“Today a speech, tomorrow the world?”—this is the title of the agenda of the meetings of one of the Toastmasters clubs in Debrecen. Perhaps it can’t be more fitting, since, just like every skill, that of public speaking takes practice and persistence. Nobody was born being able to give impressive speeches in front of hundreds of people, right?

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you most probably know that if you do something that you call a “failure”, it’s actually a success. If you’re nervous, speaking haltingly, with many “uhm’s” while looking downwards etc., that’s because you know a good strategy for them each. If you want the opposite, you need to unlearn these strategies and learn new ones.

Of course, being good at public speaking doesn’t only mean speaking calmly, fluently, and with as few filler words as possible while maintaining eye contact with the audience. The structure of the speech, language use, body language, the effectiveness of visual aids etc. also matter. On the one hand, Toastmasters taught me about these aspects; on the other hand, it gave me a new opportunity to release the blockages lying in my subconscious, giving a free way to my goal: sharing what is valuable for me with others while I’m calm, focussed, and having fun.

The Toastmasters experience

In case you haven’t heard about Toastmasters before, here’s a short introduction. Toastmasters is a USA-based nonprofit organisation, whose goal is offering assistance in the improvement of one’s public speaking and leadership skills. The organisation manages clubs throughout the world, where anyone can stand up in front of a group of people and give public speeches and take on leadership roles, after which he/she can receive immediate feedback from the participants. According to the official website of Toastmasters, they currently have 16,400 clubs in 141 countries.

You can consider taking part in Toastmasters a mentoring programme, where you can receive feedback from many different aspects so that you can become a better communicator. Since I started attending one of the clubs in Debrecen (over a year ago), I’ve received a lot of feedback from various people—some of them made me very enthusiastic while other ones only discouraged me from keeping going back. But I didn’t give up—which I thank for mainly the positive feedback and encouragement coming from Miklós Kovács, the club president, and a couple of kind members—and I increasingly focussed on these kind words and continued releasing what held me back.

Through Toastmasters, I not only could develop my communication with others, but also the management of my fears. If you’ve been to a FasterEFT session before, you may have heard the practitioner say, “The stronger you make the feelings, the faster they’ll go away.” How could I make my feelings with public speaking the strongest? By taking on a speaking role in Toastmasters! Sure, at the beginning I had plenty of resistance, but as I stepped out of my comfort zone, details I don’t think I could’ve become aware of came to surface. Now, let’s continue with a specific case—my last speech—which I remember as my greatest success to date.

A new perspective

Preparing for my speech wasn’t easy. First of all, this was the first time I gave a presentation with the help of a computer-aided slide show in Toastmasters, plus, I wasn’t very familiar with the software I used either. And its topic was a video game (or visual novel, to be more precise), which was made by the users of a notorious website and includes adult material (although it can be disabled). This by itself can make many people uncomfortable, but I decided to tell why this game mustn’t be judged at first glance and why it’s one of my favourites anyway.

Tapping helped me overcome my fears, but that’s not the only thing I did to make me relaxed and focussed during the entire speech. I remembered what Anthony Robbins wrote in his book Unlimited Power about objectives, physiology and anchors. Before it was my turn, I formulated in my mind what I really wanted: feeling good during the presentation and the evaluation. Then I changed physiology, starting to breathe and have a posture and facial expression as if I already was in that resourceful state. Finally, for good measure, just when my evaluator called me, I played one of my favourite songs in my head. All this was enough to reach my goal.

What did I learn from this experience besides things specific to Toastmasters? For instance, it’s worth being clear on what I want exactly in a particular situation. If I only have some vague idea about it, it can lead to disappointments. Also, I can change my state not only through tapping and internal work, but also with adjusting my physiology. One of the presuppositions of FasterEFT is that the mind and the body are one, which entails that if a shift occurs inside the mind, the body follows. The reverse is also true. (Marina Bajszár laughter yoga trainer demonstrates at the beginning of her video that when you’re looking upwards with your arms wide open, it’s much more difficult to feel depressed than while looking downwards with slumped shoulders, which is how people normally behave when being depressed.) Lastly, I hadn’t used auditory anchors in similar situations, so this was a good reminder that this tool is also available.

Conclusion

As Louise L. Hay wrote in her book The Power Is Within You, many things we call “disasters” could instead be considered life experiences we could always learn something from. When such an experience bothers you, that’s like your mind/body was saying, “hey, there’s something here you need to take care of”. Maybe it’s an obstacle you need to transform into an opportunity to get what you want.

In the case mentioned above, I wanted to share something valuable while feeling good. I managed to do so thanks to tapping, the precise formulation of my objective, the shift in physiology, as well as the auditory anchor. I don’t know what I‘ll be able to do exactly “tomorrow”, but if I give a public speech “today”, chances are something I haven’t been aware of will come up just to be released. In addition, I can receive constructive feedback on how to improve my communication skills from a friendly company. Thank you, Toastmasters!