“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. And most important, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” ~Steve Jobs
Joined Toastmasters club is one of the best things I have done in life. Looking back in 2007, I joined Toastmasters club following by my husband, Jim’s encouragement. English is my second language, and I never thought that I could become a public speaker in English. I was embarrassed to quit. I spent quite an amount of time practicing and memorizing every speech I have given in the club with my writing. The journey on that experience can be harrowing and frustrated sometimes. Nevertheless, I stuck with it. If you don’t know about Toastmasters International, it’s a non-profit educational organization. It helps people improve public speaking, leadership, and communication skills.
I travel to China several times a year for my business. Since I always have a pretty busy schedule, I rarely have time to do something else other than meeting with my clients. In 2018, while I was in Beijing, I discovered a couple of Toastmasters clubs in Beijing closed to where I stayed, and I started to connect with them just out of my curiosity. I would like to know and possibly learn about how Toastmasters clubs run in China. One of the clubs, Mind Keys Toastmasters, responded immediately and I had a phone call with the president of the Club Christina. I explained that I would be leaving Beijing the next day and perhaps we could schedule a meeting on my next trip to Beijing. She quickly decided to come and meet with me at the hotel.
There I was, eleven years later, invited by Christina to give a presentation on how to achieve the highest personal achievement in Toastmasters International.
I was excited and have prepared a power-point presentation for the meeting. On a Saturday morning, I invited a few friends of mine to join the meeting and asked them to give me feedback after the session. The meeting located in the English learning center. The president of the club, Christina, was there to greet us and showed us the meeting hall. She introduced me to the members who joined us on a Saturday morning, and everyone seemed to be enthusiastic about learning what I was going to present. Most of the members were serving as board members in the club.
The meeting went well, and the audience interacted with me throughout the conference. We had a question and answer session, then finished the presentation. On a parting thought, I shared that everything we want in life starts with gratitude, and provided information on how I spent time in the morning writing my gratitude list.
