The Master

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready
To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out
He's chokin, how everybody's chokin now
The clock's run out, time's up over, bloah!

- Eminem on Lose Yourself.

Em's lyrics capture how I feel everytime I do public speaking. Its that calmness that I lack, the ability to just be myself, relaxed and chilled out in front of everyone. Mind blanks, knots in my throat, that that word.......confidence. Aahhh that's it.

So no more! I and a bunch of mates from work that I convinced went along to our very first Toastmasters session held at my workplace. I must say it was a weird experience. It was very formal, and everyone was so so (what's that key word).......confident. You how it is when everyone is so "welcoming" it makes you feel uncomfortable and less welcome. Like your a newcomer at Church and everyone thinks its their duty to welcome you.

To break it down for you, Toastmasters is a public speaking club. The way it works is that you have members who have to do one formal speech and then later do an improptu. The formal speech you get given time to do, allocated to you from this book which tells you what style you have to do. Eg. some chick did "the entertainer" style and talked about how to lose weight and had to use her personal experience. When everyone's finished the formal stuff, someone who's like a veteran gives you feedback on how you can improve, etc...

Then we had the dreaded "table topics".

Some person gets up and plucks some random topic and selects someone to speak for a minute on the topic. Eg. " How did you feel about those kids being arrested in Indonesia over that heroin. Rhonda you speak". And you gotta get up and just speak! In front of everyone. No time to prepare. Freestyle on the spot.

The thing was it was slightly nerving as the people that were all pretty good speakers and were much older than us. Like between 30-50 and we was like slightly intimated as they were from investment banks, Defence Force, Deloitte, etc.. and seemed like senior executive types who were able to talk for like 5-8 minutes without palm cards and seemed so natural. Obviously they've had a lot more public speaking experience than us and were more sure of themselves.

I definently think there's a lot of benefit that can be gained from joining and being forced to speak, especially if you have to freestyle on the spot, without prep time nor time to think. I think that if I can hang with these people and be able to present in front of them, I'll take a great leap forward in not losing myself ever again.

Peace out,

DJ HO.