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From: Paul Goldstein
Date: 01 Oct 2011
Time: 20:01:53 -0500
Remote Name: 88.88.238.25
This was a very inspiring article, Pam! Congratulations on all your Toastmasters successes! WWhen I lived in the U.S., I was a member of a wonderful Toastmasters club (Central Toastmasters, Worcester, Mass.), and I attended meetings weekly for eight years. Regular public speaking showed me a side of myself that I never knew existed before! Sure, there were many evenings that I didn't feel like speaking before a group, but it was a great motivator to always do public speaking each week, no matter what I happened to feel like! Some evenings I was very fluent (especially if I was delivering a well-prepared speech); other evenings I was somewhat disfluent; and still other evenings I was severely disfluent. Yet I persisted in participating in Toastmasters each week, regardless of how fluent or disfluent I happened to be. The other members heard many different degrees of fluency and disfluency from me, but they always remained very supportive. Over the years I achieved the ATM-Gold ranking and served in many officer positions, including club president. When I visit the U.S. these days, I always return to my old Toastmasters club, where I am welcomed back as a type of honorary member. I too heartily recommend Toastmasters for people who stutter! There is nothing which beats fear of speaking as much as speaking publicly on a regular basis.