Photo by: Yann!s

In this month of March, I have gone through four FIRST TIMEs in my life.

The first FIRST TIME was my endeavor to take part in a MANDARIN humorous speech contest. It was the first national mandarin humorous speech contest held in Singapore, organized by Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry. In the first round, there were 60 contestants and I was fortunately to be short-listed into second round. Only 16 contestants were selected. Unfortunately, I lost in second round. Contestants from China took me to the cleaners. 7 out of 8 short-listed contestants were from China. Nevertheless, this was indeed a great learning experience for me. I have learnt that there are some differences between crafting a Mandarin and English speech; I have discovered some different speaking styles from the contestants.

The second FIRST TIME was to set up a booth in The Frontier Community Club to promote Toastmasters Speechcraft Workshop. I just got the idea while I was inside a train heading back to home. I thought… Hey, why not setting up a booth to promote my club workshop? I immediately asked the person-in-charge in the Community Club and the Community Club was quite supportive. I got a positive answer. Never try, never know… During this session, I noticed that actually there were a lot of people who were searching for help in conquering their fear in public speaking and this group of people, most of them didn’t know about Toastmasters Club. I have a plan to set up a booth regularly as my club marketing campaign. I think this campaign will not only benefit the public but also to my club members to learn how to explain the benefits of Toastmasters to the public. It is like a real life example for them to apply their communication skills which they have developed in Toastmasters Movement. And most importantly, it is a great satisfaction if we could successfully help people to conquer their fear in public speaking and transform their life.

The third FIRST TIME was my first time to serve as a judge in an International Speech and Table Topic contest. I noticed that being a judge is neither a difficult task nor easy task. Being a judge, I got a true experience of the process in how I allocated points to each contestant. Good speakers are selected by experienced judges. Not-so-good speakers are selected by inexperienced judges. I believe I have made the correct choice as my preferred speaker was emerged as Champion eventually.

The fourth FIRST TIME was to coordinate The Frontier Toastmasters Club Speechcraft Worskhop. The first session was conducted today. Of course, there are some rooms for improvement and I will try to take note of them and have a review after the whole session. I have discovered one thing. A lot of participants thought that they have fear in public speaking and could not think of any topic to talk about. But actually, most of them have already possessed a certain level of speaking skill. When they spoke, the flow of the content just came out naturally. It was only the mindset of “I have fear in public speaking” that holds them back. Being a coordinator of the workshop, injecting public speaking information to the participants is only part of my responsibility. My main responsibility is to motivate them and nurture positive mindset to them that speaking in public is actually not as fearful as they imagined.

FIRST TIME, FIRST TIME, FIRST TIME, how many FIRST TIME have you faced in this month? What have you learnt from you FIRST TIME? Think about it…

In any aspect in our life, we will face a lot of FIRST TIMEs. Some people are trying hard to avoid them. For me, I find that by pushing myself to face as many FIRST TIME as possible, I have become a better person.

LET’S WELCOME FIRST TIME!