I have always had a low-level obsession with excellence.
I think most of us do.
Better is better.
There is no way around that truth.
At times this obsession has made me unable to act out of fear that “it wouldn’t be good enough.”
It would be an overgeneralisation to say that “Toastmasters is the reason I’ve grown so much!”. But it certainly has played a role in the growth I have attained!
Being expected to “do it right” is one of the challenges we face as a society. When we examine our goals we might notice that there is no room to make mistakes.
Unfortunately, when we make mistakes, the easy option for most of us is to use them as evidence of our inadequacy. We might even know better than to think in this way, yet we still do, and it becomes a vicious circle.
This is where the beauty of Toastmasters shines brightest!
Toastmasters is a non-profit organisation, but you have to pay to be a member.
One of the things you are paying for when you join Toastmasters is the context.
When you make a mistake in a business presentation (or something similarly serious), it CAN have real, undesirable consequences on your life.
When you’re not allowed to make mistakes, you might find yourself “choking”; underperforming, procrastinating, paralyzed. See the problem?
On the other hand, when mistakes are no big deal, things can run much more smoothly.
At Toastmasters, mistakes are no big deal.
If you’re like me, you might show up thinking that all this is important, that you should be confident, remember everything, and avoid embarrassment at all costs!
I pushed that idea to its limit when I joined Toastmasters, which provided evidence that pointed me in another direction.
We need space to grow, we need to make mistakes to grow, we need the opportunity to express ourselves without shame to grow.
Toastmasters is a service that provides that space.
It is a tool that you can use, rather than an organisation that makes use of you.
Excellence is an ideal, and ideals mostly aren’t achievable, but they provide us with a target.
When you combine that ideal with REALITY, you might conclude that there is such a thing as practical excellence.
Excellence is relative to your current experience, including the current state of your mental and emotional resources.
Toastmasters has been a platform for me to realise this philosophy because of experience instead of just reading it in a book, blog post, or motivational picture.
Toastmasters has taught me about practical excellence.
By Dominic Villani, President and VPPR