I’m pondering over a thought “What have I learned from my first speech in IPTMC”.
The moment i start thinking about it , another thought pops up into my mind , “what have I leaned from toastmasters”.
It’s almost a month since I gave my icebreaker speech and it’s almost six months since I joined toastmasters club.
Before I begin writing , let me assure you this blog is gonna be unstructured and unorganized because it’s gonna be compilation of my random thought at this moment.
Unstructured speech is against my P2 objective but what the hell. This is my blog , not a speech.
My thoughts are Back to the Lessons that I have learned till now through toastmasters journey.
Firstly , my confidence level as a speaker has improved drastically. I know I’m not the best speaker in the club yet IPTMC has given me a platform to become one of the best & I can see my dream turning into reality soon
This improvement is a big achievement for me.
Why ?
Let me share you a story of a boy named Prateek .
In school , he was shy , introvert and lost in his own world. He used to talk politely to everyone and always greet them with a big smile. He didn’t care much about other people and still he doesn’t care much. He was happy in his own world.
But His happiness had a enemy – his english class period . He dreaded with the thought of reciting paragraph in english. He always made sure he avoided the glance of the teacher by seating in the corner seat.
Slowly and gradually his fear became strong. His stammering & wrong pronunciation added more fuel to his fear.
The fear started feeding on his confidence and the level of confidence hit his bottom.
He never volunteered for any public speaking competition such as debate or any public competition.
Why ?
He always used to self doubt himself by saying – ‘I won’t be able to speak in the public’ , ‘what if I forget and freeze on the stage’ , ‘I might stammer and do wrong pronunciation of the words” Hence he was afraid of being the laughing stock of others.
During his school , students use to bully whoever use to speak or try to speak in English.
This fear dominated his mind. It still do but now he had found a weapon to conquer his fear (toastmasters).
Secondly , I learnt the importance of dry run and practice.
How ?
I gave 25 dry runs and numerous self dry runs . With every single dry run , I learnt to improve myself.
After every dry run , I would say to myself – ‘you can do better’ and ‘you can always improve here and there’ .
Thirdly , I overcame my another fear of procrastination & quitting in the end.
How ?
Prior to writing my icebreaker , I used to make numerous excuses for not completing my speech. i used to say to myself – “yeh ho jaye phir karuga” . After a while again i used to say it to myself – “Arey woh ho jaye phir karuga” . Finally one day i sat down and wrote my icebreaker.
That day i learnt the importance of ACTION. the feeling of completing the icebreaker was great and i still couldn’t believe how could i be such a big fool by procrastinating it for such a long time.
While writing my speech , I thrived for perfection . I wanted it to be perfect .
I wrote 4 different of icebreaker. For six months , I kept on asking myself – how should I describe myself .
Whenever a thought came into my mind , i used to save into NOTEPAD in my mobile phone . The thought of how to improvise my speech haunted me for months .
Now i think about it , i laugh about it because in the beginning , the idea about writing about myself seem to be a mundane task .
I told to myself , huh since your a blogger , it will be a cake walk. But Believe or not , the more I wrote down, the more I realized that knowing about yourself is not that easy .
Duiring the process of icebreaker , I got to know new things about myself which I couldn’t have discovered otherwise.
Thirdly , I discovered importance of mentor in once’s life.
My speech was rejected four times.
Now I know why ?
because all the previous draft suck .
I got to learn so many things from my mentor that I can’t put into words. May be a different kind of bond like those of Guru-sheeshya of ancient time.
May be some experiences are worth cherishing.
I repeat above all my mentor had utter faith in my capability in writing and delivering a good which I had completely lost.
Thank you Anshul for it as well as for everything ( specially the pain of reviewing my speech countless times).
Above all thanks IPTMC .
P.S – I had been struggling from past one week to write & suddenly i wrote 800 words in a single stretch while commuting in bus. #Miracle
prAts !
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