It was April 2017 and I had just won the Area 11 Toastmaster speech contests which I never thought I was going to win. I had made it to the next round of the contest and I was really looking forward to deliver my speech which I thought was very good and was going to touch a lot of people. The week before the area contest I had won the club contest and I went home and I did all I could to make the speech better. However after winning the area contest I did not do a lot of work to improve my speech, even though I knew that the speeches at the divisional level were going to be more competitive I did not do anything to improve my speech, I did not do this because in my own head I had made it to the world championships final in Florida. The week before I was focused on not embarrassing myself but now I was a world champion speaker in my own head. The preparation was not great and a week later I could only manage a third place finish which was very good but I knew tat I did not prepare very well. I have not been able to go past the area contest since then, the best I have managed is a second place finish and last year I was not placed at all. It was a wasted opportunity, I think that if I prepare very well I could have gone very far.
I am not the only one who has wasted an opportunity to achieve wonderful things in their life, a lot of people do this every day because they are not focused on the activities that they are doing everyday. We all want to achieve great things in our lives but are we doing things that are going to bring about the good things we are hoping for? I could have gone a further in the contest if I focused on improving my speech. Look at your goal right now and just focus on the one thing you can do today and do it. True success only comes through continuous improvement, when you stop improving you will miss out all the opportunities in front of you.