Its contest season here at Toastmasters. What does this mean? It means I get to make myself a little crazy!
Let me explain. I joined Toastmasters 2 years ago because I wanted to improve my speaking skills and find opportunities to network with other speakers and find opportunities to be in front of people – audiences whenever or wherever possible. I joined the local club here in St Augustine, Florida. The first year I learned about contests and it sounded like a lot of fun so I entered the contests. I advanced from the club level in the humorous contest category on to the district level. I was excitedly practicing for the contest when suddenly Covid showed up and that changed everything as we know including cancelling all the contests until further notice. That was the end of that.
Now, here I am a year later and its contest season again. Once again... I’ve advanced from my club level in the humorous speech category and am preparing for the district contest but this time its on Zoom of course.
Why am I going crazy?
I guess I’m just feeling a little stress but I realize they say that all stress is self-induced and I do believe this. But still I can’t help but to feel some stress. Renowned motivational speaker Mel Robbins tells us to turn those feelings of nervousness into feelings of excitement because they’re the same feelings physically so I keep reminding myself I’m just excited and not nervous.
My club contest with Toastmasters of St Augustine in the International speech category is next week on January 14, 2021 and then the club contest in the same category for my other club Central Florida Facilitators is the next week on January 20, 2021. The district contest for the Humorous speech contest will be on February 2, 2021. In addition to this I’ve just been invited to another club contest as the test speaker which means I’ll give a speech during the contest so that the contestants can evaluate my speech for the evaluation contest. This will happen sometime in January (this month) whenever they set the date. This all means I’ll be giving 3 different speeches at 4 different events all in a short time frame.
Am I up for this challenge? I tell myself that I am.
Its all part of the Toastmasters journey which continuously provides me with new opportunities and challenges. I’ll just keep telling myself that I’m up for this challenge and it’ll all be fine… I think. Or I may just go crazy! If you see me sweating, pacing back and forth or acting strange its not because I’m stressed or nervous… no, I’m just excited! At least that’s what Mel Robbins tells me.
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