Gurney-Hydro Toastmasters Club

Hey everyone, we decided to have some fun in our last meeting and used Game of Thrones for our theme. For those of you who are obsessive fanatics of the TV series as some of our members are * cough Ms Secretary *, you will know that it combines stunning visuals and compelling story telling that kept fans glued to their TV screens every Monday night. In fact, the show has all the ingredients for a great speech, especially for projects that involve story telling. 1) Multi Dimensional Characters Characters that are multi-dimensional like Jaime Lannister, for example, keep the audience guessing on their next move.  Fans of the show loathed him for his "I don't give a f***," attitude in the beginning, especially when he nonchalantly pushed a 10 year old Bran Stark off the tower after the young boy witnessed something he shouldn't have. But as the show progressed, we see him displaying different sides of his character.  We realize that maybe he is not such a ba...

Let's face it...we public speakers are divas on the inside. Why else then do we want to be on stage? True we may have lofty goals such as wanting to share our wisdom as a way to add value to society. But deep down inside, we know we want to put ourselves out there and be heard because what we have to share with the world is something that we are so passionate about that we want to make sure we make a lasting impression. Like how this blog post is started - that first sentence certainly hooked you in, didn't it? You may protest vehemently or agree with it, but it got your attention enough to continue reading till here. The biggest mistake in public speaking is not starting out strong.  You want to get your audience's attention immediately.  Therefore you'll want to put your biggest bang at the beginning of your speech instead of somewhere in the middle where you may have lost some of them. So how do you make an entrance? You can say something that will m...

We all have dreams and goals and that includes the wonderful people who attended our meeting.  They shared their wisdom on what having dreams and goals mean to them. The key takeaway that we had was that there is a difference between a dream and a goal.  Dreams will remain dreams until we put in place a plan to achieve them.  Then they become goals that we work towards. Thought of the day: It always seems impossible until it's done. The thought of the day jives very well with our theme.  We may have big dreams that seem too impossible to achieve.  But hey, we don't have to achieve them TODAY AT THIS INSTANT. Set small, manageable goals that all go towards achieving that dream.  Then when we look back after some time and see how far we've come, hey, it doesn't seem that hard after all, does it? Some dreams are harder to achieve, but you can either live your life wishing you had done something to achieve it, or look back at your life and say,...