Toastmasters Hidden Bonus

It all started with big dreams and very high hopes, both from the program and from me. My desire to be come out of my den of fears was going to be fulfilled. I joined Toastmasters program and on top took the responsibility of Public Relation officer for our corporate club. I thought this post could be the forceful driving force to achieve my aim.
During this Diwali break, I was wondering apart from scribbled goals of Toastmasters Club, what else can I earn from it?
This is what I found, the hidden bonus, could be my short term syllable .Of course, I plan to be engaged long term with this program and there is much more to learn further.
A. Polishing and Unpolishing
I joined it to polish my soft skills as a speaker. And I believe that the most compelling thing a speaker can do is to just be themselves. Often this involves an unpolishing of patterns, habits, and performance techniques. The idea is to be comfortable, relaxed and at ease just being you in front of a group.
Be awesome, stay Confident.
Be yourself, stay Unique!
B. Planning and Executing.
Toastmasters provide multiple opportunities to plan, organize, prepare and deliver talks with specific objectives. Guidelines are provided for each and every presentation. Learning is in this way. But it also gives the platform to execute our learning. Most important is to learn the immediacy to respond to what’s happening at the moment. I will learn silence as an audience, only to further learn “to listen”.
C. Flexibility and Balance
Attain flexibility and gain the ability to think on my feet through an exercise called Table Topics – where participants are chosen randomly to deliver an impromptu speech for 1-2 minutes on a given topic. The balance comes from learning to trust ‘ yourself’ and to be comfortable being ‘ yourself’ in front of an audience.
As I usually say “All roads lead to Rome with a new maze coming at every turn”, this time also, I have started the journey to further explore myself and make a unique space for me. I will keep continuing digging out some more artifacts and share with you all, but do let me know, how well they are received at your end !!

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