I talked to a young guest at a Toastmasters meeting last week. He is a student studying criminology. It was his second time as a guest to our club.

He spoke about how Toastmasters could help him with his self-confidence and how you enjoyed the meetings.

Age 18 to age 80 Everyone needs self confidence and the ability to speak up for themselves.  I love it when people join, learn, grow and have a great time with their self improvement.

I am gobsmacked at how many people can’t voice their opinion, mingle in gatherings, calmly and factually make a verbal complaint, share their opinion in meetings, and the list goes on.

I was one of those people who always was able to fake it. People would never know that I was hesitant in speaking because when the occasion called for it, I could do it but they never saw my knees shaking before and after each time.

If you live on planet earth, you need your voice, and you need to be confident in using it, otherwise you’ll always live in the shadow of what you could have accomplished.

Ever heard of Warren Buffett?  He took a course in public speaking from Dale Carnegie, and he said it was the most important degree he has. In his biography The Snowball, Warren said

“I was terrified of public speaking. You can’t believe what I was
like if I had to give a talk. I was so terrified that I just couldn’t do
it. I would throw up. In fact, I arranged my life so that I never had
to get up in front of anybody. When I came out here to Omaha
after graduating, I saw another ad. And I knew I was going to
have to speak in public sometimes. The agony was such that just
to get rid of the pain I signed up for the course again.”

Do you think you will go through life without ever having to talk? Think again, you can’t not communicate, get out of your shadow and be a guest at a Toastmasters Club – do it for yourself, do it for your future, do it for your success.

* thanks for reading my blog, I welcome comments and am grateful for the encouragement of everyone who follows my blog.  Take care.