For years I have promoted Toastmasters as a key “goal setting tool.” In fact, we strongly encourage all of our Champions Club members to join Toastmasters. As James Allen says, people “do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.” As you become more, you attract more.

Amit Chaudhary had a great post on his blog about Toastmasters and his experience and I have included most of it here:

Toastmasters International is an organization of clubs around the world which help members in public speaking. The clubs tend to be small in size to ensure everyone gets a chance to speak.

Late Jan 2008, I went ahead and attended the Yahoo ToastMasters club in Sunnyvale, called Yapsters as guest. It was definitely worthwhile and I became a member and have delivered my first speech.

It is obviously about public speaking, however it is useful in many ways:

The core approach is to do a series of 10 speeches with each focusing on a certain aspect of speaking (Speech organization, Body language including eye contact, Vocal variety)

You will automatically find your own areas which need focus, be it planning for a speech, english language, fear of being in front of an audience.

There are stories to hear and things to learn from other’s speeches. I enjoyed one about the Mexico desert where the stars touch the ground at the horizon and look forward to others. I look forward to it.

You become part of a highly motivated and ambitious group.

There is a leadership track with 10 activities, if you choose to go on that instead of or in addition to the public speaking one.

As Amit mentions, Toastmasters can help you even if you don’t have any intentions of using in for public speaking. It will give you tremendous confidence and most importantly — you will be surrounded by like-minded people — and that’s a huge key to success.

If you would like to find a club near you go here….

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Tags: Champions Club, confidence, goal setting, toastmasters

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Seen Elsewhere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.