Let me ask you – how many of us know who what the term NAYSAYER means? A NAYSAYER is a person who is pessimist and sees the dark side of every action.
Everyone in this hall have at least once been broken, demotivated, distraught, torn, teased, and tossed. We at least once questioned our life and existence to the higher force. You would be lying if you say no.
Every successful men and women have questioned life just like us. —— . However, the absolute reason why they are successful and most of the society is not is simply because of one and one simple fact. They identified and ignored the NAYSAYER.
So dear toastmasters and guests. In the next few minutes you will be inspired. You’ll identify this pessimist and I’ll give you reasons to eradicate its negative voice forever.
I’ve enclosed myself within the confines of a room when I’m not working the offices. I’ll appeal to you to question yourself if I may – ask yourself when was the last time someone told you that you cannot do something? When the last time was someone told you in your face that you were dumb right in the face? When was the last time you were bullied for being incapable? Be honest – it’s hard to remember and it does not even matter. Because oh-oh ladies and gentlemen because the NAYSAYER is not the person you are trying to think about or the person you’re competing with or the person you’re trying to come up with a name of. The NAYSAYER is among us. The naysayer is listening to me speak, quietly. The naysayer is now silent. And the NAYSAYER – is YOU. Each one of us is a NAYSAYER. A human voice is just a collection of sound waves that has no meaningful significance if someone calls me dumb, it is me who gives value to the sound wave. But the negativity that we have is the NAYSAYER itself. So now that you have identified the NAYSAYER, let’s compete with it shall we? This time you’re wrong.
Competition is Naysayer’s best friend. I had to compete with several other candidates before I got my job and I had to compete to get my name listed as today’s featured speaker. Yes it gets things done. But is it really competitive out there? I say no it is not. The world is easy – competition is just a hoax that our parents and society installed into our minds. And the installed file is a big hit. Competition is surprisingly restraining us from getting a true feel and it’s not making us productive and efficient. People who do extremely well – do you know why they’re successful? There’s only one formula. It’s not because they have a better thinking capability or they can just handle pressure really well. Steve Jobs was successful not because he was good with computers but because he took the risk to try to sell something that did not even exist! It was not because some other guy in a tech company was doing better than him. If Steve Jobs thought that was a competition, he would be working somewhere in a cubicle taking orders and printing papers rather than changing the world. Even the best speakers in Toastmasters – a few who are even present here in this room right now – it’s not because they believe in speaking better than a fellow toastmaster that they succeed – it’s because they believe in crafting their speech better than what they spoke in previous projects. Better leaders, better speakers and better people – they’re good only because they do not adapt to everybody around them. Better people know that adapting is suicidal because when you adapt, you become like everybody else. Change weaknesses in your heart – not perceptions. When you win over the naysayer that’s sitting here right now listening to this speech – you automatically win the world.
The moment you realize that it’s about you and only about you – the next thing you should do is fairly simple. Eradicate the stupid story you keep telling yourself that you can’t do stuff. Remove the voice from your head that says you need permissions to do well in life. Your heart is weak, and weakness is a sign of negativity and that is where the NAYSAYER resides. Tell your heart to relax and use your head – always remember, the only person you should be better than is the person you were yesterday. Forget about everybody else. And, whenever you’re about to do something you’re afraid of and your heart beats like crazy and its telling you don’t do it, always repeat these 6 words – what’s the worst that could happen? What’s the worst-that-could-happen? And just ignore the naysayer, and live it on.
Over to you, Toastmaster.
