Got Out Of My Comfort Zone On The Ski Slopes

I often talk about expanding or getting out of your comfort zone during my motivational talks. I do practise what I preach and I will share a recent example. I've been trying to get from a Level 1 certified ski instructor to a Level 2 for many years. In doing so, I had to ski in ways that were not within my usual comfort zone in skiing. This included skiing on steep double black diamond slopes as well as doing short radius turns.

So I made a commitment to train twice per week this winter and get out of my comfort zone by doing a lot of short radius turns on all sorts of terrain including steep double black diamond hills. I was not successful in passing my Level 2 course last winter but with committed regular training this winter, I was successful in passing the retest.

Looking back now as a new Level 2 instructor, I knew that I had to constantly expand my comfort zone on the ski slopes so that I became comfortable with short radius turns and steep slopes. This is true with any goals you want to achieve whether they be in public speaking or anything else. You have to get up there in front of the audience and do more each club meeting. So with that in mind, check out my general article on expanding your comfort zone.

Group Activities Fun During Public Speaking

Clint adds a lot of fun to his public speaking talks by getting the general audience to participate in group activities. There's a new photo of such a group activity and as one can see, the folks in the audience are having a great time. See this at Public Speaking page. And yes, this talk will be brought to our Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters club sometime in the spring.

New Public Speaking Video

One of the things that's neat about developing your Toastmasters skills and new technology is that one can make changes in business materials very quickly. For example, I have a public speaking video clip that has both footage of myself during speeches as well as a few minutes at the end addressing the viewer. I wasn't completely happy with the ending so during one weekend afternoon, I rewrote the script, rehearsed it and reshot the ending segment. Then I re-edited the complete video footage on my Mac, uploaded the clip to YouTube and Google, updated my public speaking website and deleted the old video footage -- all in one afternoon!. The result is a video with a new ending at my public speaking website that I'm more happy with. Of course, more changes could happen in the future but as before, these changes can be done very quickly. Love the technology.

Some Motivational Quotes For Toastmasters

I realize that learning new skills in public speaking can sometimes be challenging. Advanced speakers like Susan Lamb-Robinson and our area governor Anupam Rawla have been through this process. So I've compiled some text from my upcoming book called The Life Champion In You which can serve as some good motivational quotes to keep you motivated in your development here at Toastmasters as well as outside. See World Champion Motivational Quotes.

Goal Setting For Your Speaking

To be a better speaker, you should have specific goals. These can be to work on things like vocal variety, better eye contact or better organization in your speeches. To do effective goal setting, you need to be in the right environment. This is an important task where you want to plan your goals carefully so you don't want to do this in a place where you can't focus. You want to come up with the right goals and plans to achieve these goals. Goal setting is important for success in any field including public speaking. To help you, here's a great article on being in the right Environment For Goal Setting.