Or not..maybe I'm just psyching myself out. I truly enjoy being in the Toastmasters club, but there have been times that I just want to avoid it. It's been almost a month since our Area contest for Table Topics took place, and well, I lost.... Sure, I gained the experience, but I thought I did really well on my impromptu speech. Bobby and our friends were there to cheer me on and several people came to me after the speech and told me that I did well and that the speech was great. Unfortunately, it was not great enough... Out of three contestants, I got to go first and went home without a trophy. Honestly, I was so crushed that I threw myself a pity party for a week. I was there to represent the Deerwood Club, and I dreaded going to the next club meeting. Hesitantly, I went ahead and took advantage of my stage time anyway and signed up to be one of the speaker's evaluators. I had to give an impromptu evaluation speech, and the "Best Evaluator" wins a ribbon. Surprisingly, I won a ribbon that day. You would think that would have had helped me gain confidence all over again with public speaking, but here I am writing a blog instead of preparing for my speech on Wednesday. I hate writer's block and preparing speeches. I'm no MLK, JFK nor FDR--I stink on speeches. All these negative thoughts and insecurities started to creep up again...so therefore, I took a break from my writer's block. I opened my email and read Jon Gordon's "positive newsletter" to distract myself. The video clip in his email is really powerful, and I was blown away by its message... how fitting to how I feel right now... Okay, losing is a good thing.. failing is a good thing....
Enjoy the video (and wish me luck on my speech!)
http://www.jongordon.com/liferisk.htmlHere's a picture of Manj and I at the Area Contest. We both represented the Deerwood Club that night. The lady on the right is Linda Deshauteurs, our Division Governor:
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