Begin with the end in mind - Toastmaster Speech # 3 - Get to the point

Good Morning Mr. Toastmaster, my fellow Toastmasters, and honorable guests. Today I am going to talk about one of the habits from this book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Obviously, there are 7 habits in this book and I am going to talk about my favorite among 7.
Begin With The End In Mind.


Begin With The End In Mind – means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you are going so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.

Say, for example, you want construct a house. You don’t simply call the construction team to start building a house. Before you even touch the ground you will visualize or imagine the house in your mind, based on that you create a floor plan, layout and blueprint and so on.

You do the same thing when you go for a vacation. You do careful planning before you begin your trip. Book you hotel, airlines tickets and other events.

But the irony is that we don’t do such planning for our life. Think about the outcome of constructing a house without a plan, same thing applies to our life.
There are 2 parts to it.
1. Visualize the end
2. How to get there

How to visualize the end?
Imagine that you are going to your own funeral. You are lying inside the casket in a funeral home. There are many people out there: You family, extended family, co-workers, people from your community and so on. Some of them going to talk about you: your spouse, your children, co-worker and some one from your community or church.

What would you wish do hear from all of these speakers? Make sure you are wishing for is realistic and achievable.
You do this exercise when you are alone and in a quite environment.

When you do this exercise, you will identify some of your deep fundamental values. These are your core values. Now you have the picture of your end or destination.
Next step is how to get there?


We all know that each corporation and organizations have their own mission statement. What is mission statement?

Basically it defines the fundamental purpose, philosophy, and values of the entity.
What is the mission statement for toastmasters?
To provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every individual member has the opportunity to develop oral communication and leadership skills.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight. It takes careful analysis, thoughtful expression and often many rewrites to produce the final form. A personal mission statement is a brief description of what you want to focus on, what you want to accomplish and who you want to become in your life. It may take you several weeks or even months before you feel really comfortable with it.


It becomes the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life. It gives sense of clarity, commitment and freedom. It helps you to focus your energy, actions, behaviors and decisions towards the things that are most important to you.
Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully and align your behavior with your core values. You are not driven by everything that happens to you. You have sense of mission about what you are trying to do and will stay focused on your goal.
If you think you are not motivated or not having enough self-confident or not able to focus on what you do, then it is time to create your personal mission statement.

So if you want to focus your energy, actions, behaviors and decisions towards the things that are most important to you, I strongly recommend you to “begin with end in mind”