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Free Talk with Topic III

Lesson 7
Choice
*choice: decision; the range of different things
from which you can choose

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 Choice
Give a speech with
the following words:

responsible
failure
decision
disappoint
better

1 “There are no safe choices. Only other choices.”

― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
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 Choice
Give a speech with
the following words:
Possible answer:
responsible One consequence of buying a bad-fitting pair of jeans when there is only one kind to
failure buy is that when you are dissatisfied, and you ask why, who's responsible, the
decision answer is clear: the world is responsible. What could you do? When there are
disappoint hundreds of different styles of jeans available, and you buy one that is disappointing,
better and you ask why, who's responsible? It is equally clear that the answer to the
question is "you." You could have done better. With a hundred different kinds of
jeans on display, there is no excuse for failure. And so when people make decisions,
1 and even though the results of the decisions are good, they feel disappointed about
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them; they blame themselves.
* The student is not required to finish all the 3 speeches, and is encouraged to choose the words they like to give a speech.
 Choice
Give a speech with
the following words:

advice
difficult
conflict
wrong
why

“What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change
2 it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.”
― Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
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 Choice
Give a speech with
the following words: Possible answer:
In life we encounter many people who, in some way or another, try to tattoo our
advice faces. They just have the incentives that get them to be blinded to reality and give us
difficult advice that is inherently biased.
conflict The most difficult thing, is to recognize that sometimes we too are blinded by our
wrong own incentives. And that's a much, much more difficult lesson to take into account.
why Because we don't see how conflicts of interest work on us.
The positive perspective is that, if we do understand when we go wrong, if we
2 understand the deep mechanisms of why we fail and where we fail, we can actually
hope to fix things.
©2016 Acadsoc Limited * The student is not required to finish all the 3 speeches, and is encouraged to choose the words they like to give a speech.
 Choice
Give a speech with
the following words:

open
mind
understand
wide
experience

3 “One can give ‘correct’ opinion only if one has an open mind.”
― Dada Bhagwan
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 Choice
Give a speech with
the following words: Possible answer:
We have so often tried to disseminate our ideas of choice, believing that we will be,
open or ought to be, welcomed with open hearts and minds. But the history books and the
mind daily news tell us it doesn't always work out that way. The actual experience that we
understand try to understand and organize through narrative, varies from place to place. No single
wide narrative serves the needs of everyone everywhere. Moreover, We ourselves could
experience benefit from incorporating new perspectives into our own narrative, which has been
driving our choices for so long.
3 No matter where we're from and what your narrative is, we all have a responsibility to
open ourselves up to a wider array of what choice can do, and what it can represent.
©2016 Acadsoc Limited * The student is not supposed to finish all the 3 speeches, and is encouraged to choose the words they like to give a speech.
Selective Questions:
(*If all the 3 speeches above have been given already, you can choose to discuss the following
questions.)

1. Do you often have a hard time making choice about unimportant things?
2. When you make big choices, who influences you the most? Give examples.
3. Have you ever given any advice to others while they didn’t take it? How did you feel?
4. Why do people have different views?
5. How to make the best choices?

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 Further Reading
Four Tricks to Help You Make Any Difficult Decision
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_71c874670102xodd.html

See you.

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