5th March 2024 5 min read
It’s hard to take that first step. I never thought I would procrastinate so much. Months and years have slipped by and I have not attained many things that I had set out to achieve.
To continue like this, I can only be good at one thing – day dreaming. Even my cats are living a purposeful life, one scouting for intruders like cockroachess and rats and making it a success.
The other lying on the couch, inspiring me to chill in this hurried, harried life.
I remember the most important slogan that I did not act on;
Nike said, “Just Do It!” This short, sharp, and succinct command reverberates in. my mind every night.
So here, I am, coming up with a short speech for my speech contest.
A speech with a purpose; it is about not delaying what you have set out to do. It is about procrastination. It is about the obstacle in my path; in this case, the obstacle to improving public speaking.
My friend had threw me this challenge to join the contest and I avoided it like a plaque because of laziness, uncertainty and fear. I gave the excuse of going away but deep down, I wanted to try but my devil’s advocate said, “Give up! There are too many obstacles “
My secret reasons;
Laziness because it involves mental work, coming up with a title, collecting evidence to support the speech and writing a persuasive one.
There. is so much to contend with. already daily but I know that I can do it if I only get started.
Uncertainty because I have not done project speeches for eons and the skills have been placed on the back burner. To warm them up again requires effort.
Fear because of performance anxiety, discomfort being scrutinised by the audience and the fear of losing my words .
Nike called again in my mind;
Just do it! If not now, when?
Do you want to return all the skills to TM like your language learning? Do you want to slip back into a loss of self confidence?
Do you want to be a scaredy- cat always?
What’s there to lose?
To err is human.
So I wrote this speech in 5 minutes because of Nike. This speech contest has started me on another resolution that’s been in Cold Storage – reactivating, rehearsing and reliving my love of a foreign language.
In fact, it had started me on a long list of things I wanted to do ;
1 To embark on a new skill in my career
2 To spruce up my practice so I can hand over to younger people and retire partially
3 To read more so that I can imbibe wisdom from books and live wisely
4 To find more meaning in my life
I find that being able to achieve is a habit, it is not an endowment from Heaven. If you do something enough times, it just gets easier. Procrastination is a bad habit. Persistence is a good habit.
A Case in point
When I wanted to improve my Mandarin, it presented as an obstacle because my mind thinks so.
The mass of words looked formidable not to mention the phrases which I needed to check up constantly for its meaning and pronunciation.
Somehow due to a deep seated passion, I struggled with its constant reading and now the mass of words does not hinder me so much anymore. Rather it is. the choice of topics to read that takes my time.
This makes me realise; We set up the obstacles ourselves. We need to just do it. A habit to keep working at it until the obstacles disappear whether it is laziness, uncertainty or fear .
