In August 2015 I joined Gloucester Speaker’s club with a dream of following a speaking career but very soon I realised I was not as good as thought I was. I had enthusiasm, ambition and determination but I was not a great speaker by any stretch of imagination. I did my ice breaker ( the first speech in Toastmasters) a few weeks after I joined and I quickly followed it up with another speech and another. However I was not very happy with my progress. Very soon I started to wonder if following my dreams of becoming a motivational speaker was a good idea. By the time I got to my fourth my confidence had not grown, in fact I was less confident in my speaking ability however I realised that if I did not speak I would lose all confidence so carried on signing up for more speeches, I was going through the manual very fast but I was not growing. When I reached my sixth speech I started to feel like I had not learnt anything but then one of my fellow toastmasters by name of Sheila wrote an evaluation of one of speeches and on the 7th speech it all came together and every speech after that has gone up a level.
A lot of people have a dream but a lot of people never get started and out those who get started a lot of them never finish. What my Toastmasters journey taught me was that sometimes you will put in all the effort and you will not see the results. You must not give up on your dream if you think you are not making any progress. However it is important to ask for help if you realise that all your efforts are not giving you the result you hope for because you might just need a little bit of guidance. In summary Toastmaster taught me three things, number one was if you are not confident in something try and do a lot more times, never give up when it is not going well and the third lesson is ask for help if you are not getting the results that you want