Good evening Madam Toast Master, Fellow toastmasters
and welcome guests,
I am going to share my journey around public
speaking… and yet why am I here.
To begin the journey we need to hop to the time
machine go back in time when I was in 10th grade. This is probably the first
time ever on a stage. My brother and I were moved to our grand parents house in
countryside from the city where we lived forever. This school was in near by
village about 3 miles away from grand parents’. One of our teachers decided to
bring up well studying students and put them on the stage and share this
particular lesson. We were each supposed to memorize a paragraph and speak in
front of other students. I was super excited as this is something completely
different and I had never done this before. I memorized my portion very well.
We all assembled in an open hall. There were about 150 students. Students went
up and spoke and came down. My turn came up, teacher called my name.
I went up on the stage… stage is feet above other
students; you may call it a platform. I went up there, turned around towards
students. I chocked, my legs were shivering and was sweating… I could not hear
any single word from mouth, really wanted to speak but just the air came out. I
failed. It was embarrassing! Could not face my friends, fellow students
especially girls. I tried to forget that nightmare.
The next experience is going to 35 weeks long
stage presence! To check on this, lets forward the clock a little bit and I was
now in 12th grade in the same school. There was a custom in the school,
beginning of the year; first assembly of the year; teachers and principal
select a student leader. Different teachers were nominating the names. I was
trying to go small and hide behind tall students. I didn’t want to hear my
name. Unfortunately, our principal remembered my name in the crowd and called
up on the stage. This is bigger stage than the other one. School student leader
position was not that bad. Share a motivational quote and play a couple of
anthems and pretty much it! Though the music was loud in the speaker, I could
hear even stronger dhak.dhak.dhak! I saw my heart was beating up and shirt was
going up & down! But I survived…
The next one totally 360 degree turn around… This
time I threw myself on the stage. This was during my college days… It was
totally dreamful days of my life. I joined my college cultural team and
represented my hostel and college in many cultural events. I performed on
stages, acted in skits, danced for songs, participated in the games. We were
just having fun… whatever we acted were totally well received and lots of
claps and prizes.
Many years later, after many stages and
presentations, I challenged me again and threw myself in front of 600 high tech
employees in a developer conference. Though I was considered a subject matter
expert, I realized that there were people in the audience much knowledgeable
than me and there were people less knowledge than me. I could be looked
as an idiot if I delivered content wrong… My goal is bring in the awareness by
explaining the complex matter in a simple form possible. I created many little
stories to present the content. And I was one of the top 3 speakers… Yet, I
wanted to go to next level and by my manager’s recommendation I decided to join
Toastmasters…
Moral of the story is… every single stage is
unique… Challenging… it may be due to new content… may be new audience… every
single presence is a little journey, one would have to go thru nervousness
state to accomplished state…
Yes, I feel the accomplished state, now!!
Yay!!
Thanks all.
