My First Toastmasters Speech: The Ice Breaker
It's Tuesday, March 6, 2012. I've just arrived home from work when my wife calls me to come downstairs. Her voice is filled with urgency so I rush downstairs to see what was the matter. When I'm finally downstairs she looks like she's about to cry and tells me, my stepmother found my father unconscious on their back porch when she arrived home from work and he was being rushed to the hospital. She said she would call us when she found out how he was doing. We spent the next forty-five minutes driving to the Mon-Valley hospital with both are minds racing through the range of emotions and each of us hoping to receive a phone call.
My father passed away that night.
I’m not telling this story to make this a depressing meeting. When thinking about my Ice Breaker speech I thought about all the topics I could talk about. I could talk about how I've been married to an amazing women for over 4 years, who is my rock, and is only expecting our first child on July 24th, or really any day so if I rush out of this meeting please don’t think I’m being rude. I could’ve talked about how I went from only being able to run a mile or two a few years ago to last May completing my first Marathon. When I started thinking about an event that perfectly explains where I've been and where I'm going. It's this story. My father's death changed me similar to losing anyone you love. This event is the reason I'm here today. I've thought about coming to Toastmasters before my father’s death. I've know about the benefits of the program and I've read books from people like Jeffrey Gitomer who believes this program changes lives. I never came to a meeting because I was afraid. I was afraid to screw up, sound stupid, or to not have anything important to say. I would have been worried about how people perceived what I said. I was afraid about what other people thought. For a long time I've been afraid of being myself and letting people know how I felt. I was really afraid of being rejected, by my peers, my friends, and my family.
When my father died, I realized something that we all know but repress. We all know that our life here on earth is finite. My problem was I wasn't living as if this was true, I was afraid to take chances, to take risks. Professionally, I've been procrastinating. Like Steve Jobs referenced in his 2005 Stanford Commencement speech, when he talked about looking in the mirror and asking himself the question, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to do today?" Whenever the answer is 'No' for too many days in a row , he knows he needs to change something. For me the answer was 'No' for to many days in a row. I needed to change and I've to started to make many changes in my life. Coming to these meetings being one of them.
This coming year offers another full year of changes and challenges. I cannot wait to try and tackle all of them. I'll be a new father, I'll be completing my Masters in Information Science, I'll been learning to program in a few different languages, I'm going to complete a Tough Mudder in August, I want to write a daily blog post, keep a speach in my back pockt, and find a job that gives me more freedom and challenges me to be better. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope Toastmasters will be a prominent part. Next year at this time, I hope to receive my CC and CL. I hope to be a contributing member and get to know all of you better. I hope to be changed by this process that has helped so many other people. I hope to be a better speaker and impromptu speaker. I hope to come to these meetings and challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone. To reach to a place I haven't been before. I hope to see and hear all of your speeches and the challenges they give you. I want to see the accomplishments and errors this process creates. I want to screw up, say something dumb, and have people not agree with me. I hope you didn't hate this speech and I look forward to your feedback. But also don't care because this is mine and I meant every word of it. I hope...
A little over a year ago, hope, was one of the last words to come to mind. The night of my father's death was the worst moment of my life. But it doesn't do me any good to sit around and feel bad about it. He was an amazing father and he'd want me to keep moving forward.
My main hope here at Toastmasters, is when we leave this room today and throughout the upcoming year, we’ll leave a little better than when I entered.
