2015年Toastmasters世界演講冠軍Mohammed Qahtani演講視頻

英文演講稿：

The Power of Words

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What?

Oh, you all think smoking kills? Hahaha let me tell you something. Do you know that the amount of people dying from diabetes are 3 times as many people dying from smoking?

Yet if I pulled a Snicker bar nobody would say anything. Do you know that the leading cause of lung cancer is not actually a cigarette? It’s your DNA.

You could smoke for years and nothing will ever happen to you. This whole war against smoking is just to restrict the farming of tobacco.

Mr. Contest Chair, Fellow Toastmasters and Guests…

I use these arguments, even though I just made them up, with a group of my friends. And the results, 5 of ‘em believed what I said. 2 of ‘em started smoking.

Words when said and articulated in the right way can change someone’s mind. They can alter someone’s belief.

You have the power to bring someone from the slums of life and make a successful person out of ‘em. Or destroy someone’s happiness using only your words.

Does that seem a bit too good to be true?

A simple choice of words can make a difference between someone accepting or denying your message. You can have a very beautiful thing to say but say it in the wrong words and...phew...it’s gone.

I have a son who’s 4, and he had this bad habit of writing on the walls with crayons. And one evening I walked into his room and he’s goin’ at it just writing and drawing and so on, and I said “hey hey, hey hey, hey hey! Are you stupid? Don’t you ever do that again!”

And guess what happened, he did it again. Nobody likes to be threatened, nobody likes to be intimidated. His pride would not allow it. He did it again just to spite me.

A week later I walked into his room and again he’s goin’ at it. And this time he was even lookin’ at me, just…

I came down, I said, “Sweetie, come here. Don’t do that, you’re a big boy now.” And he never did it again, ‘cause his pride wants him to be the big boy.

Have you ever wondered why nobody cares about global warming even though it’s a very serious issue? It could kill all of us.

Because when you go home and you flip on the TV, and you see a scientist trying to talk about global warming, it goes something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see from the graphs here, the temperature for 2014 it shows the water level is rising. This table shows that monodioxic level and the 3rd ozone layer...it’s in an alarming position.”

The message never get across. But most importantly if you are a person who’s a role model, if you’re a person who’s been admired, anything you say could be believed. Anything you utter could be taken as truth.

My friend Nassir, he loved his father. Idolized his father. He would do anything to make him happy.

But his father was the kind of person who’s not easy to impress. And year after year Nassir tried and his father’s like “meh.”

First year in college Nassir got straight A’s. And he thought to himself, “this is it, this what will finally make my dad proud.”

He picked up the phone, he called his dad, “Dad, I got straight A’s. Are you proud? Please tell me you’re proud, father.”

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“Yeah, listen son, I’ll have to call you back. I’m busy.”

“I’m busy” was the single sentence that broke the camel’s back. And he started drinking, doing drugs, hanging out with the wrong crowd.

“Nassir, why? Why are you throwing your life away?”

“If the one person in the world that I care about the most doesn’t care then, then why should I?”

And one evening I got the phone call, Nassir’s in the emergency room. Drug overdose. I rushed to that hospital. I saw him on that bed, and I saw that machine go beep, beep, beeeeeeeep. And I saw doctors try to bring him back to life. “Clear! Pfff, Clear!, Pfff, Clear! Pfff.”

It’s clear that a single word could have saved this life. Words have power. Words are power. Words could be your power.

You can change a life, inspire a nation, and make a...this world a beautiful place. Isn’t that what we all wanted? Isn’t that what we are all in this for?

Your mouth can spit venom, or it can mend a broken soul. Ladies and gentlemen, let that be our goal. (cigarette prop)

Contest Chair...