2015 World Champion: 'The Power of Words' Mohammed Qahtani, Toastmasters International

please welcome our next contestant Muhammad catani The Power of Words The Power of Words Muhammad quani [Applause] what all you all think smoking kills let me tell you something do you know that the amount of people dying from diabetes are three times as many people dying from smoking yet if I pulled a Snicker bar nobody would say anything do you know that the leading cause of lung cancer is that actually a cigarette it's your DNA you could smoke for years and nothing will ever happen to you this whole war against smoking is just to restrict

the farming of tobacco Mr coner chair poos Masters and guests I use these arguments even though I just made them up [Applause] with a group of my friends and the results five of them believed what I said two of them started smoking words when said and articulated in the right way can change someone's mind they can alter someone's belief you have the power to bring someone from the slumps of life and make a successful person out of them or destroy someone's happiness using only your words does that seem a bit too good to be true

a simple choice of word can make a difference between someone accepting or denying your message you can have a very beautiful thing to say but say it in the wrong words and it's gone I have a son who's four and he had this bad habit of riding on the walls with crayons and one evening I walked into his room and he's going at it just writing and drawing and so on and I said hey hey hey hey hey hey are you stupid don't you ever do that again and guess what happened he did it again

nobody likes to be threatened nobody likes to be intimidated his pride would not allow it he did it again just to spite me a week later I walked into his room and again he's going at it and this time he was even looking at me just [Applause] I came down I said sweetie come here don't do that you're a big boy now and he never did it again cuz his pride wants him to be the big boy have you ever wondered why nobody cares about global warming even though it's a very serious issue it could

kill all of us because when you go home when you flip on the TV and you see a scientist trying to talk about global warming it goes something like this ladies and gentlemen I mean as you can see from the graphs here the for for 2014 it shows the water level is rising this uh this table shows that the monodic level on the third o layer is very alarming position the message never get across but most importantly if you are a person who's a role model if you are a person who's been admired anything you

say could be believed anything you utter could be taken as truth my friend NASA he loved his father idealized his father he would do anything to make him happy but his father was the kind of person who's not easy to impress and year after year NASA tried and his father's like n first year in college nasar got straight A's and he thought to himself this is it this what will finally make my dad proud he picked up the phone he called his dad dad I got straight A are you proud please tell me you're proud

father yeah listen son I'll have to call you back I'm busy I'm busy was the single sentence that broke the camels back and he start drinking doing drugs hanging out with the wrong crowd n why why are you throwing your life away if the one person in the world that I care about the most doesn't care then then why should I and one evening I got the phone call NASA is in the emergency room drug overdose I rushed to that hospital I saw him on that bed and I saw that machine go beep beep beep

and I saw doctors try to bring him back to life clear clear clear it's clear that a single word could have saved this life words have power words are power words could be your power you can change a life inspire a nation and make a this world a beautiful place isn't that what we all wanted isn't that what we are all in this wh your mouth can spit venom or it can mend a broken Soul ladies and gentlemen let that be our goal cont sir all right and shortly we'll hear from our winner this year

please welcome to the stage first place in our Championship Muhammad katani w [Applause] in just one moment we'll hear from Muhammad all right and let's hear from our first place winner [Applause] Muhammad I did not know it's this big though ladies and gentlemen when we did the semi-finals and I one they asked me to say something and I said honestly I didn't prepare anything because I did not expect to win and I'm coming here today and again I did not expect to [Applause] win but I want you to think about what are your challenges and

what are the things that you think is impossible because this was imp possible not just for me but for almost everybody who knows me and yet here is I don't want to say it again but if I can do this think about that thing that you thought you could never do or you just gave up on because maybe it's way up ahead and I cannot do it and when you do I want you to remember that Muhammad katani got this and and and also you can do the same thank Youk you [Applause]