Inspiring Lives: Fine What You Love

I am honored to be with you today, at one of the finest organization in the world. Today I want to tell you two stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just two stories…

The First Story Is About Connecting The Dots

Back on my elementary days my teachers always named as the most talkative pupil in their class. I always talk to my classmates; I even went in the front of the class just to talk every time my teacher goes out of the room.

Speaking has always been a thing that I love. But I never realized that until I was in College. When I was in college I was exposed on different organizations. There I have learned to conduct team building seminars, talk to a lot of people and gain a lot of friends.

Though I have this natural love of speaking, I also encountered several problems with it. At that time I had difficulties organizing my thoughts and I have also poor English skills.

Before I thought none of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But after realizing its importance to my life I find ways to develop my communications skills. Now, with this quest, I met Toastmasters International.

Back then I don’t have any knowledge about it and I never heard the name of this organization until in a career orientation seminar was held in our school last March whom our speaker is a toastmaster member. But without that hunger in improving my communications skill and gaining more friends, I won’t be able to stand here today in front of you great people.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My Second Story Is About Love And Loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. After college I worked in an IT Provider company as a web developer. But after three months of working I’ve realized that I can do more than just doing web sites. I believe that I can give the best outputs doing what I love, which is talking and communicating with people.

So what I did is I resigned. I tried to find works which I can use my computer skills and do what I love as well. But boy finding that is not easy. I tried to apply at call centers here in Cebu and other jobs available but to tell the truth I failed many times.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I am a failure, a loser. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. So what if I failed. And you must have also experienced failures in life right. It might before or presently. So what if you failed. You failed, you really failed, you failed, and you failed you failed. You think I care about that? I do understand the feelings but we are the artist of our life.

Our job is to break thru barriers not to accept failures and bow and say thank you I’m a loser I’ll go away now. Do you want to be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you’re still smiling. That’s true greatness to me.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Before I end let me tell you about this amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of the past generations. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.

This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.

Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as I end my talk, I also wish that for all of you.