Finding Your Passion

Yesterday I gave my 10th speech in Toastmasters...quite a milestone among club members. Toastmasters is an international speech club dedicated to growing public speaking skills through a structured program along with leadership skills. I became a member a year and a half ago although I knew about TM since 2002, attending TM functions in Hong Kong.

I saved the hardest project for last - body language. In my speech I was supposed to utilize gestures, eye contact, movement around the stage, facial expressions, in additional to all of the public speaking techniques I've learned so far.

Our club website in case you're interested (http://sunset.freehosttoast.com)

It took a while to get the speech together. I was debating between the topics of "the dentist chair," "decision-making," and my recent discovery of the ukulele. Since this blog had already been published, I utilized the content to make a speech with a take home message. It was about finding your passion, and how do you know you've found one rather than a passing fancy. In developing the speech, I tried to break down my first blog entry into meaningful sections and then attached a point to each section, resulting in 5 indicators that you've found your passion.

1. You lose track of time.
2. You scour the world for information.
3. You make an internal commitment to the activity.
4. Everything falls into place as if by design.
5. Your passion becomes intimately woven into your life.

Here's the speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfm2i8aDD7M

I wasn't feeling too good about the speech when I started rehearsing it in the morning but by the 8th time, I was ready. What was cool about giving this speech is I found out a fellow toastmaster in our club recently picked up the ukulele too. He recommended www.chordie.com for guitar/ukulele tabs.