Over. I am not planning on delivering any speeches for awhile.

This past weekend, I attended Toastmasters District 86 Training (Club Officer + Workshops) in Mississauga. What I took from the experience was (in terms of goal setting):

1. Have a vision
2. Make a commitment
3. Orchestrate the experience

After a very enjoyable RCTM meeting last Thursday, I decided to become a member. I think 3 Toastmasters clubs is definitely my capping point, but I look forward to occasionally visiting other clubs as a guest.

Unfortunately I missed my High Noon meeting in Cambridge today due to the weather. The Guelph meeting in the evening was very enjoyable, and I have continued with my habit of fairly (but brutally) evaluating Icebreaker speeches, yet leaving the speaker with a positive and uplifting end note. I feel like I am talking about wine appreciation… a fine hint/nose of pepper, smoke, cherry and leather!

It was wonderful to get back to all of my regularly scheduled meetings today

As we are currently entrenched in the holidays, we have a week off of our standard Toastmasters meetings. I find I really enjoy kick-starting my week with a few meetings, and I am missing them today. I’m greatly looking forward to our first meetings of 2010.

1. Delivering my ACB (Advanced Communicator Bronze) speech during our High Noon speechathon today
2. Attending our Stone Road Holiday party tonight
3. Shopping for a gift this afternoon for the event
4. A celebratory pint with my fellow SRTM’s after the celebration

A lovely success!

I am now wrapping up a rather serious speech to present tonight at Stone Road Toastmasters. Everyone has seen my buoyant and comedic side; interesting to see how they will react to somber.

I happened to be conversing with a friend recently over some fantastic craft beer. Shortly into the discourse, he mentioned to me, “Rebecca – you’re a really great listener.” What a pleasant confirmation of yet another way that Toastmasters has positively affected my life. I never used to be as engaged in the role of a listener. I was one of those people who used to sit rather impatiently, seeming to pay attention to the other person, but mainly anticipating my turn to shoot my mouth off. When you mindfully and actively take a role in the other person and their words, they become all the more richer and more interesting. It becomes easier to pick up on subtleties of language – nuances, hidden meanings, and quiet humour. Granted, there is occasion that I am intently paying attention because I am picking up imperfections in speech, and I fully admit to quietly counting “ums”, “ahs”, and other filler words in conversations, but I usually try to be quiet about such evaluations – unless the other person wants to know!

As much as I really enjoy shooting my mouth off giving speeches, I am really starting to thrive on the evaluation process. In so many ways, people treat listening as a passive process, when in fact, it is active. Evaluating is an excellent reminder of this.