At a school assembly that I spoke at, there was a man who spoke for a few minutes just after I finished talking to the students.
The man told a story that was very interesting to me. The story was of another assembly that took place some time before. The assembly was held by military officers who wanted to interest the young men in possibly joining the Armed Forces.
And there is where the story begins...
On the day, there were representatives from all four of the major military forces present. There was an Army recruit, Navy, Air Force and of course a Marine.
The whole assembly was supposed to take an hour, so they needed to divide the time between the four of them. The Army recruit went first. He spent 30 minutes convincing the young men that the army was the best choice for them to serve their country. The next to go was the Navy recruit. Feeling that the army recruit had been selfish to take so long, he was determined to get his time in. So he spent 15 minutes talking and urging the youth to join the Navy. After he was done there was only 15 minutes left in the whole assembly, and next up was the Air Force recruit. He decided, he would not rush himself, because the other two had been so selfish and took 10 minutes trying to convince the young men to join the Air Force.
By now the assembly would be ending in 5 minutes, so the Marine recruit had almost no time to "convince" the youth to join.
Oddly enough, he didn't seem bothered at all!
After all three of them; the Army, Navy and Air Force recruits were done, the Marine walked sternly up to the podium with only 5 minutes left and opened his mouth. But what he would say, would only take a few seconds. Without cracking a smile he looked straight out into the crowd of young men and said, "to be quit honest, I don't see one person in this room who looks worthy to be a Marine. But if you think you've got what it takes, meet me in the hallway after the assembly". "HuRAA!"
The moral of the story is... When something is truly great, it doesn't take 30mins, 15 or 10 to convince a person. They should feel honored to be apart of something that is truly great.
So if you are confident in yourself, you don't need to go to great lengths to seek others approval, you can lift up your head and stand firm on who you are.
Would you have gone to one of the other three recruiters, or would you have been brave enough to step up and try out for the Marines?
