CC10 - Inspire your Audience - A Habit for a Lifetime

I was so excited about the next day’s event. We were going to go for a grand shopping. I was thinking about the lots of stuff I am going to be buying for myself and my little one. The excitement spread to my little daughter as well. We were sure to have a blast the next day.

TMOD, toastmasters and guests very good morning!

Any guess where we were going to go for the shopping?

We were actually heading to the YMCA book fare that happens once in a year. It is such an exciting and the most awaited moment of the year for our family, as all three of us are book worms. I truly feel that, the greatest assets that we are going to be leaving behind after us will be the treasure of books for our children. I am not going to talk about our shopping. I am rather going to talk about a more exciting task – reading!

Why should we read?

For people who ask, ‘when I have enough work to do at home and at office, how will I get time to read?, I was one among you. When we get to know the benefits of doing something we automatically start allotting time for that. Just like how we spend our Sunday mornings here after working hard for five or six days of the week out of pure passion.

1. When we read a book, it is more like having a conversation with the author. Who you are depends on the people you talk to. Why limit yourself by talking only to your friends and family when you have the privilege of talking to Steve Jobbs or even Mahatma Gandhi. Just imagine, having a cup of tea with Edison as he discusses his inventions. Our brain will be gradually tuned to think in the lines of big leaders. Our perspectives will start changing for the betterment and renovation of ourself. This helps us to transform ourself from what we are now to what we actually deserve to be.

2. Life is short lived! When we tend to achieve something big in life professionally, personally or spiritually, books provide a big guidance to us. Things we are trying to achieve now were already achieved by a bunch of leaders who have documented their success stories as well as their failures and their learnings. When we read such books we do not repeat the same mistakes they had done. This helps us achieve our target with less mistakes in a lesser span of time. Books on failures teach us more than the ones on success stories

e.g. Wings of fire is a book that talks more on failures rather than success though it was written by the most successful scientist of India. Whenever I feel down I grab this book and it gives me energy to face the failure.

3. Books rejuvenate us and give us the required hope in life. We lead our life not just to earn money and reputation and die one day. There is a bigger picture. When we start thinking for a while, we will understand that each of us have a purpose in life which makes our life meaningful. But we have to strive a life time to find out the meaning which is hidden.

When ever I undergo big challenges in life, and feel that I will never be able to come out of it, I read this book called ‘Man’s search for meaning’. It gives me lots of hope that even the worst of situations in life like being caught in holocaust, will come to an end and there is always a spring after harsh winters.

That was about why we have to read books.

My experience with books

There are several books that changed my perspective towards life. During different points in time I had fallen for different genres.

· As a school kid I used to be crazy about Enid Blyton’s books like The enchanted wood, The famous five, Adventures of the wishing chair. I used to be an adventure loving person. Later on I started reading books like Sherlockholmes, David copper field, Tom Sawyer etc.

· When I was in college I was obsessed with Shakespeare. I used to be thorough with all the characters in his play that you ask me in my sleep, I could say who was Rosalind, Julius ceaser or Othello I had read all Shakespeare’s books in our college library. I never spent a penny on buying books before my marriage. I mostly used the library books and the e-books.

· After marriage I was in fact very happy to see a treasure of books in my husband’s book shelf. I would not have been so happy even if I would have seen gold or diamond. From then on I was convinced that spending money on books is an investment and you get the returns in terms of wisdom.

· I started reading a lot of Robin Sharma’s books later like Who will cry when you die, Monk who sold his Ferrari, Greatness guide etc. A lot of inspiration to read more books is from Robin Sharma

· Walden is a book that taught me how much important it is to live close to the nature.

· ‘Tuesday’s with Morrie’ taught me that when you know the day you are going to die, you will lead a more meaningful life.

· ‘Man’s search for meaning’ is a book that taught me that suffering in itself is meaningless and we give meaning to suffering by the way in which we respond to it.

· Communist manifesto taught me the values of equality in a society and the politics behind it.

· Believe me I even read books on philosophy like – life and death of Socrates. 😀

· Shoe dog is a book that taught me how life has to be adventurous and out of the normal to achieve unusual heights.

· On a lighter note I also read Ruskin bond, r.k Narayan and Chetan Bhagat for fiction.

· ‘My experiments with truth’ taught me the real value of being morally right at all difficult times and how difficult it is.

There are so many such books that inspired me.

Having said that books play a vital role in grooming our personality to become better people in all aspects as well as to face our everyday challenges in life, it is important to choose the books we read.


Hope you all get inspired and invest in books.


Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

A home without books is like a body without a soul.


Today a reader, tomorrow a Leader !!!

CC-9 Persuade with Power - Emotional Intelligence

Introduction:
Getting angry is ok, as long as you get angry for the right reason, with the right person, to the right degree with appropriate tone, and language. These are the words by Aristotle.

TMOD, Toastmasters and guests, very good morning!

In a survey, it is seen that 70% of the people with lower IQ levels performed better in their professional and personal lives compared to the people with higher IQ levels. That is when there was a research and it was found that there is another important factor that influences the performance and success of a person. They named it as "Emotional Intelligence".

Body :
We see situations where an IIT topper fails miserably in his professional and personal life while a school-drop out becomes successful in both. This is because of this factor called "Emotional Intelligence". To be successful in life, Emotional Intelligence plays a vital role. There are four stages in Emotional Intelligence.

1. Self Awareness
2. Self Management
3. Social Awareness
4. Relationship Management

1. Self Awareness:

In the first stage you should be aware of the emotion you are currently experiencing. For example, jealousy, anger, stress, depression etc. When you are not aware, you will never be able to control it and manage it. Once you are aware of the emotions you are undergoing, it will be easier to use it to the right proportion to drive for results. This requires a bit of self analysis

2. Self Management: 
While being aware of your emotions is easier, managing them is a challenging task and it comes only out of practise. We should keenly observe the people around us, how they handle tough situations smartly managing their emotions and rightly using them for success. We should also observe our self and find out how effectively or badly we have handled a particular situation. We can make a note of all possible alternative ways we could have handled the situation better. This will help us to take control of similar situations in future. We mostly face similar challenging situations and if  we keenly observe, there will be a pattern for all the tough situations in both our personal and professional life.

3. Social Awareness: 
Once you are aware and can manage your own emotions, you can start assessing the emotions of the people around you. Given a distressing situation, people around us are also pressurised and they under go a series of emotions. Understanding the emotions of people around us, is the third stage of emotional intelligence. Once you are aware of what is running in the minds of your opponents, you are almost there to have an EQ score of 75%.

4. Relationship Management:
Now that you are aware of your own emotions and know to manage them and are aware of your opponent's emotions. You need to now build a bridge with your co-workers or family members and build trust in them. It takes months or years to build trust. But once it is built, nothing can shake the relationship you share with that person. That trust becomes a healthy relationship.

Conclusion:
To put emotional intelligence to practice, take up one skill at a time and work on it. Take up Relationship management as the last one as it requires a high score on the other three levels. To even start practicing the fourth level we need to have a decent score for the first three levels.

Once we have practiced all the four levels and have mastered all of them with high scores, what happens next? Does it guarantee a successful life?

Imagine, when you learn to play the piano and practice the skill for 3 years and become a master of it and for the next five years you have totally lost touch. Later you try to put your hands on the piano, what happens? The same holds good for emotional intelligence as well. It is a continuous process and needs continuous practice. Once you master all the four traits, it will not guarantee a successful life unless you keep practicing and improvising on it through out your life.

Humorous Speech Contest

Albert Einstein said: "Never stop asking questions".

Scene 1:
It was an early morning and I was getting my daughter ready for school. When I was brushing her teeth. She asked me to stop. She said, "mmmmmmm" I asked "What ?" After spitting the paste she said "Amma I have a question!" I thought, "Oh my God! Not right in the morning!" If I show my frustration she would start crying which will result in a further delay, so I wanted to keep my cool and proceed. I asked, "Yes honey! Tell me." She started, "Amma, where was I before my birthday?" "What??!!!" "I mean where was I before I was born?" I knew she was heading to a tough question and this was only a start. "Perhaps you were in my tummy. But if you dont brush and get ready your teacher will be mad at you. Let us quickly get ready now." "Wait ma, How long was I in your tummy?" "You were there for more than 9 months. In fact you refused to come out and they had to operate you out. Now that is not important. You will be late to school" "Okay, But before those 9 months where was I present?"  There is always a point when I surrender to my daughter. I knew it was this. I said, "Even big philosophers don't have answer to this question. I am just a software engineer. How do you expect me to answer this. Do one thing. Why don't you find this secret when you grow up and give enlightenment to the human society?"
"No ma. I want to know it now. I can't wait until I grow up. Why don't you google and find out as always?" By that time I heard my husband shout from the bedroom, "Is this the time to talk about enlightenment of the society? I am not going to answer her teachers if she is going to be late today."
"See because of you I am getting scoldings! Open your mouth for God's sake" This time she was deep in thought "Ammaaaaaa " "Hey why do you shout near my ears!" "No ma! Now I have two more questions who is a philosopher? and what is enlightenment? Please ma only these two questions you answer me. I will ask no more questions until I reach my school." Phew!!! This is how my day starts with my little one.



Scene 2:
During the night time it is a routine for us to talk about the day's happenings. My daughter started, "Ma today my mam asked all of us what we do on Sundays. I said my parents go to Toastmaster's club on Sundays. She asked me, "What!!! They go to some club on Sundays??" Yes and sometimes they take me also to that club. After that my teacher was puzzled. She asked me to sit down and didn't talk to me for the whole day. Is it some thing bad ma? This toastmaster's stuff?." I immediately said, "No. No. There is nothing wrong with that. Probably she might have thought it is some pub or entertainment club. Next time when you say to some one you better say 'Toastmaster's meeting' instead of 'Toastmaster's club'. She was thoughtful for sometime and then asked, "Ma...What is a pub and an entertainment club ma? I have never heard of these terms!"

Surrendering point!!!!



Scene 3:
When I completed my CC1, my evaluator rightly pointed out that I was missing eye contact with the audience. I wanted to some how come out of it. When I did some research about this on the internet, they provided a suggestion to have puppets instead of people and try to practice the speech making eye contact with the puppets. For the first time I was happy that our house is filled with soft toys. So during a Saturday afternoon, I put my daughter to sleep in the bedroom, and took ten of her teddy bears and dollies  and went to the study room to practice my CC2 speech. As I was practicing, making eye contact with each of the teddys, she entered all of a sudden and was dumbstruck to see me talking in front of her dollies. Crankily she started crying. When I asked her why, she said, "You never told me that you are going to 'pretense-play' with my dollies. I would have joined you. Too mean of you to do it when I was asleep." I felt myself like a thief bitten by a scorpion.

TMOD what would you have done when you were in my shoes?