Member-only story
Be A Toastmaster and Improve Your Communication Skills!
Be A Toastmaster and Improve Your Communication Skills!
The proven way to excel and achieve personal happiness
We need the courage to live. Life is not straightforward. I remember all the times when I was cowered by fear. However, it’s all my perception.
Fear to fight back. Fear to face the consequences even when wronged. Fear to put things right and be justified. Fear to inspire others to have courage through one’s challenges.
One of my first fears was public speaking. Being pathologically shy and introverted had caused me to miss many opportunities in life.
I missed the meeting and interacting with inspiring people because of the lack of the art of conversation. Mostly due to the fear of not being able to converse well.
It was evident back in school. Students who were conversant and confident were also courageous. They get noticed, offered opportunities to develop and grow further.
That caused me to embark on a long journey to learn communication skills. Almost laughable thinking about it.
My first foray into public speaking was when I enrolled with the British Council for a public speaking course. On the day itself, they put us individually in front of a video camera and I freaked out. Talk about throwing one into the deep sea immediately.
The costly three-day course hardly moved my dial on personal confidence.
Next, I embarked on a Dale Carnegie course, another expensive workshop, all ten sessions of it. Dale Carnegie was an American writer and lecturer, and the developer of courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills.
He was the famous author of “ How to win friends and influence people” which is still widely read and practiced today.
My self-introduction on stage on the first day lasted 10 seconds. We could see that public speaking fear was real as, among the professionals, even high fliers like managing directors feared speaking in public.
