The Advent of my Toastmaster Journey

Few years back, I had got to know about Toastmasters International. For those who havent heard about Toastmasters, Toastmasters International is a non-profit organization which provides a wonderful platform where each member will get an opportunity to improve their communication and leadership skills. I didn’t do much about it until recently when I begin to play a role in the Toastmasters. 

We have started a Toastmaster chapter in our company, called the BACI SilverTongue Toastmasters club. In-spite of a short period of time, we are into a full sprint mode now. As a registered member, each of the members is supposed to complete 10 projects, at the end they will be recognized as Competent Communicator. 2 weeks back, I did my first project – CC2. I have shared below, the topic which I had spoken about. My colleague Balaji also had given his first project speech – CC1, which is providing an ‘Ice Breaker’ session – basically introducing himself to the audience. Another colleague, Nageshwar Sahu, a very capable Toastmaster himself, had helped us 

 practice the speech 3-4 times & refine it. Thanks Nagesh for your help J. Now, over to the speech…

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Project CC2: B/G Friend

How many of you think that understanding women is difficult? Can you please raise your hands?? Thank you but unfortunately I don’t buy that thought. I think it is easy to understand women. The reason being two of the most beautiful relationship which I have with two women in my life, namely with my mom & sister. I have never felt that I couldn’t understand them & Iam able to modify my behavior accordingly to make them happy. Hence, I found it curious when one of my friend came to me & complained – ‘It is so difficult to understand girls’. He had a book with him called ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’. The book was supposed to help him understand more about women’s way of thinking. I said to him – Buddy, why don’t you directly start interacting with girls & then try to understand them, instead of learning it from a book.  My friend being a bookworm replied back – I find books to be a better company than the girls.  So, it triggered my thought process on how I can convince my friend in his language. Taking books & girls as comparison, bring out the similarity. That’s what Iam going to share my thoughts on B/G friend – Book/Girl friend. 

As the quote goes, never judge a book by its cover. There are certain small books hardly 100-150 pages, but the amount of impact it can make in your life is of big magnitude.  At the same time, there are certain books which are bulky, good looking to quote one – Emperor of maladies; the cover is beautifully decorated, looks nice, but believe me once you see the first page, it will be like as if your entire physics, chemistry of your 12^th standard has been crammed in the first page. What I mean to say is that you will not understand a single word (for a leisure reading). Similarly, Iam sure you will agree if I say that don’t judge a girl by her appearance. I needn’t talk more on that, still what really matters is what’s inside the girl rather than her external appearance. That’s true for both girls & books.

Last month, I & my friend had visited the Landmark center to look at new arrivals. As I looked at different books, I couldn’t help wonder that there were so many different genres of books lined up. Fiction, literature, management, psychology, philosophical, spiritual etc. They induce so many different emotions in their readers.  Similarly, when you are with your girl friend, they have a mesmerizing power to induce so many different emotions in you. They leave you happy, sad, excited, confused, surprised, devastated, the last two being more often. 

Books have an ability to stretch your frontiers of knowledge & make you a learned man. It is said that the more you read, the more you become knowledgeable. At crucial times in our life, certain books can motivate, inspire us to stretch ourselves & strive for success. Like the heroine in the movie, Singaam, where she gives a pep-talk to the hero, who then goes ahead to bash the villains, girl friends can motivate someone to be a better man & attain a bigger goal in life. Though you don’t have a choice in terms of listening to the uninterrupted flow of advice, sometimes, it does benefit you in a big way.

Another similarity which a book & girl friend has is in terms of their universal impact on the society. Confused?? Let me explain. Books by virtue of increasing knowledge in the society, contributes to the GKP, which is Gross Knowledge Product, which is the collective intellectual capital of its citizens, where as girl friends by virtue of their consistent shopping ensures they provide good livelihood to the shop keepers, there by contributing to the GDP, Gross Domestic Product of the nation.

Two men were having a conversation. One man said to the other – I become a millionaire after my marriage. The second man remarked – Wow, seems your wife has brought you loads of luck. The first man replied – I was a billionaire before marriage. Now, a book can teach you how to save money, but only a girl friend can teach you how to spend the saved money!

Finally, to put things in perspective, reading books is like a hobby, which endures for a long time. Having a girl friend is like having an interest, which is more a short term. It doesn’t matter if you have an interest or a hobby, what matters more is what you do with it & whether you make it a permanent part of your life. That is true both in case of books as well as girl friends. Stay open to learning, and both books & girl friend can positively influence your life for the better. 

Thank you!

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Dear friends & readers, if there is one good thing which you can do for yourself, that would be this. Join a Toastmaster community nearer to your living place. Though, I have started the journey very recently, being a wise man (as Iam) I can understand the significance of +ve impact, which TM can make in your life.  Hoping that I would be sharing more insights from my TM journey in this blog, & hoping that I also get to hear about your TM journey too.

God Speed & May the power be with you!