Bravery

For the month of January our Cottonwood Toastmasters Club has been holding a Speech Craft with the theme and goal of teaching valuable interview skills. This past week we had a volunteer, not a member of Toastmasters,  bravely stand before us and give a speech, terrified as she was. We would like to congratulate her on doing a marvelous job! She incorporated interesting information about herself, reasons why someone would benefit from her services and skills, asked valuable questions, and stood confident in her desire to learn and grow.

We learned that she was trained by a Shaman named Blue Cloud and does a Reiki type of healing. We also learned that she has a CD available and offered to share it with her future employer. Her name is Reverend Linda Page associated with Liberating Perspectives. Our applause is for you! You did a great job and we thank you for sharing.

Cottonwood Toastmasters meets every Monday 12:00 to 1:15 at the Cottonwood Village, 201 E Mingus Ave. Guests are welcome. For more information call Laina Lloyd at 928-300-8638 or Dave Ellison at 634-6540

Learning From Your Mistakes

Yesterday I gave a speech in our Cottonwood Toastmasters Club. It was probably one of the most difficult speeches I have ever given. That's a good thing! I learned the most from this speech because of the topic difficulty and the mistakes I made. The topic was "Interview Skills". This topic was assigned to me for the Speech Craft Series we are doing during the next three weeks. To make it more challenging, I wanted to give a speech out of my Entertaining Speaker Manual to assist me in my goal of Advanced Communicator. Whew, I tumbled thoughts around in my head for days, all the while asking myself "How can I make this speech informative and entertaining?" It wasn't until the night before my speech was to be given that I got a FLASH of an idea! 


I had recently read an article from Pine Tree Consulting Service "Things Not to Say at a Job Interview". They surveyed top personnel executives of 100 major American corporations and asked for stories of unusual behavior by job applicants. It is from this article that I chose to be the person of the "DO NOT DO'S" at an interview. It was a lot of fun being the wacky one, wearing the bold jewelry, kicking off my shoes, making insulting comments, talking on my phone, etc... The difficult part came when I realized I'd forgotten to pass out the hand out and had to do it during my speech, oops. And I ran out of time and didn't tie up my ending very well, which is something I pride myself on doing. Okay, so maybe it was a lesson in humility. I can take it!


How are you going to learn if you don't make mistakes, if you don't get up in front of an audience and speak? There are some club members I have not heard from in the year I have been in our club. I would like to extend this challenge to you of speaking at least ONCE each month. It is good for you, even though it hurts! I still get anxious before my speeches and often ask myself  "Now remind me why you are doing this Laina?" and the response is always the same, "It's good for you girl!" 

So how about it? Are YOU up to the challenge?

Cottonwood Toastmasters meets every Monday 12:00 to 1:15 at the Cottonwood Village, 201 E Mingus Ave. Guests are welcome. For more information call Laina Lloyd at 928-300-8638 or Dave Ellison at 634-6540

Thoughts for the Day

At each of our Cottonwood Toastmasters meetings someone is assigned to give a thought and I have heard some great messages over the past year. I felt that it would be appropriate to devote this blog post to a few of the thoughts that have impressed me at different times of my life. There are so many, these are but a nibble of the great words that can inspire, humor us, or assist us in times of change.  Maybe you can use these in your Toastmaster meetings as well. I will start with our thought from this past Monday, which was: "Don't wait for people to be kind, show them how."

"Your mind will be like it's habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts." 

 -- Marcus Aurelius

"Every good thought you think is contributing its share to the

 ultimate result of your life" 

--Grenville Kleiser

"The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. We learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time,and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

--Winston Churchill 

"Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow"

--Mark Twain

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." 

--Will Rogers

"If at first you don't succeed you're running about average." 

--M.H. Alderson

"All nature is but art unknown to thee, All chance, direction which thou cantst not see; All discord, harmony  not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. 

--Alexander Pope

"Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live."

--Goethe

To be continued...........................

Cottonwood Toastmasters meets every Monday 12:00 to 1:15 at the Cottonwood Village, 201 E Mingus Ave. Guests are welcome. For more information call Laina Lloyd at 928-300-8638

 or Dave Ellison at 634-6540