Today is December 14, 2017 will pass. When you see this title, maybe you think I want everyone to walk 30 kilometers everyday. But I want to tell you a story more than 100 years ago.

Before December 1911, no one reached Antarctic. So this is the dream of all the adventurers at that time. The Antarctic is located in the southernmost point, it's the south latitude 90 degree. Usually the adventure starts from south latitude 82 degree, we also need to return back after arriving Antarctic. So overall this is a journey over 2200 kilometers. Finally two teams wanted to accomplish this challenge to be the first one to Antarctic. One is Amundsen from Norway, the other is Koster from United Kingdom.

This is an interesting comparison, Amudsen has five members and Koster has 17 members. From your intuition, who will win? They started at similar time, just like the competitions in the world, when you see the opportunity, others also see it. So the two teams made preparations and started the last competition in October 1911.

The result is this: Amudsen team reached Antarctic and put the national flag of Norway in December. However, although there were more members in Koster team and they started at similar time, they arrived Antarctic over one month later. And what does this mean?

This is the difference between success and failure. Amudsen has been remembered as the first one reaching the Antarctic, and they obtained all the honors. However, for Koster, even though they experienced similar difficulties, because they were late for one month, no one remembered them.

This story was not easily finished, Amudsen returned back smoothly from Antarctic. Because of late, Koster didn't obtain honor. What was worse, because they were late, they encountered heavy weather. There were members fell behind continuously. Finally no one returned back and all of them died. This is the difference between dead or alive.

So we can see, the adventure of predecessors are more difficult. But what made such huge difference, not only the success and failure, but also the life and death?

Firstly, in order to go Antarctic, we need goods and materials. Although Amudsen had less members, their goods and materials were more abundant, which was three tons. In comparison, koster had only one ton, although they are more members. was one ton of goods enough? Theoretically, it was just enough if they did not have any mistakes on the route. However, the truth is when encountering the unknown difficulties and pressure, it is unavoidable that they have mistakes. So it is dangerous to prepare the goods just enough theoretically.

On the contrary, there were five members in the Amudsen team, but they had 3 tons of goods, which means they had richer quantity. So they expected the possible difficulties and made full preparation for it. In another word, they left more possibility for rescuing mistakes.

Besides goods, actually both team encountered similar weather on their way to Antarctic. But their results were so different, why? Finally people find answers in their log. The successful experience of Amudsen can be summarized as one sentence: no matter how the whether was, they kept going forward 30 kilometers everyday. It is like, you need to do well in difficulties. But more importantly, you need to do well constantly . on the other hand, from the records of koster, they were more random, when the weather was good, they went forty or fifty kilometers, when the weather was bad, they slept in the tant and cursed the weather.

And this is indicated to be the most important difference leading to their results. No matter the weather is good or not, no matter it was easy or difficult, keep going forward 30 kilometers everyday, both on the way to Antarctic or on the way returning back.

So why I tell this story, there are great similarities to the environment what we are in and what we want to achieve in our life. No matter what we want to do, we need to have goal and make achievable plan including the preparations for mistakes. Then we need to keep working hard constantly, even though the speed is not very high.

Just like coming to toastmaster, although just once a week. After practice once after once, Finally one day, you will find your speech can deeply impress others and you will be the champion speaker in your heart.