Count Your Blessings

I was set this topic as a table topic or impromptu speech in Singapore where I was a ribbon.

I came second or, as my certificate says, First Runner Up, at Harrovians Toastmasters club in the UK.

Tonight at HOD I gave this version of my speech Count Your Blessings and Take Action.

Here's the Count Your Blessings & Take Action speech version 2.

You should count your blessings. Why? Most of my audience at Toastmasters are optimists, at least while they are out at Toastmasters.. So why is this message relevant to you?
(I ask the audience) Are you optimists or pessimists?
Why is being optimistic important - because Unicef study shows that British children are the most depressed worldwide - at least in the 21 developed countries. That's this week's news. I wonder whether that has anything to do with the fact that the Samaritans started here in Britain.

First The Optimist's Creed

I have a handout of copies of the Optimist's Creed. It was written many years ago but is still relevant today.

If you are depressed - or want to be an optimist or give this creed to anybody else such as your children or grandchildren I have four copies do we have four pessimists?
One person is putting her hand up and down and can't decide if she's an optimist or pessimist - maybe she's both - a manic -depressive! A heckler has called her bi-polar.

I have several stories to tell you about optimism and pessimism. You can read more of my speeches and stories on the internet.

I try to be optimistic. I wear colours that keep me cheerful. Do you think I look a colourful person? I wear reds and today I'm wearing red and green, the colours my uncle could not see.

My beloved late uncle didn't know I was colourful because he was colour blind.
Uncle could not see and did not want flowers in hospital. He had no flowers in the gardens at his house. I was upset about this and so was my uncle and everybody else.

But that saved his life. He wanted to be a pilot in World War two but couldn't be - because he was colour blind. He was upset about that too. Nobody realised the connection. I didn't realise until I wrote up the family history. My mother's first husband husband died in a plane in the war. Being colour blind helped my uncle survive.
I used to be upset whenever I looked at flowers, even this plastic flower, and these pictures of colourful flowers. But now I see that being colour blind was a blessing.

My uncle outlived many other people. Not just in wartime. Neither my uncle nor anybody else saw his being colour blind as having any advantage or silver lining. But when I wrote family history I could see that being colour blind had been a blessing in disguise.Newspapers give bad news but Uncle used to read obituaries and say triumphantly - 'I outlived him!'

At the end of his life when my uncle was depressed he still blamed his parents for everything. My son who read psychology at university said that by the time your are on your deathbed you should have stopped blaming your parents for what happened in your childhood. What's important is not where you've come from but where you are going, as Ella Fitzgerald said.

People worry too much about little things - even big things which seem big at the time. I remember being upset about losing a job. I phone my mother up and she said, 'Do you remember Lesley Whittle, the girl who went missing?'

I said, 'Yes.'

My other said, 'They've found her.'

I said, 'Good, she's alive.'

My mother said, 'No she isn't. But I don't want you to upset about that, or about losing a job. Don't upset yourself or upset me about anything. Just enjoy life. There are dreadful things much worse than what happens in your life in the papers every day.'

I'll end with a happier story illustrating the same point. The goat story, shows how things could always be worse, and when you realise that, they don't seem so bad.
In my family we tell the goat story as an example of how things could always be worse.

(My first version of this speech told the internet joke, the Flood Story about woman refusing help in flood.)

The Goat story is about a poor man asking advice and getting told to get a goat.

A week later he says life is even worse. He is told to get rid of the goat.

He comes back a week later to say he feels so much better now the goat has gone.

So be an optimist and Count Your Blessings and take action to stay an optimist, Things can only get better.