Here are some of my notes from a toastmasters CC10 speech I completed recently. This is not my speech, but rather an altered version to make it more suitable for reading. This was the basis for my Toastmaster International Speech Contest Speech

When I was in school they gave out participation awards at swimming carnivals. I remember participating in the 50 metre butterfly event; one of the most exhausting swimming strokes. So I entered the race and swam the best I could. As I flailed my way through the pool I eventually made out what looked like the wall - so I mustered what was left in my tank and sprinted to the wall. As I lifted my head up in pure ecstasy ready to celebrate my achievement, I realised this was a 25 metre pool, I had only completed half the race. I did the only logical thing that I knew. I gave up and yet somehow managed to collect that participation award.

Fellow swimmers, guests and contest chair. What exactly is success? what exactly is failure?

Since my participation award over 10 years ago, a generation has past and now people in their 20’s and 30’s have innovated and changed the world! From our smart phones to of course social media, the Twitters, Facebook and Instagram. The excellent thing about all this is now we can of course measure how the next generation of 11 year olds measure success - like my younger cousin. All we have to do is go on your favourite social media app of your choice and search “#Yolo” (you only live once) and you will discover what exactly is success in their eyes:

My history exam is tomorrow and I haven’t studied #YOLO

As you can all now appreciate, when success is anything at all;

  • not finishing your swimming race

  • not studying for your history exam

Then we can all label ourselves to be extremely successful!

You may think these are all contrived situations - we’re describing the world of children after all. But what about the last time a project which was an obvious disaster was in fact labelled as a testing and learning opportunity, or even more commonly a politicians' policies and budget measures which are always a success, at least compared with the previous budget or policy.

The reality is, that by defining success to be anything at all, we have placed ourselves in a situation which is in fact worse than failure.

I myself have been exposed to this rather unusual habit of redefining words in order to reduce the negative connotations and thus creating this false illusion of success. Imagine for a moment that you were to write a report outlining the problems which exist in perhaps a system or processes. Now imagine how you might rewire this problem to be a success. All we have to do is the change a single word:

  • Problem

We can instead call it a challenge, an opportunity, and now, we have altered this thing to from being some ghastly and need of replacement and urgent attention, to be instead elevating it to the realms of success. Something which we can aim to improve.

Perhaps the true way to be successful is to think critically and retrospectively about how we label and redefine success. Afterall,

That boy with the participation award - despite what is written on it has still never swam 50 meters butterfly.

Or that young girl - who was emulating the ideals of “seizing the day” will probably be thoroughly disappointed next week, when the history results come back.

Maybe those aren’t really indications of how to be successful. But instead, next time when you’re quick to label or redefine something as a success be sure to ask yourself:

have I defined success to be … doing anything at all?

by asking and answering that very statement is how you will be truly successful.