FEAR IS THE PATH TO THE DARK SIDE – YODA

 The session started with an inspirational reflexion of our cheerful president Jelena Vetockina: “When was the last time you got a positive feedback at work”. In my personal opinion, people are not getting used to give a positive feedback, because it is assumed that it is your responsibility to do it well. Jelena invited to new guests for a little introduction, one of them was from the opposite side of the world New Zealand.

Sean Palit was the Toastmaster on Star Wars Day: “May the 4^th be with you”. None would think it was his first time as Toastmaster of the session, because he seems very confortable explaining the agenda of the day. The theme could not be more appropriate for that day: “Fear is the path to the dark side” cited by Yoda from Star Wars. What is the one thing that you have always wanted to do, but were afraid to try and why?

Olga Pucurrul was the brave woman, who broke the ice of the session with her Italian food joke, seafood spaghetti and meat-balls spaghetti!!!

The technical team was composed by Emilie, Eduard and Laia, as timekeeper, grammarian and ah-counter, respectively.

The first speech of the night was María Blancas with “Iceberg”. I fully agree with her quote: The brain can be the most irrational reality. Everyone has a perception of the reality totally different. In this sense, María explained the social Iceberg effect: people only show the 10% of them. Then we compare our 100% with the 10% of what we watch on TV, magazines or FB. A person value in not relative and not depend on others values.

The second speech was from Beatriz García, “Into the Wild”, which perfectly matches with the theme of the session. Beatriz showed us how difficult is to get out of our comfort zone, even though the objective is to travel to an exotic place as Kenya is. Our brains become our worst enemy when we decide to discover new things, because it is always showing us all inconveniences that could happen. However, Beatriz showed us how to face our fears making a balance with the positive things that could happen. Her experience encouraged us to take risks and venture into the wild.

The third speech  “Fake it until you believe it” by Maria Luisa Gomes, strengthened our perspective about how important is body language. This comes from nature itself, such as a cobra or a goose tends to appear powerful spreading his body or, on the other hand, we tend to a protection posture shrugging our shoulder in sign of weakness. Maria Luisa shared with us her dance teacher’s advice to become powerful and look at her now how powerful is on the stage in toastmaster. Congratulation Maria Luisa for your metamorphosis.

Marc, M.A and Rayanne were the evaluators of our fantastic speakers, highlighting the objectives achieved in each talk and giving advices to improve in future ones, to “Be the wonder woman/man of your life” as Maria Luisa said.

Paul Conde as the Table Topic Master chose his victims: Enrique, Gerard, Gerard (guest) and Isabel. We learned what is the best place for a sexy tattoo, how to improve your "sexual skills", how to contact with your ancestors and Lieutenant Oneill’s look is back.

At the end of the session, Paul welcomed to the new members of Toastmaster.

 Blogger : JuanM (Session of the 4th of May)