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Tomorrow we will be having an Annual Lunch. Our Company organizes annual lunch every year just before the Lunar New Year. It’s a fun event where everyone gathers. We have some presentations, games, lucky draw and a lot of good food and drinks. I’ll be giving a presentation about SSL VPN there and while I was preparing my power point slides, I found a speech that I wrote a year ago when I was a member of Toastmasters Club at HK Polytechnic University. I find it quite interesting to read now… and I am presenting it here as it is. I didn’t deliver the speech exactly this way but this is the material I prepared on. It’s about the question we ask to ourselves “why me?“…

Why me?

Good evening ladies and gentlemen…
Have you ever asked yourself this question “why me?”
Oh god again, I failed the subject?
Oh no! I was not hired again, and you know this is my 10th interview!
Life is so stressful!
You literally have to fight every moment to survive!
And after this long struggle, guess what? I fail again! Why me?
Why all the miserable things in this world happen to me?
I can see he’s having a good life or she’s having a good life.
He succeeds in everything he does.
But you know, I think I’m not as lucky as he was.
They’re rich; they’ve good family background, they’re fortunate to go through good education and so on…

Do we ask these questions to ourselves?
I’m sure most of us have, some consciously and some sub-consciously!
So, ladies and gentlemen, today I’m going to talk about this very question we ask our selves “why me?”
I used to ask this question to myself a lot.
Some of my typical questions would be like:

- (When I was a little kid) I wanted to have a big car but my parents wouldn’t buy it for me. Other kids had it, I thought they’re lucky. I’m the unfortunate one. God why me?
- (When I was a teenager) I loved that girl so much, but she’s not interested in me. Damn! Again it’s me!
- (As an adult, after completing my university) I wanted to have that job at Radio Station; after all I had a masters degree in Telecom. But, they didn’t hire me. You see again, this always happens to me!

You see from the above events it sounds like I had a miserable life. Some of you maybe started to have sympathy for me and started feeling truly sorry for me. But you know what, that’s not the end of list. I can go on and on and on with these so called why me questions.

One day I suddenly realized that life was like a coin with two sides and I was focusing only on one side. So, started to consciously look at the other side:

- (As a child) I had a very healthy childhood; my parents didn’t spoil me with all unnecessary stuff. They provided me all I needed with my best interest at their heart.
- (As a teenager) that same girl who was not interested in me, finally came to me and told me how much she loved me.
- (As an adult) although I didn’t get to work in Radio Station but you know what, I got a chance to work in one of the prestigious IT firm in Nepal and now in Hong Kong

And that’s not the end of it, I can go on and on with the good things that has happened to me in this life. Very interesting thing is that I never asked why these good things happened to me. I finally discovered that we remember the miserable things more than the good things and we take for granted most of the valuable and important things in our life.
My failures in life have made me more determined for success.
From every difficulty I’ve grown stronger.
Instead of asking, why I failed again?
You should be asking, what stops me passing with an A?
Instead of asking she’s not interested in me?
You should be asking what’re the qualities that I should possess, so that she’ll love me.
Instead of asking why I was not hired for the job again?
You should be asking what I should do to have a business of my own?

So, my friends to be successful in life you should change the question you ask; from why me? to why not me?