Life Happens

Here's my latest District International Speech Competition Speech:

Life Happens

What is your definition of success? I’ve always believed that success was about helping people and the more people you could help the more successful you could become. So throughout my life I’ve tried to put myself in position to help more and more people so that I could achieve some of that success.

Mr. Contest Master, fellow Toastmasters, and guests, the problem is while I am striving for that success, “life happens.” My career path has gone from former Marine, to ex-disgruntled postal worker, to car salesman. Yes, car salesman...
But I kept believing in myself, in my dream. Sometimes I dreamed just to escape, (while delivering your mail, to your neighbor). But the harder I worked the more Life threw obstacles in my path, and I began to feel like I was becoming a total failure.

Successful author, Napoleon Hill said, “Any thought held and revered in the mind begins at once to clothe itself in the most convenient physical form available.” Thoughts become Things.

I’ve been through so many obstacles in my life, haven’t you? But obstacles don’t stop us, we stop ourselves. We don’t drown by falling in the water, we drown by staying there. We drown by giving up on our dreams. Life happens for a reason. The obstacles that you’ve faced were turning points to keep you on your path.

The obstacles of my life came early. A runaway at the age of 14, I made all the wrong decisions and got all the wrong results. But if weren’t for the obstacles of my youth I’d never have been forced into the Marine Corps… er, I never would have “enlisted” into the Marine Corps. If I’d never “enlisted” into the Marine Corps I never would have met and married my beautiful wife, MaryAnn. After the Marines I spent 7 years as a mailman running from dogs, and during that time I opened a retail business in the Mall, and it did so well I opened another! We worked really hard and were successful, then the economy slowed and my business began to fail. Like a precious crystal vase that slips through your fingers and falls, slow motion, to the floor, I watched my business disintegrate before my eyes. I lost everything. My business, my pride, our home, and I almost lost my family. In the end I packed up my wife and my two small boys, and with nowhere else to go, moved into the one place I never wanted to be, the basement of my mother in law’s house. It was the most crushing, most painful time of my life. (My mother in law wasn’t too happy either.)

But from great pain comes great perspective, and what I didn’t realize then was that I was never supposed to be a retail businessman, but had it not been for the obstacles of my business failure I would have never had to sell cars just to feed my family, and if I’d never sold cars I never would have thought “since I’m speaking to customers all day long, maybe I should look into this thing they call Toastmasters.” All the twists and turns of my life, all of Life’s Happenings, have led me right here, to the platform, speaking to people. After years and years of searching I’ve finally found something that I have a gift for, something that I can use to help people - lots of people.

Will speaking be my way of achieving success? I don’t know that answer. The better question is, will keep me out of my mother in law’s basement?

Think about your life, your successes and how you got where you are today. Your life happens for a reason, the obstacles you face are turning points. Life moves you to your thoughts, your dreams, to what you hold in your mind.

What is it you really, really want? If there is anything in this world you could accomplish, what would it be? As farfetched as it may sound, as crazy as it may seem, and as far away from your dream as you think you are, if you bring that thought to the front, if you hold it in your mind, if you “dream your dream” your obstacles will turn you and move you towards it.

Give it a chance. Believe in this process. See your obstacles as merely turning points and don’t get discouraged. Because the minute you think you are going in the wrong direction …

Life happens.