Ambitions of a Lewisham Toastie

I don’t know about you but it feels a little strange not being at Toastmasters this week. So I thought I would relive the memory of lasts weeks meeting.

When I think about the meeting last week, the word ‘ambition’ springs to mind. Not just because this was the grammarians chosen word for the day or because of our Toastmasters Cryptic question that kept everyone guessing for the night but because it was actually ambition that linked all of the fabulous speeches.

Firstly we heard from Karolis, who gave us the ‘Recipe for success’. Spurred on by a school reunion, he wanted to find out what made some people successful while others were perhaps not so successful.

Jason gave us an addition to that recipe in our second speech where he showed us how we could realize our Toastmasters ambitions more easily by utilizing the D71 website.

Finally Richard, told us in his winning speech, a tragic story of how one mountaineers ambition to place his wife’s photo as near to heaven as possible ended up killing him!

Fortunately for us Toastmasters, our ambition of becoming great public speakers, need not kill us! Speaking in public really does get easier over time the more we do it- Fact! Our visiting Aussie  Toastmaster Tina, was testament to this as she walked away with the best table topic of the night, while Chris Douce, won best evaluator.

So a question to anyone reading this blog who isn't already a member or is new to the club– what is your ambition? Is it something that Lewisham Toastmasters can help you with? Talk to us, join the club, get yourself a mentor and start realizing your ambitions!

Lewisham Speakers New Executive Committee Meeting - 24th July, 2013

Lewisham Speakers new Executive Committee is meeting on 24^th July to discuss the plan and strategy for the year 2013-14. The meeting venue is The Talbot Pub, 2 Tyrwhitt Road, Brockley, London, SE41QG. The timing 7.30 pm to 9.00 pm.
 

Another first - congratulations is in order!

Hello all,

I had to let you know this hot off the press news! Julie our long standing and eldest member of Lewisham Toastmasters Julie Kertesz, has just been given a DTM. No it’s not an alcoholic cocktail, it is the Distinguished Toastmaster award. This is the first time Lewisham Toastmasters has had a DTM. Julie is also the first DTM to be recognized this Toastmaster year for the whole of District 71 so it’s extra special!

Personally, I think Julie deserves the award just for her enthusiasm, passion and willingness to give her time so generously to coach and mentor new Toastmasters and contest winners alike. Alas, I do not make the rules! So to put this into perspective for you, if you want to follow in Julie’s footsteps you have to complete the following:

•  Competent Communicator manual (most of us at Lewisham are here!)
•  Competent Leader manual (we can complete this along-side the above)
•  Advanced Leader Bronze
•  Advanced Communicator Bronze
•  Advanced Communicator Silver
•  Advanced Communicator Gold
•  Advanced Leader Silver- which involves a high performance leadership project. Julie chose to  implement an area wide story telling project which helped toastmasters like you and me learn to tell stories as part of their speeches. The result -8 people ended up telling stories to a fee paying audience at the back in March 2013

To us Toastmasters novices, that basically means A LOT of public speaking!

As if all of the above was not enough, to be eligible for this award, you also need to be a club Officer for a year and then serve your District as well. Julie has been president of our club, and was also Area Governor for District 71 for 2012/13.

I know some of us are not at Toastmasters for the awards, but I cannot stress how major this award actually is. It’s testament to Julie’s hard work and perseverance. Its evidence that her confidence, and speaking skills are at the highest level.  

It’s also proof that this Toastmasters stuff works! 

It’s hard to believe that it has only taken Julie 5 years to achieve this incredible accolade. 

What is even more inspiring is that Julie has done all this at an age where society says she should give up and ‘retire’. Luckily for us she decided not to follow age stereotypes and has gone on to become a commended keynote speaker and stand-up comedian. 

It just goes to show that if we persevere and keep coming to the club, keep giving our speeches, keep getting signed off for the roles we take on each club night and stay committed to our own development, there is no reason we cannot reach these heights too!

The only thing stopping us is us!

We are honoured to have such a humble experienced Toastmaster in our midst.

Please join me in congratulating Julie!

Well done Julie!

First of the year

For those of you who don’t know, the beginning of July represents the beginning of the Toastmasters year. The Chinese refer to 2013 as the year of the Snake. People born in the Year of the Snake are reputed to be thoughtful and wise, and the year itself is meant to signify ‘steady progress’. So what? I hear you ask.

Well I think this is rather apt because for each and every toastmaster- no matter what your level, each week we come to Toastmasters, we make steady progress. Even if we only take part in the warm up and don’t utter a single word publicly for the rest of the night, we are talking small steps to becoming world class public speakers. I stress this point because I really believe it. Case in point, on Wednesday 3^rd July, one of our guests-Larissa made massive progress. She did her first table topic telling us confidently how Lewisham toastmasters feels like ‘her family’ She even lasted the full 2 minutes which was amazing!

We were honoured to host several guests on Wednesday night who also gave many other ‘First’ anecdotes. Including the first day at school (Didier), the first time on holiday (Afam), and the first time in the sea (Royston of Bromley Toastmasters). Karlios, who took on the table topic evaluator role for the first time, managed to give positive feedback to every single table topic speaker. I look forward to witnessing their steady progress in the weeks to come.

There were lots of other noteworthy ‘first’ times. For example, Wednesday night was the first time Manoj attended a meeting as our club President and had a speech prepared. The first time Jason took on the Toastmaster role which he did extremely well. The first time our newest member Jacqui gave her speech to us – her new family which was about her family. We all hope to meet your sister one day!

We had a wonderful speech from Zhanna, who gave us a plotted history of Tea and even showed us how to make it! It’s the first time, I’ve seen tea drunk as part of a toastmasters speech and definitely the first time anyone has ever told me to pour tea into milk, not milk into tea. Clearly I’ve been going wrong all these years!

The 3^rd prepared speech of the evening came from me, where I lamented on the quality of our decisions. That speech that won speech of the night, with Richard providing the winning evaluation for evaluating Jacqui’s speech. The table topic award went to our lovely American Toastmasters veteran guest- BiBi. In her week-long stay in the UK, Toastmasters Lewisham was the first club she attended. Her 16 years of progress was obvious as she skilfully avoided the ‘Kiss-and-tell’ question and instead told us to:

 “Never evaluate yourself as others will do it for you”  

We all need to take these wise and thoughtful words on board – for if we don’t, we will only stifle our own steady progress. Umm… I wonder if our new American friend was born in the year of the snake!

Should you choose to make the wise decision to continue your steady progress, I will see you Wednesday 17^th July. In the meantime,

Happy New (Toastmasters) Year!