If you thought it was hard not being the best, or rather being the second best, wait until you discover what it feels like to not even be in the top three.
To cut the long story short – losing sucks! So I am a part of a group called Toastmasters International, which basically is a bunch of people who LOVE to talk and clap. And every year the followers of the cult compete against each other to determine who is the most professional yapper of them all. I usually compete in impromptu speaking category a.k.a thinking fast and talking OR in my case, talking first and thinking later!
The topic at this year’s contest was, “I am different”. Simple enough. But in response to the topic, I froze. In my head , I could view with clarity this ice berg of cold blankness. I talked for about two minutes on the subject uttering the words “different” and “relevant” numerous times, without making any real sense. By the time I left the stage and headed back to my chair, all I could think was – was there enough space to hide under it? I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. I have come up with a hundred ways I could have approached the topic. You know how it is right? You come home and suddenly you can come with all these smart come backs.
While everyone was busy giving me feedback on what I did wrong, there was just one person who asked me as to what ‘I’ thought went wrong.
Here’s what I think it was.
I desperately wanted to win and to that end I tried to come up with a smart speech that would wow people, instead of coming up with an honest response that could be articulated with conviction.
My hunt for relevance that evening, led my speech to be completely irrelevant.
If I could do it again, here’s what I would say:
“Am I different? No!
In fact on the contrary I think I am rather ordinary, very common, very just-like-everyone else. Even in school, I was usually… standing… outside the class. My absence in the class just meant less noise, one less talking drone. Forget being extra-ordinary, sometimes I felt extraneous even amongst the ordinary.
Isn’t that how we all are? Similar. Two eyes, one nose, hopes, dreams and aspirations. Frustrations and disappointments. Small successes, big failures; most of us are pretty much the same. At the very core, in the depths of our heart, we are all the same. So no, I am not different.”
Maybe if I had said this, I would have come home with the gold.
It’s not who we are that makes us different, it’s what we do with our stuff, our lives, our dreams. That determines our destiny.
Zahra Husain likes to live and think in ways she is not supposed to and she blogs at http://www.zahrasays.com