. You ask yourself "Isn't this alarm clock 5 minutes faster than the clock in the hall?" You go back to sleep again. But, this time you sleep for 2 hours. You get up at 6, scan a few pages from the book and go to the exam. How many of you have had a similar experience?

My Friend's Exam Experience

One of my friends had an interesting experience. He didn't prepare well for the exam. He went to the exam hall. The question paper was distributed. He stared at the questions for 10 minutes. None of the questions looked familiar because he didn't prepare well. He walked to the front and asked the examiner "Sir! Am I in the right exam hall?" The whole classroom laughed.

When are we Lazy?

You may think we are lazy always. But WE ARE NOT. We can watch Olympics overnight in the TV, without even blinking our eyes. We become drowsy only when we read our TEXT BOOKS in the night. We can talk for hours with friends about "how the government should keep the city clean". We become lazy only when we have to spend a few minutes to clean our own bathrooms every week.

Conclusion

Laziness is like taking drugs. It gives you momentary pleasure. But, it ruins your life.

Laziness makes you a daydreamer. Not an achiever. Have you heard about the "Hare & the Tortoise story"? The Hare can run faster than the Tortoise. But, in spite of that, the Tortoise won. Why? The Hare got lazy and decided to take a nap, whereas the Tortoise started to move right away. The Tortoise won the race because it wanted to be an ACHIEVER & not a DAYDREAMER.

Ladies & Gentlemen,

Do YOU want to be a daydreamer or an achiever?