HOLIDAY, SPORT AND RELAX!

Last Wednesday July 13th, we had a short but very exciting session: holidays are almost here, we are happier than usual… and somebody is making tourism in a very different way: visiting a Toastmasters Club in another city.

In this session we had the chance to have with us 2 guests from the Toastmasters Club of Warsaw and one guest from the Toastmasters Club of New York.

Sandra, our dear President, warmly welcomed the guests, who were really happy to participate to our session in Barcelona Toastmasters Club and exchange new ideas with us.

Bea, who was the Toastmaster of the day, started the session explaining that during the weekend Murray won the Davis cup and Portugal won the European Championship. They all deserve now relaxing holidays, resting from all that effort.

Now we also start our holiday season, and many of us use this period of time to do more sport than what we normally do during the year. Bea, for example, loves taking relaxing walks on the beach every morning and do some stretching.

Some of us will do different sports during our holidays: it can be swimming, running, trekking or even "sofing" or "siesting"! They have great benefits :-) 

Whatever sport we choose for the summer, it’s important to live at our best during the holidays, relax and have fun, in order to come back in september with enthusiasm and new energy!!

This was the fantastic technical team of the session:

Maria Luisa - Sergeant at Arms

Gerard - Ah-Counter

Sean - Grammarian

Enrique - Timekeeper

Raffaella - Blogger

The 3 speeches of this session were very inspiring. Here’s a short summary of each speech: 

FIRST SPEECH

“Read your audience” – Marc

(5th speech of the Competent Communication Manual – Your Body Speaks)

Marc started his speech describing the situation of a public speaker, who was training for hours and hours his presentation, training every single movement in front of the mirror and learning by heart every single word, to prepare a perfect speech.

When the speaker is finally making his presentation on the stage, he suddenly can see that the audience is…. sleeping!!

The speaker had learned his speech by heart, but he didn’t connect with his audience, he didn’t adapt the speech.

“Some speakers say that their audience is apathetic” – explained Marc – “But they are focusing too much on themselves and not on their audience!”

Marc suggested to personalise our speech, by interacting and asking questions to the audience and listening to their reaction. It’s not something strange, we actually do it everyday in our conversations with our friends and family…

The last tip: “Read the body language of your audience, which is the most powerful language!” 

SECOND SPEECH

“NO” – Mariyana

(6th speech of the Competent Communication Manual – Vocal Variety)

“When you’re young, you want to do everything” – started to explain Mariyana – “but there’s only one word that you don’t want to hear at all, and this word is: NO”

We tend to see the word NO in a negative way, we normally prefer to say YES.

But the word NO can actually protect us in different situations:

1 – We can use the word NO to save our values and principles. For example, we can say NO if something that we’re asked to do doesn’t respect our values.

2 – We can use the word NO to protect ourselves from the exploitation of our kindness. Mariyana explained that a friend of her asked her credit card number to buy a flight, in order to travel in a specific date just for pleasure. She said NO, because her friend didn’t need any help, she was travelling for pleasure, not for an emergency, and she was trying to make an exploitation of Mariyana’s kindness. 

3 – We can use the word NO to better focus on our goals. For example, if we’re trying to find a job and we want to succeed in our goal, we’re not going to say YES every time that some friend is asking us to go out! The new job won’t fall from the sky, we have to make an effort to find it, and the word NO helps us to focus on our goals.

“When you say NO, think about the following!” – concluded Mariyana – “And ask yourself: if I say NO, am I closing the door to something, or am I opening the door to a bigger YES for tomorrow?”

The word NO is a treasure that protects ourselves today and opens the door to new opportunities for tomorrow.

THIRD SPEECH

“What would it take to change the world?” - Miguel, from New York

(9th speech of the Competent Communication Manual – Persuade with Power)

“What would it take to change the world? Love? Peace? Kindness?” – asked Miguel to the audience and continued: 
“It would take compassion to change the world! Compassion, which is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another human being who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.”

During the speech Miguel gave us the examples of Mother Teresa and Helen Keller, who both were very compassionate and wanted to help people.

Mother Teresa asked to help people even when she was in the hospital, and Helen Keller was able to smile even if she was blind.

“How can we develop a mind frame of compassion?” – asked Miguel, inviting us to take responsibility of our life. We can’t always say: “It’s fault of this, or that”.

Life happens to us, life is a story, "...but you can tell the story in your way, in a compassionate way!” – emphasized Miguel. We can just start from the simple things. 

Miguel concludes his inspiring speech with a “call to action” that we all can practice: “Smile, like Mother Teresa!”

EVALUATION OF THE SPEECHES

1 - Rayane evaluated Marc’s speech “Read your audience”

Marc’s performance was great, with nice body language and great eye contact. Marc did a really nice speech!

Rayane suggested to improve the conclusion, by making a little summary of the speech and ending up with a strong conclusion. She also recommends to personalise the examples of the speech by involving people from the audience, like saying: “For example, if Jelena and Bea do this, the consequences will be: A, B, C…..”

2 - Sandra evaluates Mariyana’s speech “NO”

Sandra appreciated Mariyana’s strong opening with a question, which could catch our attention from the very first beginning, as well as her “call to action” during the speech.

The speech was well structured, with a strong opening, the body, were Mariyana explained 3 different concepts, supported with practical examples, and a nice conclusion.

Sandra suggested Mariyana to exaggerate a little bit more the vocal tone in the questions, making some pause and accompanying the speech with a more “dramatic” body language.

3 – Paul evaluates Miguel’s speech “What would it take to take the world?”

Paul appreciated Miguel’s speech, not only for the speech itself, but also because he is from New York and he decided to share the speech in Barcelona Toastmasters.

The speech was really appealing, and the great thing is that we all have the power to smile and change the world!

Paul suggested Miguel to adapt the examples to the audience: many of us didn’t know Helen Keller, who is better known in USA. We could have felt more involved with examples like the refugees of Syria or other examples that are closer to our context in Europe.

Paul also suggested to pay attention at the structure of the speech, which has to change if the speech is inspirational or persuasive.

GENERAL EVALUATION – by Jelena

The session started and ended on time, the guests were warmly welcomed and the organisation was great!

The performance was also great:

• The technical team gave a personal touch in the presentation of their roles
• The Toastmaster Bea chose a great topic
• Rayane and Sandra made their evaluations with energy, enthusiasm and sense of humour, giving practical examples and suggestions to the speakers.
• Jelena encouraged Paul to be softer and motivating in his evaluation. Miguel could have improved the structure of his speak, but it was overall it was an inspirining and very appealing speech.

Jelena also encouraged everybody to applaud a lot to the speakers: we have to give them all our positive support!

At the end of the session, our President Sandra reminded us to participate to the upcoming Toastmasters Summer Party, on Saturday July 16th on the beach (Marbella).

AFTER THE SESSION

After the session, we all went to the bar as usual, but this Wednesday we had the chance to share this moment together with our guests from Warsaw and New York Toastmaters Clubs.

It was really great, as you can see:

See you next Wednesday dear Toasties!

Take care!

Blogger: Raffaella