Informative Speech: This Is Water

This is Water, was a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. Ever since this speech has been given it has become well known. Because of the length, it can be hard to read through the speech while trying to understand the whole idea of it. Wallace fills the speech with stories, examples, and vivid ideas while trying to convince these college graduates how to view life in a positive perspective. While this speech is packed full of ideas he manages to give it in a way outside of the norm for commencement speeches. Yet still gets all the information to the graduates and anyone else who listens to it.

In the video, Successful Thinking, Heather Collins states that the three questions about thinking are “What did you learn? How do I know? What is the rest of the story?” (Collins) While asking yourself what you learned, you become aware of your

Purpose: After listening to my speech, the audience will be more educated on Texas’s roadside attractions, as well as relate to the sites I will discuss in my presentation.

According to Marlynn Wei from Psychology Today, “mindfulness helps to get ‘unstuck’ [from negative thoughts]”. In her article “Mindfulness Quiets Unhelpful Thoughts”, she mentions how it “encourages a lack of attachment to thoughts that wander through [the] mind.”

Focusing on one thing at a time and prioritizing is technique for clearing your mind. For example, writing down just 3 things that you have to do in a day will be far more motivating than bombarding yourself with a list of 50 things that you want to accomplish before next week. This will allow you to de-clutter your mind of the endless list of chores, must do's and have to do's that plagues us and act as a psychic

Her speech had inspired the audience to be thankful for what we have a don’t take anything for granted because it can all be taking away from us or our life could be a lot worse. This speech was great and so was the speaker, I learned from the speaker to be confident in my speech and use more personal stories that can relate to the audience.

The article “Good Habits, Bad Habits”, written by Ann M. Graybiel and Kyle S. Smith, indulges in the idea that in every task we preform, our mind use one of two ways. The first way is the mindless way. This approach is where we do tasks without thinking. We use this technique almost everyday. For example, when a person takes the same route to his or her job everyday, they are using this process of thinking. The second technique is considered the “deliberation circuit” by Graybiel and Smith. This procedure is the opposite of the first. It involves some sort of decision making to take place, before an action can carried out.

Contemplation incorporates taking a seat and unwinding. All things considered, on the off chance that you can't think, then attempt to do yoga. It will help you to unwind when you are accomplishing something else.

This is how our minds work. The more we try not to think about something, the more we do, and that's perfectly normal. What this article will show you is how to redirect negative thoughts before they have a chance to get to you.

However, the ability to think critically serves as a primary skill in separating the innovators from the followers. Critical thinking and the exercising of introspection allow us to develop a variety of skill sets including, but not limited to: considering topics and issues in an objective and critical way, identifying the diverse array of arguments that relate to a particular issue, evaluating numerous points of view to determine their strength and validity, noticing what implications might be behind a statement or argument, and providing structured reasoning and support for any and all arguments we wish to

Research problem Maintaining focus is an important challenge in present-day society, with its abundant distractions such as food, alcohol, and the Internet. Two forms of mental training have been cited as methods to reduce distraction: mindfulness and working memory training.1 Both have been thought to impact attention and cognitive control, but they differ in how they operate. Mindfulness is trained under conditions of low cognitive load and an important ingredient is changing the attitude towards your thoughts.2 In contrast, working memory training occurs under high cognitive load conditions, and involves the development of proactive cognitive strategies.3 What is unclear is how mindfulness and working memory training affect distraction,

This self awareness helps keep me grounded. Although I do worry about things, it tends to

With a second speech under my belt, I am ready to face the third. Before I do, I need to reflect on the persuasive speech. Starting out, I struggled to pick a topic for my persuasive speech. In most debates, I am a wishy-washy kind of person who would rather not pick a side who likes to find an even middle. While the middle is technically a viewpoint, it is difficult to find evidence out there to support it. However, I eventually came up with a topic when I was talking with my family on Facetime. With this project on my mind, I told them I was troubled trying to pick a persuasive topic when my mom reminded me our family trip to Utah. She said I could do my project on high water consumption in the southwest and how it effects water sources such as Lake Mead and the Colorado river. Although I liked this topic I preferred the second topic she suggested which was water contamination. Last summer, my hometown had to filter out contaminants that 3M had dumped. Our water wells were unsafe, so they closed half of them down and enforced a strict water ban for a whole month while they regulated the new contaminants. In the end, the second topic was more relevant to me and added to my credibility. Also, places such as Flint, Michigan have been on the news bringing up questions toward water safety. Ultimately, I was able to find more credible sources on this topic.

In How Successful People Think, John C. Maxwell discusses the thought processes used by successful individuals and describes how these techniques can be learned. He outlines the 11 types of thinking and the important skills attributed to each. People succeed by: 1. Seeing the wisdom of big-picture thinking 2. Unleashing the potential of focused thinking 3. Discovering the joy of creative thinking 4. Recognizing the importance of realistic thinking 5. Releasing the power of strategic thinking 6. Feeling the energy of possibility thinking 7. Embracing the lessons of reflective thinking 8. Questioning the acceptance of popular thinking 9. Encouraging the participation of shared thinking 10. Experiencing the satisfaction of unselfish thinking 11. Enjoying the returns associated with bottom-line thinking

This is probably the number one misunderstanding about meditation - that meditation is to "stop thinking." Certainly, a benefit of long term meditation is a reduction in the the amount of thinking that goes on, and that is great. The inane, repetitive and usually negative chatter of thoughts that jump one to another in their minds is one of the first things people new to meditation are confronted by.