“The Truth Is Out There”

I don’t know why, but I always admired people who give (or gave) great speeches, such as Steve Jobs or Martin Luther King.

There’s some kind of magnetism on them, difficult to describe.

As a blogger (yes, I am), I have several blogger friends here in Barcelona. One of them, a social skills expert, recommended me to go to Toastmasters.

When I first came to the Club, I didn’t think there was also the possibility to have meetings in English, in order to be able to give speeches in the language of Shakespeare.

There had been so many months since I was not talking to people in this language, and I think the best way to learn is to practise, not Reading, listening or writing (the three of them help, of course).

Before I atended the first meeting, I was thinking something like: “ok this is one of these silly things people do to spend some time out from home, but not really worth it”.

After the meeting I was totally shocked. It was exactly what I was looking for!

The meetings were funny, and I learned a lot on the first meeting.

I discovered that the truth was not as I thought.

Actually, like in the TV show “The-X Files” that was the topic of last Wednesday’s meeting “The Truth Is Out There”.

1.- Introduction

Jelena Vetockina, our president, started the sesion very inspiring, as usual. He said ‘choose people who make you better person”, quote which I absolutely agree.

Olga Coscodan was the Toastmaster this time and described the program in a very particular way. She was afraid of Table Topics last week, but assumed from no won that it’s a very good way to learn though. The Theme was, as I said: “The Truth is Out There”. How would you life be is you were abducted by aliens? Have you ever though so? That one was funny J

Actually, like Olga said, the subject of abductions is quite interesting in countries such as Germany or USA, since a lot of people believe in aliens.

The Technical team was composed by Jorge Egea, Miguel Escobar and Emilie Jacquetton.

2.- Speakers

The first speech of the night was Sean Palit’s “Building Castels in the Sand”. I fully agree with Sean when he said passions is overrates and exagerates. Society and Media has brainwashed us in that sense. The meaning of passion has evolved (lathin “endure/suffer”).

When we were kids, we were excited to build castles in the sand, even though they could be destroyed by the sea water, the wind, etc. We united energy, effort and commitment just by the unconditional love we put in the action of building it. As adults, we give up easily so it’s different. We shouls recover the passion for living as kids once had. Let’s make the world the best castle in the sand!

In my opinion, Sean gave a very good speech and succed in his goals.

The second speech was from Rayanne, “Scared in the Mountains”. This was a very interesting and frightning true story from Rayanne when she was on holidays at Pucayacu, Ecuador.

Fog, breakings not functioning, a car passing along…

They just had the front light of the car but they couldn’t see anything…

They didn’t even know where the precipice was.

A story full of fear and confussion…

Finally the fog disappeared and a car told them that they needed to stay until the breakings get cooler (they were so hot they didn’t function).

3 lessons for the audience: be careful with the breaks, also with the mountain roads, and beware of the time you want to get somewhere if you don’t know the place.

The third speech was Jelena’s “Meeting in the nutritionist conference”. It was one of those interesting speeches due to the deepth of its content.

First, Jelena mentioned Mychael Hyatt, saying that a conversation should be like a game of ping pong, giving and receiving. You wait for the ball over the net, then you hit it back to the persono n the other side.

She also talked about 5 strategies to become better conversationalist:

1.- Listen with your heart

2.- Be aware of how much you are talking

3.- Hit the ball back over the net

4.- Ask follow-up questions

5.- Provide positive feedback

I think the most important strategy is the first one, although it doesn’t imply the fact of talking. But in order to improve your communication skills, there’s no doubt that you have to really listen, not faking it.

The second part of the speech was a role-play with Isabel Montero, when they simulated to be strangers and meet in a conference, initiating the conversation to find a place and using open-ended questions. The talk was quite long and they had time enough to talk about topics related with nutrition, veganism, health and even Feng Shui at the end.

3.- Evaluation & Table Topics

Marc Majoral, Beatriz Garcia and Paul Conde were the evaluators of the three speechesm giving positive feedback to the speakers and also some things to improve.

Hugo Perez, as the Table Topic Master, introduced the volunteers. The topic of the night was ‘Extreme Sports’ such as downhill running, running with hills and Major League Combat with juggling. The ones who dared to be the volunteers were Amros, Juan Rubio and Maria.

The three of them did it funtastic!

At the end of the session, Jelena received from Rayanne her first ribbon advanced speech and announced the Toastmasters contest in April, which will take place in Alicante.

Finally, the meeting was over and as usual we ended up havind a beer at the bar, See you next week! J

(Meeting of the 16th of March- Blogger: Edu)