Speech Part 2: Drafting

Intro: We’ve all experienced bad days. Whether it’s a traumatizing event like a death of loved one, to just something minor like forgetting your p.e gear that carries out throughout your entire day or maybe just an unpleasant event like being rejected by your crush…luckily that has never happened to me. We’ve all had bad days. Where we just feel like giving up. We internally ask questions like Why do I even try? Whats the point? Why am I even here? I just wanna go home. We’ve all experienced this throughout our entire lives and we will continue to for the rest of it. It is inhuman to enjoy the disappointing feeling of taking part in a bad day, where no matter what you do, things just don’t go your way. And that’s life. Nobodies perfect. But what if we could change that invalidating attitude towards that bad day and stay positive for once, to turn that terrible day into a better day, or a life lesson experience. Which outlines my topic of how to stay positive during a bad day. On the 4th of May 2018, I had perceived that I had hit the rock bottom of life, where I felt stuck in an endless loop of negativity. However during these tough times I had established 3 main points that turned my experience around.  The ability to see situations in a different perspective, the influence of music and the ability to smile. And what you are going to learn today, that can be used throughout your entire life is…that you can always be positive in a bad day.

Main Points:  

Perspective: 

Perspective is the most crucial lesson to be learnt when experiencing a bad day. Perspective is an individuals particular attitude towards  regarding something or known as a point of view.  Every individual living organism in this planet has a perspective of whats in front of them. But why is perspective so important in staying positive in a bad day? Well, perspective is like taking yourself thousands of feet into the sky and realizing things could be a lot worse. It’s like the quote ‘I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw a man with no feet’. We will live in this big wide world where sometimes we forget that the world doesn’t revolve around us. Where we feel that when something goes wrong the world’s going to end. Well let me tell you something. You are not the only one living in this world that is struggling! Your not. So get that illusion out of your head that you are the only one out there struggling because there is bound to be someone else in this big scary planet that could be severally struggling way more than you are. Especially in first world countries like the beautiful New Zealand we live in today we tend to forget that most of our difficulties in life may be nowhere near the portions of a third world country like an African in Uganda. Let me demonstrate an example of this.  Last week I couldn’t over hear this girl in my geography class failing her math’s test saying “I’m so dumb” “I’m going to fail the year” “You know what I’m just gonna give up and drop out of school”. This girl perceived that her whole education had been thrown out the window by failing one math’s test. However if this girl looked through the eyes of another perspective she would’ve realized that she only failed one math’s test out of how many throughout the year. She could’ve realized she should be grateful that she isn’t according to UNESCO the 101 million African children that doesn’t even have the option for education. She could’ve realized she was extremely fortunate to not be born with a cognitive brain disorder such as autism which gives a massive disability in understanding subjects like math’s.  If I had I told this girl to look at her problems in a different perspective, and told her information like this, she would’ve then realized she is immensely lucky to be the situation she is currently in, and maybe instead of complaining she could’ve learnt that she isn’t dumb and maybe to just pay more attention in class or work a little bit harder. So before negative thoughts arise in a disappointing event, look at it at a different perspective and ask yourself this What could’ve been worse? and What did I learn from it?

Humour,

Music: 

The second point to staying positive in a bad day is the use of music. Music is much more powerful than you think it is. Its much more that its definition of written or printed signs representing the vocal or instrumental sounds. No, music is a art that can instantly change that negative mood no matter what circumstance your in. The first way it does this is because everyone loves music.  Humans naturally love listening or playing music. This is because music releases the chemical of dopamine which is the sensation of reward. Music does this by triggering blood flow to the brain that activates regions linked to the euphoric stimuli which is the area dopamine is released.  So just by listening to a 3 minute song like ‘I’m sexy and I know it’ can instantly make you feel better, and what’s not positive about feeling good. The second reason how music helps you get through a bad day is that music brings out your emotions. It does this by the lyrics, tempo or the sounds connecting with your mood. Music in this sense is a way to release all your concentrated emotions that you hide, in way we can enjoy so the only thing left in our system is motivation to get through the day. A specific example of this is by the greatest perceived by many rappers of all time, Eminem. Eminem lived through tough struggles like being bullied, dropping out, suicidal however Eminem was able to write songs to release all the negativity and emotions to get through the struggles of life. His specific song ‘Going Through Changes’ talks about his dear friend Proof who was shot outside a club on April 2009. The song remenises his struggles such as overeating, daytime napping, pill addiction and sorrow when Proof dies. Eminem was able to utilize music in this situation  to express his stressful emotions in a positive manner to gain motivation during these tough times. The final point of the use of music keeping you positive is by picking a song with a happy memory attached to it. The reason why this works is when listening to a song with a good memory attached to it, your mind automatically switches your train of thought to that memory and distracts you from the bad day you just had. Your mind can only consciously directly focus on one thing at a time. So for example I might choose the song…  And what’s cool about this is, after the song has finished and your confronted by your horrific day again, your mind is calm enough to realize, Hey this is not as bad as I thought it was before, and your now able to confront that bad day in controlled state. So just by singing or listening to a short segment of music during a bad day, can make you feel happier, release all your congested emotions and relax you enough to confront that bad day.

Humour

Smiling: 

The third and final point to staying positive during a bad day is the ability to smile and laugh. Simple as it sounds, however not so easy to do when your having a bad day. We tend to forget the universal indicator of happiness the smile can be used throughout any situation. Instead, you naturally frown, shrug your shoulders, shake your head, or sometimes do silly gestures, or some people even choose to hit themselves like … Or what I do is, i’m not sure anyone can relate but is get annoyed at any small thing that could possible annoy me, like for instance if someone tells me to push in my chair I would be like… “Wowww, wowww, why don’t you push in the chair.  Your just lazy you big forehead!” Or if my pencil lead snaps I would be like “Oh great, now you snap. Watch me disown you for a pen…  These are all natural reactions to when something has gone wrong, but what if instead of creating these embedded negative gesture we choose to smile or laugh. The reason for this is, when you smile your brain releases the reward/happy chemical of dopamine like in music which for one keeps you positive, but second of all it releases serotonin. Serotonin is a chemical which is responsible to reducing stress levels. This is vitally important  because your mood towards a situation is elevated by your stress levels. This chemical released in our brains is very crucial as enduring low amounts of serotonin leads to aggression and depression. So just by smiling for 30 seconds , slowly erases depression.  Even if you have to fake it like “Oh my gosh i’m having such a bad day”, the effect remains the same. Studies show that participates who were instructed to smile recover on average 20% quicker than participates instructed to hold a neutral expression. So when enduring a bad day, do something that will make you smile. Like go out and play just dance with your friends, go watch a hilarious movie like grown ups, or play Minecraft and die a bunch of times… Well that’s what I do anyway. Whatever it may be, do an activity that will make you smile, because it will lower your blood pressure, release dopamine that will make you happier, release serotonin that reduce your stress levels and overall make you feel a lot more positive during or after a bad day.

Conclusion: 

It is part of the human journey to experience bad days. We all have bad days. And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it because like I said before, nobodies perfect. However what we can change is our attitude towards a bad day that can make us more positive and motivated to get through the struggles of life. We can all do this by changing our perspective which we ultimately learn that we should be grateful that it could’ve been worse, we learn that through the struggles of bad days there’s always a lesson learn’t  and finally it’s okay to have bad days because you know what happy people know, is that happy people know there gonna have bad days. We can also do this by using the power of music where we learn that it makes you happy as it releases dopamine, we learn that it can release your bundle up emotions which can motivate you and we also learn that songs with memories can calm you enough to confront your bad day again. The final way we can also stay positive throughout a bad day is the ability to smile where we learn that it releases dopamine so you stay happy, it releases serotonin which reduces your stress levels and we learn that when having a bad day do something that will ultimately make you smile because that could well change your bad day to a not so bad of a day. I challenge you when confronting a bad day to not react so quickly and negatively. But instead take a deep breath and smile, look at it at a different perspective and confront your day instead of running away from it. 

Stuff left to include: remove repetition,

One Reply to “Speech Part 2: Drafting”

  1. A great speech draft, Michael- very persuasive (!) and you have structured the content to connect with your audience throughout the writing. The area that you could refine today is editing out any unnecessary repetition. There are times where you do repeat the same ideas, and removing these references would make your points more succinct and direct 🙂 You could then begin to learn your draft for the presentation.

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