10th speech of the Communication and Leadership Manual
by Stefan Bogdanov
held at Toastmasters Club of Berne
I am a fast train driving without regress
To and thru between the No and the Yes
My nerves are conducting the electric flow
From the city Yes to the city No
Dear Toastmasters, guests and friends,
The journey I want to describe has something in common with the journey from the city No to the city Yes, described in the great poem by the famous Russian poet E. Evtushenko. The talk will be about a similar journey of mine, the Journey from Fear to Fun, a considerable part of which took place during my TM experience of now more than one year.
How many of you came to toastmasters because of fears of talking in public? Of course we hope that by joining Toastmasters we will conquer these fears and become good public speakers. As well as this fear, I had still other, more formidable fears, when I started the Toastmaster's journey: the fear of words.
These fears have accompanied me all of my life. These fears blocked my speech and hampered my communication. Experience shows that most stuttering people remain stutterers for all their lives.
Why is it so difficult to change stuttering? Stuttering is like an iceberg, the stuttering effect being only the symptom on the surface. The greater part of it lies beyond sight: it is composed of the complex stuttering personality, the stuttering behaviour, the stuttering feelings. And in order to change stuttering, one has to change the whole iceberg, that means that one has also to change the behaviour and the feelings.
Indeed, stuttering creates a false self. In order to be cured of stuttering, one has to become again one’s true self. So I started to watch my good and bad speaking periods and identified the characteristics of the stuttering iceberg. Then I started changing the stuttering behaviour and my speech became more fluent.
I dare now dream of becoming a fluent speaker, because there are number of stutterers who overcame their speech problem. Just to name the most famous ones:
Last summer I visited for the first time a World Conference for persons who stutter. There I heard the Canadian Mary Wood deliver a magnificent speech. The speech was perfectly fluent and was a rhetoric masterpiece, great even for fluent people. Mary seemed to enjoy the presentation. At the end of the lecture she told us that she learned the art of speaking with Toastmasters. After her lecture she encouraged everybody: face your fears, go to TM and learn the art of good communication.
When I came back, I looked in the internet and found the Bernese TM club. Soon I visited a Tostmasters meeting, which was taking place at that time at the Bruder Klaus church. The first thing that struck me was that many participants were having fun. This encouraged me to become a member of Toastmasters and to face my fears of words and of public speaking.
Soon another fear was added to the ones I already had when I saw that they voted for "best speech". I feared not being able to equal normal speakers at the “best” votings because of my fluency. To my surprise, my impromptu speech at the table topics was voted as „best“. Although to tell you the truth, I think that the TM practice of choosing the best might be an obstacle to people with speaking fears. I have some friends who are reluctant of joining Toastmasters when they hear about these votes. On the other hand, it is important to face fears, to face challenges and to do our best, regardless of the votes.
Last week we had a very motivational speech by our area governor Roy Skinner, entitled "We plan as we think". It was about right thinking, that leads to good planning of our TM activities. On my TM journey I also discovered that a insufficient preparation of my speech resulted in stress and confusion during the performance. So this was another lesson I was taught during my TM journey: organise and plan well your speech! I planned this speech already 2 months ahead. I waited for good ideas to be whispered to me by my subconsciousness.
Where does our journey lead us?
Our journey is like the quest of Frodo and his friends in the Lord of the Rings:
The road goes ever on and on Down from the door when it began
We entered the door to the Toastmaster’s meeting, and our journey here will not be as risky, but at least as interesting and exciting as the journey of Frodo and his friends. And like Frodo’s journey, our journey will lead us to many unknown lands. We will meet many new spirits, because of the multicultural aspect of our TM group. We counted that about 15 languages are spoken here - and we know that each language means another life to the person who speaks it. And like Frodo’s journey, our journey too will be a success and we will fulfil our objective, which is to become good communicators and public speakers.
I am now holding my 10th speech, so today is a milestone of my TM journey. Looking back to my time with you Toastmasters, the journey fills me with gratitude and joy. I want to celebrate this occasion with you, my friends. I want to invite everybody to have a toast with me during the dinner pause.
Long live the toastmaster experience!