My First Speech @ TM!!!

Today I made up my mind to give an attempt in ToastMasters Table topics Session. I was awaiting for the moment when Table Topics Master will call for volunteers.

For the past five or six weeks stint with ToastMasters, whenever the table topics session will happen, I used to feel anxious and when they called for volunteers, I sat down wihtout making an attempt, fearing that I may bluff in front of crowd.

As weeks turn around, this fear started building upon stronger that I am unable to control it anymore.

So, yesterday, I researched on why this fear happens and what am I afraid of. If I am afraid of the unknown people around me, then there are so many people whom I dont know and I may have to fear for my lifetime.

If I am afraid of what people would think of me when I bluff, then I can never become eloquent or get better in expressing myself.

So, in order to eradicate this fear,I told to myself that whatever be the topic or how complex it may be, I will have to give an attempt.

In order to make myself comfortable, I developed an idea to start speaking for first few seconds on something general and then get on to the topic.

The time arrived and the table topics Master called upon for volunteers, I stepped out after three seconds and got to know that the topic given to me was

“India is the best country to live on the Earth”

Though this seems to be a simple topic, I had a doubt whether to use the generic helper speech which I had prepared intially and later decided to use the generic one without consideration and here goes the speech I had made.

“Necessity is the Mother of Invention. How many of you agree?(Few audience raised their hands). We have this bulb because of Thomas Alva Edison who had a fear of dark.

He wanted to have light in the dark so as to get rid of this fear .This necessity driven him to invent bulb. Similarly I also considered that public speaking is something important and I ackonwledged the necessity and joined ToastMasters.

Now coming to the topic, Inida is the best place because I had been born here and also because of Tajmahal, epitome of love and I had been there too in the past. Thank you”

1 min and 18 secs had gone.Though I had not connected with the topic much, I succeeded in my attempt to stand up and speak.

A singaporean ToastMaster later said that there were so many places like Kerala, Goa etc., which could had been spoke on the topic.

Standing before an sensible audience itself seemed to me an bigger task. I am not able to say that I was nervous because I feel I made my mind so stronger that I did not feel nervous,but rather I did not kept my mind open and did not think at all on the topic.

Now, If at all, I would had think on this topic that time, I would had spoke something like the one below.

“Well, ‘India is the best country to live on Earth’ is the topic. To tell that it is the best, I should had known other countries, but unfortunately I had not been to any of the countries other than my home country.

So, If I make the comparison based on what I hear on other countries,then definitely it would not be correct Apple to Apple comparison. I can say about the things I like about India and I will left to the audience to decide upon whether it is the best or not.

Tajmahal, one of the seven wonders of the world, is so much beautiful and I am fortunate to admire its glory by being there at Agra. In additon what makes it still beautiful is that it is the epitome of love.

India has so many states with so many languages like Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Urdu etc and these diverstiy in languages and the diversity in culture are something which I had admired and hope you would also feel the same.

It has the great Marina and Juhu beach in addition to the several beautiful beaches at Goa.

It has the world’s highest Mountain Himalyas, It has so many rivers like Ganga,Yamuna,cauvery etc.,and so many beautiful temples.

With these wide fortunes, I believe India is a great place to live on Earth. Leaving the question of whether it is the best or not, to the audience. Thank you All!”

 

On the other hand, I also had this thought. I doubt patriotism in the sense that is it right to draw lines on the planet Earth and call, “This is my country and This is yours??

Whenever a war happens between India and pakistan, we all feel that we are Indians and will fight it as Indians, Similarly when it is between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, we say we are Tamilians and will fight with Karnataka. If its with our neighbour, we will fight it with our family members.,

Atlast it will be me vs Rest of family if the conflict is between me and the rest of family. Man is so selfish that in order to defend himself, he created the boundaries.

But question that needs little thinking is that “Is it fine, If real life goes for unreal boundaries??”

Mad Race!!!!

Every Morning Deers start running in order to escape from the Lion and Similarly Lion also starts running every morning hoping to find its prey to escape from starving.

This Mad Race goes on and on… Sometimes intention of Deer succeeds and sometimes Lion’s intention succeeds.

Though this seem to be a very simple story,I think it has a profound meaning. This jungle story also happens in our human society.

The entire society runs and entities of the society we human beings, run believing that our intentions will succeed that day.

But as its all a relative theory, one’s success also means some one’s loss. For instance, Real Estate person’s dream of transforming a small area around a forest might affect the dream of a Man who tries to conserve forest.

On one weekday in the past week, When someone said, “don’t you know this simple technique?” I felt guilty after that question doing nothing for some two hours or so, until this sudden realisation happened.

If I have to feel guilty for things I don’t know, then the whole life time would not be sufficient enough to get rid of this guilt feeling.

So, the realisation in essence is that, I should not waste time feeling guilty when some one provokes me, rather it would be better if I try to catch up with learning the needed techniques to work effectively.

 Thoughts I admired this week:

Kannadhasan, a famous tamil poet,once said a story of a Man to explain enlightenment. Here goes the story of that Man

A Man was surrounded by so many problems in life and he finds all his endeavours to solve them to be unfruitful,at one fine moment, when he realized that he cannot do anything ,he shouts louder the word “oh…” and started laughing contiously … Kannadhasan says this Man is enlightened.

Is Ego Needed?

I never knew that my first blog here will be on a topic EGO. As an Indian,during my early schooling years, I was taught that people have to be selfless and should not have any pride in talking about themselves(Or their successes). In essence, “dont be egoistic” is the theme imposed on me.(or my perception of what people around me believed).

As I grew up, most people (especially those involved in personal development) stated that one’s self image is very important and how good one feels about himself is the key to success.

These two thoughts seemed contradicting to each other and after contemplating on this, I feel self image and ego are somewhat synonymous to each other.

So my understanding now is that one of the important keys to personal development is to have this ego(or good self image), albeit I believe when this ego becomes too strong that it can hurt other people around, then it would have a negative effect on personal devlopment.

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