Ice Breaker

It happened when I read about an article about toastmasters in local newspaper, and I though it was interesting, so I started to visit a club which was located in lebak bulus. I was clueless, so I just came to see how the meeting run. The atmosphere was nice and fun, everybody looked happy to talk on the stage with full of self-confidence, no one gave bad or sarcasms comments; instead they gave a motivating evaluations.

This was the place that I was looking for, but I didn’t know if I could stand on the stage and talk in front of the members, I never did a public speaking before, my first and my last public speaking performance was when my script examination on university and it was really bad because I was staring at the wall and never gave eye contacts to my lecturer. So I was truly a non-public speaker person, but could I become a good public speaker?

We knew that some person was born with a natural charm so they could perform well on the stage, but how about a person who wasn’t born with it like me, can I learn to be a good public speaker?
My reason to join this club was to improve my English, but then I realize English was just a tool, the main thing that we learn was communication, and to be a good communicator we ought to be a good listener and a good speaker.

So after a month, I tried to join the impromptu speaking session, each person could talk for about 1-2 minutes after the MC gave question, and I was really bad, I spoke less than a minute and I made so many fillers. At that moment I though I never moved forward but then my friend in the club encouraged me to deliver my first speech, she was really helpful, she was my first friend in that club and she always motivated me to move forward, I never forget her even though she didn’t come to the club again.

And then I started to prepare my first speech, it should be a speech about myself but I tried to make it interesting, then I structured my speech so it had the opening, body and closing, I wrote the speech down but I didn’t memorize it, I practiced my speech for several times until I felt I could deliver it naturally.

And when it came for me to perform in my club, I felt I was walking on the clouds, I became a person that I never knew before, my speech just flew like a water and after I finished it I gained my first applause, I was so happy that I never forgot that moment I deliver my first speech.