Take a Walk on the Wild Side

by Waves Zhang

Why should we join the Contest?

1)     Someone mentioned that there is Density in our lives.

If you read many books in 10 years, these 10 years will be far more valuable and longer than the 20 years of the others who haven’t read at all. Because you know more about the essence of our life by taking the shortcut – books. As the old Chinese saying goes, there is gold and beauty in the books. This is what is called the Density of our lives.

Likewise, as a Toastmasters member, when we join a contest, the density of our TM journey will be reinforced. The contest is the shortcut for us to learn more about the essence of Toastmasters.

2)     If every speech in CCTMC regular meeting is our practice, then the contest will be our Show. This means that for only 7 minutes on stage, there will be innumerable times of preparation off stage. Excitement, Pressure, Competition, Nervousness, Anxiety, Torture, Desperation, Inspiration, Hope, Perseverance, Refinement, Expectation, and finally Readiness and Confidence. This roller-coaster of emotions with a variety of different ingredients, which feels exactly like constipation, is the bonus we get for joining the contest.

Alright, if you don’t join, you can’t feel and benefit from this experience whatsoever.

3)     Actually, all of the feelings described above are only the landscapes along the contest journey. The ultimate destination of this journey is to know more about ourselves. Actually, the contest, the competition and all of the audience out there, as a whole, is just a mirror, through which we can see more clearly who we are. It’s a journey of discovery, exploration and fulfillment!

With times over times’ of refinement, we even get fed up and sick with our speech, and yet, when we keep working on it, we can see the real us. The depth of the potential we have probed in ourselves in the contest goes far beyond any other occasion.

Eventually, it’s only our true selves who can come to the rescue. 

Does the result really matter?

1)     First and foremost, in CCTMC, frankly speaking, the club contest level is equalized with the contest of division level, in which the competition is super fierce!

Here in CCTMC, Yann, who once won the Champion of Evaluation Contest in China, First Runner-up of International Spleech Contest in China, and countless times of Finals of National speech contest before, joins contest every time, for sure!

Here in CCTMC, like this spring, from hundreds of clubs across the whole China, there were only 15 contestants got into the final of International English Contest, Table Topic Contest and Mandarin Speech Contest. And among these 15 contestants in the 3 final contests, 2 of them are from CCTMC.

So here in CCTMC, even when you lose, actually, you lose nothing

2)     Some members told me before:”If my speech sucks, I will lose my face, or I will lower the quality of the contest in CCTMC?

How big your heart is, then how big the arena will be.

Put your heart into preparation, rehearsal and delivery of your speech on the stage and the quality will be there.

And in the meantime, we may really lose our face in the contest, on the stage, in front of huge amount of people. If it’s the case, congratulations! You win! Toastmasters is a place where you learn and have to learn by losing face. It means we are stretching hard our comfort zone, it means we are challenging deeply our limits, and it means we are incubating a new competence.

The more you lose your face here, the more you win!

In a word, contest is the accelerator of our self-growth Take it or leave it, it’s up to ourselves.

3)     Last but not least, the result does matter, for everyone. And yet, the key is in what that result is? The one that judges gave us? Or the one we have measured by ourselves?

We know better than everyone, the kind of obstacles we have conquered, the kind of effort we have given and the kind of breakthrough we have made!

So if we are satisfactory with ourselves, and we have improved compared with the us of yesterday, it will be OK!

Therefore, we should try our own best!

Then the result is all about ourselves It has nothing to do with the others!

Who should join the contest most?

The members who haven’t joined contest before!

Senior members, like Yann, Joyce and Dana, if I suggest them not to join the contest, they will kill me! Because they all know deeply about benefits they can get from the contest!

So here I strongly suggest the members who never joined contest before, to give it a shot.

Besides the ones who signed up already, Una, Yaxiong, Julia, Chiara, Rosie, Sunil, Lu Qi, Jenny, Dahai, Joy, Rene, Wang Xi, Chiara, Zoe, Debbie and JJ, go for it, then you will see a different yourself!

All in all, it’s all about believing in ourselves!

Let’s give it a bold shot in the contest, take a walk on the wild side, and challenge ourselves deeper, together!

See you in the contest!