Free February with Mullingar Toastmaster: Grow your communication skills this year!
Toastmasters started more than 100 years ago. The name is something of a red herring compared to what the organisation represents today. Toastmasters is fundamentally a communications organisation with clubs worldwide.
If you are able to use your own voice, the benefits are many. You can improve your existing relationships, improve your career and essentially improve your own confidence.
All in all, Toastmasters can help you grow and become more successful in all parts of your life. How many of us on a monthly basis give time to ourselves? If you are like most of us, you get caught up in the whirlwind of work, family and everything else. Toastmasters gives you some time to yourself where you can grow and explore your own skills.
The strength of the Mullingar club is that you are accepted as yourself from the moment you come in and your uniqueness is what is encouraged out in every speech. Members’ passions come to the fore in many ways. Some examples include podcasting, poetry, gardening, travel, and career.
For every journey you want to follow, there is a pathway in Toastmasters that is laid out to help you achieve and learn the skills. Toastmasters is a practical organisation where you take action on the skills you are looking develop, with a tailored plan and with the help of mentors.
If you would like some time for yourself and to explore an interesting new environment, join this month for two free meetings and see if Toastmasters is for you this year.
The next meetings are on 10 and 24 February. To get codes for the meeting, contact us on Facebook: Mullingar Toastmasters, Website: www.toastmasters.org or Email: mullingartoastmasters@gmail.com. Our meeting at the end of January had the theme of the 1980s.
Toastmaster on the night Brian McLoughlin brought the 1980s back to life with exuberance! It was a case of going back to the future. Michael J Fox would have enjoyed the night.
Great memories of Jack Charlton and Ray Houghton from 1988 were relived. The music of Springsteen, Queen and Bob Geldof formed the backdrop of memories during the evening. Festivals in Slane, Lisdoonvarna, Moate and Macroom were all brought back to life! American TV jumped into sitting rooms in a big way in the ’80s and Columbo, MacGyver and Knight Rider were but a sample of those mentioned.
Mary Frances Cox gave us the word of the evening, ‘evaluation’, as January is a great time for reflecting and evaluating the previous year. Brian started like a bat out of hell and the momentum carried through the evening. The excellent Maria Costello was timer and brought her precision to the role.
We had three speeches on the evening. Tom Byrne, our newest member, taught us the importance of not judging ourselves by outside factors of success such as cars or work. He encouraged more focus on internal success. His message was one of being rather than doing. Embracing the simple joys of a cup of tea can be more powerful that any outside metric of success.
Billy Gough talked about an impending change of lifestyle he is working on to build stronger health. It was a great message on our health being our wealth. The final speaker Philip Howlin gave us an ’80s childhood journey and asked the question of good stories and bad stories.
He identified it is important to embrace the good stories but also to change the bad stories if they are not serving us. It was like the 1987 film ‘Batteries Not Included’. Take the energy or batteries out of the story and it loses its power! The evaluators on the night gave world class feedback to all our speakers.
They were Geraldine Smith, Pauline McCabe and Mags Healy Donohue. Our final piece for the night was to have Rose Marie back with us after a Zoom sabbatical to bring us down the 1980s memory lane during our topics session.
It varied from music, hand me down wardrobes and bad perms. It was a great trip back in time that all enjoyed.