The real toast

After putting it off for a while, I attended my first Toastmasters' session.

I enjoyed it.

We played an ice-breaker in the beginning where each of us has to talk about a person they would like to swap their lives with.

Answers from the house: my wife, Osama bin Laden, Martin Luther King Jr, my supervisors, etc.

I thought about the answer for a little while and I had it.

There is no chance in hell I would swap my life with someone else.

Of course, the language that eventually came out was slightly milder.

One of the goals in my life is to be who I truly am. That is not easy. I remembered going to Tony Robbins' seminar for the first time. I flipped open the manual and there it was :

This is not a weekend about changing yourself. It's a weekend about KNOWING yourself and then BEING yourself.

Till then, I have always thought that self-improvement was about being better. I was wrong. It's not about that. It's about being who you are created to be. It's about having the courage to be true to yourself.

I'm so happy that this ice-breaker and my response to it sets the tone for the rest of my Toastmasters' adventures. If I should continue, that is.

The evaluation tonight was very technical: grammar, tenses, vocabulary, etc. I was hoping more talk about PASSION, the number 1 quality in my book. I don't care how technically competent you're. You've got no passion, you've got nothing.

The other missing ingredient was personal style. Absolutely no mention of it at all. I want to have my own style. No point copying someone else. No point being someone else.

Be myself.