I was in our Toastmasters district 88 Beijing conference 2 weeks ago, it was my first time to join the district conference. At first I did hesitated - you know the ticket is around 800 RMB...but at last I bought a ticket and now I'm here to share what I've taken from this big activity. What I want to say is: it is worthwhile and I felt lucky to be there!
There were so many shining points during the 3 days activity, today I'm going to share three amazing moments which impressed me the most.
The first moment was about this beautiful and lovely girl - Louise. She was born in Britain and now living in Beijing. She is the winner of the table topic contest.
In my view, she deserved this award. I like her speech VERY much.
The table topic question is: "Is there anyone or anything making you feel that it is the truth of life?"
As you know, in the contest, there's no time for preparation. In the short period of time (2.5 minutes), this beautiful girl perfectly told us a real story she experienced in London marathon - At the last few hundred meters, a girl suddenly fell down. The finishing line is just over there they can even see it. The girl seemed very sad. At this moment, another girl stopped and came to her side. She helped her up and supported her with her arm. They walked in the last part of the race hand by hand and crossed the finishing line together.
At last Louise expressed her opinion about winning: The real winning is to win together, it's about helping each other. If you win everything alone, is it a real success? She finished her speech by asking this question. There was a silence and then all the audience burst into applause.
Later I knew that she won the second place in Xi'an conference last year, in mandarin speech contest, mandarin!
In the break time, I had a quick talk with this lovely girl and added her we-chat. I'm very happy to know her and I felt lucky to be there!
The second moment was the keynote speech session from Mohammed Murad.
Mohammed is from Dubai. He was our Toastmasters International President from 2014 to 2015. He is a very nice uncle, always smiles during his speech. I think he has the power to make people calm down.
In the keynote speeches, he mainly told us his understanding about leadership. From his viewpoint, leadership is not just about being a leader in your company, it is everywhere in our whole life.
What is leadership? Mohammed said:
For me, leadership means 4 "H"s.
Head. Keep an open mind for knowledge, which is very important for leadership.
Heart. Heart means caring about others. Without it, knowledge means nothing to leadership.
Health. It ensures both head and heart could compensate with each other.
Humility. Everyone has limit in abilities, and can't go further without other people.
My dear friends, what's leadership for you? The exact answer can only be found by yourself.
During his whole speech, the rhythm is very good, relatively slow. It’s easy for us to follow. At last, he shared the QR code of his we-chat with us. Most of us added him as a friend in our We-chat list. Later on our way back to Dalian, one of my friends sent a message to him about toastmasters and happily got his reply. He said: "Toastmasters is not just a program but a mindset.”
I couldn’t agree more and I felt so lucky to meet Master Mohammed.
The third moment impressed me a lot is the prepared speech contest section. I noticed that most of the contestants are quite ordinary people in life. Some of them were used to be afraid of speaking in front of people. Someone told us their own awkward stories - not only in public speaking area, but also in many other fields. This made me think about our potential - there might be some huge energy stored in everyone's body. It's not showing up yet doesn't mean it will not show up later. When the little universe outbreaks, the energy might be amazing!
The excellent speakers are those who have already found their potentials, what about us? Let's continue the magical self-discovering journey in toastmaster!
My dear fellow toastmasters, I felt so lucky to join the Beijing conference and I already bought the ticket for our next conference in Jinan. I don't want to miss the wonderful moments in the conference and the feelings together with so many excellent and lovely friends! Will you join me?
