Best motivational speech EVER! *Never give up!!!* Eric Thomas

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Inspirational Stories: Never Give Up

In 2005 i was having the best time of my life i was 20 drinking recklessly parting everyday i was in my gap period in life. The following year i was to go off to university in another country and i was so excited, life could not be better than this. On new yrs eve in the morning like every new yrs eve i was in happy mood, planning with my friends, for the evening ahead everything was going great. Normally i would get the party started at about 7 pm with a few glasses of hot stuff but that evening i felt down sad, i could not explain it , my parents where even concerned by 10 normally i would be 2 hrs out of the house by then. My best friend called me at about 10 pm to go with him to a party and came to pick me up THEN i started drinking from 10:30 till 12:30 nonstop shot after shot . I don't know how i wondered off from my friends and ended up on the main road yes i got struck by a car.

It was bad all i remember my friends who had been called by someone who recognized me trying to take me to the hospital but my leg had broken it was detached and I could not move. I was still intoxicated and could not feel the pain, an ambulance arrived and i was taken to hospital, now came the difficult part for my best friend to call my parents what i must have put them through, when i woke up which was now about 6 am the alcohol had worn off by now with still a broken leg i was in so much pain.

The doctor told me i had to have an operation to reattach my bone together and that i would never be able to walk without a walking stick, my heart sank how could i have done this to myself why did i do this why how ran through my mind everyday, worse i come from a country where the medical facilities and medicines are in short supply and the procedure would be very costly my parents had to sell the family car to pay for the op. There was no food given to patients so my dad would come every visiting hr to bring me food and tell me stories i have never felt so close to my dad.

I also spent my 21st birthday in hospital. The day of the operation came i was nervous, 2 pm was my scheduled time 6 pm i was done thank god for morphine, my family was with me till visiting time ended They had put metal plates in my leg to reattach the bones. 8 pm the horror began something was terribly wrong or the meds had worn off too quickly, i called the nurse a short stout lady who appeared to hate her job i pleaded with her to give me painkillers but she ignored me and walked away and turned off the lights i tried a few more times but to no luck i was alone in the ward just me and 4 other empty beds. I cannot explain the pain it was as if my leg had been sawn off, i tried to think of happy thoughts to occupy my mind it did not work, i tried to move i was paralyzed i had no use of my lower half of the body i spoke to myself, i blamed myself for being in this situation. what could i do who could i tell i was sorry who would listen to my repentance i was alone. i asked anyone in my head my mind please come and take me any where but here someone come and rescue me. i called to my Dad hoping he would hear me 15 km away.Across from the bed a clock i could see hear every tick tock tick tock. Why me God angrily WHY.

Continue reading Never Give Up

How to Become a Wildly Successful Motivational Speaker

I frequently have people say to me, "I think I'd make a good motivational speaker. How do I go about it?" And since I get this question a LOT, I thought I'd just put all the answers down in a blogpost and then I can direct people here when they are looking for answers. Here you go. 

1. Have something extremely important to share with people - information SO valuable that you know it will change people's lives for the better.
2. Write a brilliant, funny, substantive, Pulitzer Prize winning, story-rich one hour speech about it. 
3. Make certain it is DIFFERENT than the other brilliant speeches out there. Not just better (which is a given) but DIFFERENT. 
4. Do NOT present it until it is ready (bad press is worse than no press.)
5. DO, however, present it to professionals in the meetings industry who will critique everything from the content, to your delivery style, to what you are wearing to why you keep saying or doing "x." You NEED to know what is and is not working.
6. Do NOT rely on your friends to tell you how good your stuff is. They love you, they don't want to hurt your feelings, they want you to like them - and most importantly - unless they are GREAT motivational speakers themselves, they don't actually KNOW what is good and what isn't.
7. Once it is brilliant, give it away to deserving, appropriate groups for free or a very low fee. You need to know from experience what is working, what isn't, where the laughs are, etc.
8. Hire a professional videographer to shoot several of these sessions. GREAT quality video with good lighting and sound. Cheap video in a dumpy looking conference rooms works against you.
9. Hire a professional editor (preferably who knows what meeting planners are looking for) to edit a rough cut for you.
10. Hire another professional to look at the rough cut and make more suggestions about what should and shouldn't be included. (8, 9 and 10 could be the same person - but they NEED TO KNOW WHAT MEETING PLANNERS ARE LOOKING FOR! This could be a very costly mistake if they don't know what will get you booked.)
11. Build a VERY professional looking website with all your great video clips, plus photos of you speaking AT actual events (not the posed, "Oh look at how I am pretending to speak" photos.) If you do not have a great website, people will not book you 999 times out of 1000. You are competing with professional speakers who have AMAZING sites. Be prepared. This costs thousands of dollars to do right. AND - it takes a long time. 
12. Hire a professional to optimize your website.  Allocate another couple of thousand dollars to have someone insure than when people are searching the term "motivational speaker," of the 3,500,000 results that appear (no, I'm not kidding on that number), you will come up at LEAST in the top 10 pages of results listings.  And many people won't search past page 5. I'm on page 4...today. Trust me, tomorrow I may sink like a rock. You have to WORK to stay high on the results listings.
13. Figure out how to market yourself to meeting planners and speakers' bureaus. And be prepared again - these people don't know you and don't have any track record with you. But they DO have a track record with hundreds of other speakers who are years ahead of you, have made them look like rock stars for recommending them and have made those bureaus and meeting planners lots of money in commissions. 
14. Go to your local chapter meetings of the National Speakers Association. They are in lots of cities around the U.S. Go to www.nsaspeaker.org  to find a chapter near you. They bring in professional speakers who cover every topic you need to know about: Presentation skills, marketing, business tools, technology needs, social media advances, business practices, ethics, etc. 

Read the full article by Linda Larsen here

Top Three Steve Jobs Speeches

As a CEO, Steve Jobs will be remembered for many things--not just as a purveyor of innovative, landscape-changing products. He'll also be remembered as one of the most powerful and charismatic orators and marketers of our time. Here are my top three picks for Steve Jobs' most compelling speeches.

Apple's Partnership with Microsoft at Macworld Boston, 1997

"If we want to move forward, see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace the notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us, that's great … And if we screw up and don't do a good job, it's not somebody else's fault -- it's our fault … So the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I'm concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, and this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry, to get healthy and prosper again."

Jobs then switched to a slide of Apple's logo and Microsoft's logo together, and then got serious about Apple's "Think Differently" marketing campaign, ruminating on how Apple products are for "people who aren't just out to get a job, but for people who want to change the world."

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Merging the themes of life, growth, and death, Jobs' 2005 commencement address to Stanford University was stirring in a way that transcends many cut-and-paste graduation speeches.

In his address, Jobs told three stories set in three pivotal moments of his life, one of the most important being when he was fired from Apple (7:14):

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Jobs' speech was so inspiring, in fact, that its even been ripped off by others around the world.

Apple iPad 2 Keynote, Special Event, March 2011

Jobs' unexpected appearance at the iPad 2 event in March 2011 caused a lot of stir. He had just taken an indefinite medical leave of absence, and already people were wondering what Apple would look like post-Jobs.

Full Story: http://www.pcworld.com/article/238905/top_three_steve_jobs_speeches.html

Inspirational Quotes of Famous People

Inspirational stories about giving up

This is a story about how important is being persistent and never give up, no matter how many failures you have experienced in the past.

A man was spending his holiday in Africa. One day he watched the elephants passing by. To his great surprise these giant strong animals were being held only by a small rope, tied to their front leg. Obviously, they could easily run away any moment. However, they did not.

Then he saw a trainer and asked him, how could this happen that not a single elephant makes an attemp to break free. The trainer explained: „When the elephants are very young, we use the same size rope to tie them, and at that time it is enough to hold them. Gradually they grow up, get stronger, nevertheless they never try to get away, as they believe that the rope will still hold them.

The man was stunned. These strong animals could break free any time, but they did not, because they believed that this is impossible. 

Sometimes people act like elephants, when they give up after the first failure. Remember, that failures are part of learning. If we want to succeed, we should never give up, but try and try again.


Read the story here

Inspirational stories about determination

I will tell you a story of my friend Monty Roberts. 

As he was a kid, his father as a horse trainer was moving from stable to stable, from ranch to ranch, training horses. Thus, the boy‘s school career was constantly interrupted. One day, when he was a senior, teacher asked him to write about what he wanted to be when he grew up. He did not hesitate a minute and wrote seven-page paper about his aim to be an owner of a horse ranch, he wrote many details and drew a location of buildings and stables and even a detailed house plan. 

Two days later he received his paper back with letter „F“ on the front page. After class he came to teacher and asked: „Why did I receive an F?“. The teacher responded: „This dreams is so unrealistic for a boy like you, who has no money, no resources and who comes from itinerant family. There is no possibility that you will reach your great goals one day.“ Then the teacher offered to rewrite the paper with more realistic attitude.

The boy went home and asked his father, how should he act. The father answered: „This decision is very important for you. So you have to make your own mind on this“.

After several days the boy brought the same paper to his teacher. No changes were made. He said: „Keep the F and I will keep my dream“.

Now Monty Roberts owns 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of 200-acre horse ranch and he still has that school paper, which now is framed over the fireplace.

Remember, you have to follow your heart and never let anyone to steal your dreams.


This story is taken from here

Motivational speaker: TONY ROBBINS - Raise Your Standards & Change Your Rituals

ANTHONY ROBBINS - Raise Your Standards & Change Your Rituals. 
Motivational speaker Tony Robbins gives a motivational and inspiring speech about life and it's possibilities, how you can have a better and happier & more successful life by changing your rituals and raising your own standards. 

Inspirational stories

Let us stop for a moment and look at oulselves in another way.

From time to time it seems that despite of all our efforts, we experience various negative emotions in our lives, such as despair, anxiety, fear, apathy, mistrust or anger. When we have troubled relationships with our family members or collegues at work. When our destiny leads us into some difficult situations in business or we have problems with health. Or we just feel tired of our daily routine... 

Sometimes all of us might feel lost in this life, when we need support and encouragement as well as wise words, that may help to look at the situation from another point of view. Maybe it would be a spiritual conversation with a person, that you feel trust and respect for. Or reading of the Bible, or other spiritual literature. Or you can spent some quiet moments in the forest, by the lake, or other place in nature, trying to listen to the voice of your heart, as when you learn to listen, it might tell you much more then you could expected.

In this page we offer you to have a look at inspirational stories. Sometimes they encourage us to seek for our dreams, trust life and ourselves and never give up. They teach us to notice the magical beauty of the world that we live in and that surround you every day, as well as they show, what are the true values that are worth aiming for in our lives. Also they tell about God‘s caring and the power of unconditional love. 

We get inspired by the strength of the human spirit and we learn, how to be a better person, more sensitive, supportive, kind and loving. 

After all, inspirational stories help us to feel harmony with the world that is around us and find true happiness inside ourselves.


Read more on http://inspirationalstories.eu/

Kevin Plank - "Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur"

Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour, talks about the keys to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Plank spoke at the 2010 Cupid's Cup for the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Strategies to increase your motivation

It's easier to stick to your studies when you're strongly motivated. This page explains what you can do to stay motivated.

Motivation is not endless stream or a switch you can turn on and off. Neither is it something that you're born with or not born with. Even creative geniuses can find themselves unmotivated. But everyone can harness their own motivation with a simple tool of setting goals. Watch this video below for some tips to help you stay motivated:

Think positively

• Listen to what you say, either to yourself or to others: Do you put yourself down? Are you negative about your chances? (For example: 'I can't do it.' 'I'll never get through all the work.' 'I'm not very good at ....'
• Try changing your talk, and your ‘self-talk’ and give yourself positive messages. (For example: 'I can succeed.' 'I’m good at …', 'I passed my previous assignment so I can pass this one too.')
• Make a list of all the things you’ve completed successfully in the past, include assessments and exams but add other things as well (i.e. got a job, painted the house, learned to cook, etc ). If you succeeded once, you can do it again.Think about how you did it and use those techniques again.
• Form mental images of working towards successful outcome, i.e. studying hard and passing! (It's very important to include the 'working hard' bit: you won't pass if you don't do the assignments or study for the exam!) Keep thinking about this, reinforcing the image.
• Revise with a friend or fellow student (perhaps you could link up with someone you've 'met' through the course page). Then, if one of you is having a bad day, the other can be encouraging and get you motivated again.

The power of positive thinking - Dr Aaron Jarden, senior lecturer in Psychology, Open Polytechnic (opens in a new window)

Set realistic goals

• If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do, try setting some realistic goals.
• Start by dividing large tasks into smaller, more manageable parts. Then set a mini deadline for each of them.
• Accept that whereas an A is great, a pass is really all you need.
• Accept that you can’t do everything and try to work out what is possible.
• Think about your learning – what works for you and what doesn’t. It’s amazing how many students continue to use strategies and techniques that don’t work for them simply because that’s what they’ve always done. If you don’t think the strategies you’ve been using work all that well for you, then try some new strategies.
• If you feel you're not coping, ask for help: ask your lecturer/tutor or ask a learning adviser by calling 0508 650 200; there may be something we can do to help. And ask for help sooner rather than later, then there's a better chance that you can get back on track.

Read the full article: Strategies to increase your motivation

Feel Free to Help Yourself

Sarah L. Courteau

Sveral years ago, I was living in Washington with one of my brothers, who had come to stay with me while he pulled himself out of a rough patch. Eventually, he got a gig selling memberships at a gym, part of a well-known national franchise. No one in our family is a natural salesperson, but it was a job, and at least the gym is one place where my brother is in his element.

He had the closing shift, and he’d get home in his regulation polo shirt and raid the fridge just as I was going to bed. Pulling in a paycheck straightened his shoulders, as it does for anyone. Some of his wry humor returned, and so it was that one night he came in and, standing at the kitchen counter, recited “The Affirmation,” the creed that new gym employees had to learn by heart:

I will win. Why? I’ll tell you why—because I have faith, courage, and enthusiasm!

Today, I’ll meet the right people in the right place at the right time for the betterment of all.

I see opportunity in every challenge.

I am terrific at remembering names.

When I fail, I look at what I did right, not what I did wrong.

I have clearly defined goals.

I never take advice from anyone more messed up than I am.

I never let a negative thought enter my head.

I am a winner, a contributor, an achiever. I believe in me.

We laughed until there were tears on our cheeks, in part because of the mock enthusiasm with which my brother belted out that last line, but mostly at the idea that such earnest propaganda could ever be received—much less adopted—with a straight face. What kind of chump did these corporate types think he was?

But really, what was so ludicrous about a company that makes its money burnishing the temple of the body applying that same approach to the mind? Sure, it isn’t exactly a tune you can dance to. Still, “The Affirmation,” crude as it is, echoes some of the time-tested ideas of the self-improvement canon, old and new. Back in 1936, in How to Win Friends and Influence People, a folksy businessman’s bible that is really just a useful guide to not being a jerk, Dale Carnegie admonished his readers to “remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” And in the 2006 blockbuster The Secret, various “experts” unrelentingly advocate using positive thinking to mobilize the “law of attraction” in your favor. “Your life is a mirror of the dominant thoughts you think,” but the law of attraction doesn’t register “words of negation,” says one of these authorities. (In other words, if you’re thinking “I don’t want the restaurant to give away our table,” what the universe hears is “I want restaurants to give away our tables.”) The Secretreminds me of another megaseller, The Da Vinci Code, with its pseudo-historical references and simplistic explanations peddled as deep insights. The law of attraction is bunk. But there really are some benefits to thinking positively.

The truth is, my brother could have done worse than take “The Affirmation” to heart. And at that point in my life, dating a string of men whom Dale Carnegie would have kicked to the curb, I could have, too. The main trouble with “The Affirmation” was the source—a company that wanted its workers to bristle with enthusiasm so they’d sell more memberships. That didn’t invalidate the message.

There’s a fundamental contradiction in our attitudes about self-help—a term that describes the broad category of products and ideas that are supposed to make us thinner, happier, smarter, and more efficient. We Americans accept protein powders, extreme diets, personal trainers, expensive gym memberships, and the Rube Goldberg exercise contraptions that litter our basements and garages as the necessary paraphernalia for the pursuit of physical perfection. We openly admire gym rats and envy their fit bodies. But anyone who dabbles in the improvement of the mind—even taking yoga that hasn’t had its spiritual roots bleached out completely—invites a raised eyebrow among those of us who consider ourselves serious people. We are above such lockstep platitudes, empty positivity, and pop psychology.

Read the full article by Sarah L. Courteau : Feel Free to Help Yourself