Yes, You Can (Motivational Excerpt From The Course Book)
Mohammed Tahir is a Sindh Gymnast Champion. He has been a member of the
Sindh Sports Board since 1993. He has competed for the Sindh Team of
Gymnastics in Hyderabad, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Larkana, Quetta, and
other cities of Sindh. He has won many golds, silver, and bronze medals. He won
silver and bronze medals at the 32nd National Games 2013 in Islamabad. He is
a sports and gymnastics coach at a local school in Karachi. Tahir wants to be a
world champion to make his parents and country proud.
Topical Activity 1
Work with your partner, read the text, and answer the following questions in
your notebook. After you have completed it, exchange your work with another
pair. You read and edit their work and they read and edit your work with a
pencil. If you want, you can make the changes suggested by the other pair.
1) Why did Tahir choose gymnastics?
2) What kind of talent does Tahir have?
3) What does he think is a good age to start gymnastics?
Topical Activity 2
Which sport would you like to take up? On a piece of paper, write five things
that you like about this sport. Exchange with your partner. Edit each other’s
work for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Write the corrected work in your
notebook.
Motivational Stories
Struggling will make you stronger
“Once upon a time, a man found a butterfly that was starting to hatch from its cocoon. He sat down and watched the butterfly for hours as it struggled to force itself through a tiny hole. Then, it suddenly stopped making progress and looked like it was stuck.
Therefore, the man decided to help the butterfly out. He took a pair of scissors and cut off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily, although it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man thought nothing of it, and he sat there waiting for the wings to enlarge to support the butterfly. However, that never happened. The butterfly spent the rest of its life unable to fly,
crawling around with small wings and a swollen body.
Despite the man’s kind heart, he didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle needed by the butterfly to get itself through the small hole were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings to prepare itself for flying once it was free.”
Think outside of the box
“In a small Italian town, hundreds of years ago, a small business owner owed a large sum of money to a loan shark. The loan shark was a very old, unattractive-looking guy that just so happened to fancy the business owner’s daughter.
He decided to offer the businessman a deal that would completely wipe out the debt he owed him. However, the catch was that we would only wipe out the debt if he could marry the businessman’s daughter. Needless to say, this proposal was met with a look of disgust.
The loan shark said that he would place two pebbles into a bag, one white and one black.
The daughter would then have to reach into the bag and pick out a pebble. If it was black, the debt would be wiped, but the loan shark would then marry her. If it was white, the debt would also be wiped, but the daughter wouldn’t have to marry the loan shark.
Standing on a pebble-strewn path in the businessman’s garden, the loan shark bent over and picked up two pebbles. Whilst he was picking them up, the daughter noticed that he’d picked up two black pebbles and placed them both into the bag.
He then asked the daughter to reach into the bag and pick one.
The daughter naturally had three choices as to what she could have done:
- Refuse to pick a pebble from the bag.
- Take both pebbles out of the bag and expose the loan shark for cheating.
- Pick a pebble from the bag fully well knowing it was black and sacrifice herself for her father’s freedom.
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She drew out a pebble from the bag, and before looking at it ‘accidentally’ dropped it into the midst of the other pebbles. She said to the loan-shark;
‘Oh, how clumsy of me. Never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked.’
The pebble left in the bag is black, and seeing as the loan shark didn’t want to be exposed, he had to play along as if the pebble the daughter dropped was white, and clear her father’s debt.”
Never give up on your dreams
“Once, there was an older man, who was broke, living in a tiny house and owned a beat up car. He was living off of $99 social security checks. At 65 years of age, he decide things had to change. So he thought about what he had to offer. His friends raved about his chicken recipe. He decided that this was his best shot at making a change.
He left Kentucky and traveled to different states to try to sell his recipe. He told restaurant owners that he had a mouthwatering chicken recipe. He offered the recipe to them for free, just asking for a small percentage on the items sold. Sounds like a good deal, right?
Unfortunately, not to most of the restaurants. He heard NO over 1000 times. Even after all of those rejections, he didn’t give up. He believed his chicken recipe was something special. He got rejected 1009 times before he heard his first yes.
With that one success Colonel Hartland Sanders changed the way Americans eat chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken, popularly known as KFC, was born.
Remember, never give up and always believe in yourself in spite of rejection.”