This weekend, I took my daughter to a swimming class. There was a small girl not much older than my daughter, who was crying all the time. She was trying to get out of the water. The instructor pulled her by her hands out of the water and then took her to the deepest part of the pool and dropped her into the water. She disappeared under water and came out again still crying. The instructor pushed her back into water. He repeated this for about five times. I was aghast at this seemingly cruel behavior. Later, I could see that the girl stopped crying and followed his instructions. The instructor was working to drive away her fear of depth. The best way was to dunk her in the deepest part of the pool.
We toastmasters are not different. We have chosen to test the depths by jumping into the water. The best part of it is that we have not been pushed into the water by anyone else! We are here by ourselves. That shows our commitment towards improving ourselves. Toastmasters program has no instructors. It is our self-motivation that drives us towards our goals.
We all joined the club for specific reasons. Some of us wanted to shake away the fear of speaking in front of a crowd, some to become more proficient speakers, some to find an outlet for their creativity and some to break away from the grind of work.
We have our own pace for moving up the ladder. Some of us take just 6 months to complete the Competent Communicator Track, while others do it in a year, or even couple of years. It is after all, self-paced learning. What we need to keep in mind is that we have to keep the learning going. We come here overcoming many hurdles – the project pressure, the manager who looks over his glasses when he sees you leaving, the colleague who is wondering what you are doing every Wednesday… and so on. We just need to keep one thing in mind – we are here to learn, grow and share. Yes, we are forced to miss the meeting sometimes, but we rue those missed meetings, and make it a point to keep coming back.
Public speaking is just one of the things that we learn from Toastmasters. First thing I remember is the counting of ahs and ums, not just in the club meetings but also at work meetings and even conversations. When I hear lot of ums and ahs from the Team members, I understand that they are not confident with their explanations. At the same time, when I have to say something, I strive to keep my ahs and ums down – what if one of the listeners is also a Toastmaster?
Consciously or unconsciously, every meeting that we attend here is changing us. I may be playing the role of a timer or grammarian or ah counter or evaluator or general evaluator, or not playing any role at all. When we are here, we are doing active listening. When a speaker says something, analyze it. Wow that is a nice way to say it, or maybe he should have said it in this manner – it would have been more effective
We all joined the club for specific reasons. Some of us wanted to shake away the fear of speaking in front of a crowd, some to become more proficient speakers, some to find an outlet for their creativity and some to break away from the grind of work
A Best investment
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