Almost all first steps are awkward

By David Bradshaw

YOU may not remember, but your first steps were awkward.

You fell down a lot. You probably bumped your head. You may have scraped a knee, but you got up. You learned to walk. You learned to run. You made it to here.

Well done.

The same way you learned to walk is how you learn to do anything.

Take some stabs at it. Walk a little, wobble, fall down. Get up again.

That’s the real secret: Get up again.

As long as you get up again, you’re never out of life.

I found the piece you’ve just read in Life’s Missing Instruction Manual by Dr Joe Vitale.

Joe’s advice reminded me of the often-told story about Winston Churchill addressing the students at Oxford University at their commencement exercises by repeating the words “Never give up!” very loudly several times in succession—and then leaving.

As an address, this always seemed to me to be a tad unsatisfactory. No-one could argue with the message, given that it came from the man who inspired Britain at the most critical time in the country’s history. 

But to get up and utter just five words? Surely not. Brevity is good, but that seemed scarcely credible.

I decided to investigate.

I discovered that (a) the speech wasn’t given at Oxford University but at Harrow, Churchill’s old school; (b) he didn’t say “Never give up” but “Never give in”; and (c) the speech actually lasted for over four minutes.

To put this in perspective, it was more than twice the length of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which ran to 272 words against Churchill’s 733.

The essence of the address (which included the words that are usually misquoted) was: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

The date was October 29, 1941. That was two months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Soviet Union began the counter-attack against Nazi Germany.

 

Sorry about all the detail, but I hope you get the point, which is that it’s awfully easy to assume that people have checked their facts when they’re telling a story. Maybe it’s my journalistic background, but I feel I have to know for sure what actually happened.

And another point—which I picked up in my days with Toastmasters, the international speaking club—is that, as both Lincoln and Churchill well knew, you don’t have to say very much to get a meaningful message across.