DON'T PANIC

Happy Towel Day people!

One of the few things are better than listening to pF is to drive on a highway at 12 miles an hour above speed limit on a rainy Friday evening , while listening to pF.

You better run all day, and run all night
And keep your dirty feelings deep inside.

Icebreaker

I gave my first speech at my toastmasters club today. Sharing it here, as much as I can recall.

Good morning Mr. toastmaster and my fellow members. My name is sinkingsun and I am here to give my first, icebreaker speech today. This is my third session at the club. By the end of the last meeting, I had heard quite a few members who spoke upon various topics and obviously it was very motivating. I thought that it would be interesting to select a topic of my choice and share some ideas. So when they called for volunteers for today, I raised my hand.

But then I was told that for the icebreaker speech, the speaker is supposed to speak about himself. This is to make it easier for him since ideas on this topic should come intuitively. Besides, it also allows the audience to connect to the speaker.

Suddenly it was much more difficult than I had imagined. For one, it always bothers me to realize that what ever we think we know about ourselves is far less than how much we don't. The more we look outside, the more we ignore our inner self. But without going into the eternal philosophical question of the meaning of life and our place in the universe, the other reason why this was so difficult is because of the sheer size of the topic. 4-6 minutes are too less for someone to speak about themselves. Even 46 minutes would probably not be enough. So I basically had to pick up one or two instances from my life and elaborate. Here is one.

When I was a kid, I read something somewhere. It was - "the more we listen, more we learn" and it made so much sense to me. Our senses are meant to gather data. If we put a good filter in place to select the relevant information for processing and retaining, and reject the unnecessary junk, all the energy that goes into it is so much constructive. It was this simple and obvious! So this idea basically stuck and I learnt to listen and made it a habit; And I think that it has worked quite well for me so far. I have received this feedback more than once that I am a good listener, and I would like to believe that this is reasonably true. One time however, someone gave me a good advice along with the above feedback. She told me that with listening, it is equally important to speak. This gives other person the impression that he or she is being trusted, which is as important as appearing trustworthy. This is actually quite true. They don't call communication a two way process for no reason!
This basically was why I joined Toastmasters - to learn to speak, and with this, hopefully I will get somewhere. Thank you.

PS: The above BS is totally superficial - at least most of it is. I didn't even want to join the club in the first place. I did just because I was forced to. In structure, the actual speech was even worse than what is written above. Besides, does it not sound too phony? Wait, don't answer.

Once in a while, when some bad timing, a technical glitch or any other inconceivable force of nature prevents you from doing something you were going to do out of desperation, is it not a relief to later realize that it would have been a cause of regret?

You had been thinking for time t whether or not you should make that move, feeling that it could momentarily ease the air (may be for even more, if you are the optimistic type). But then those forces didn't let you. And inside you know that that move can never ease the air for anybody.