This I Believe Outline (Half Speech)

How many of you wake up and feel extremely accomplished when you tie your shoes? (Pause) Yeah, me neither. That’s because it was not very challenging. There was no struggle. There was no inward drive forcing you to complete this task, pushing you to succeed in the face of adversity. Now, while many of you might say that “the struggle was too real” while coming to class today, I’m sure that it was not the hardest thing you’ve done all month. I believe that challenge breeds excellence. Without facing a challenge that has the ability to break me, I never feel fully satisfied when coming out successful. If you look back on your life and think about all of the times that you really wanted something so badly, that you trained and pushed yourself to your limit in preparation for this endeavor, that is when you felt true success. I came across a quote by an unknown author that stated, “If you don’t lose, you can’t respect winning. If you don’t fail, you can’t respect success. If you don’t struggle, you can’t honor life.” In other words, our growth as humans is dependent on the challenges we face. In my opinion, people don’t change when they’re doing something menial such playing PlayStation games or watching Friends on Netflix. People change in the moments when they are forced to focus or quit. An instance where I realized this in my life was during my freshman year when doing a calculus assignment at 2 am during my second month of college. This was after the initial high school superstar drive wore off and layers were peeling off to a point where I began to run out of steam. Then I thought to myself, “I want to quit and just be done with this forever. I’m miserable.” Afterwards I thought to myself, am I going to throw away my future because I’m uncomfortable and want life to be easier? Or am I going to become stronger and rise to the challenge?” To emphasize, Nelson Mandela said it quite clearly. He stated, “There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”