Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Dennis R. Blanchard - How Has Toastmasters Impacted My Life

HOW TOASTMASTERS HAS IMPACTED MY LIFE


Unforeseen events can be defining moments in one's life. I attempted to hike the 2200 miles of the Appalachian Trail in 2007, but only made it 600 miles to Virginia when I started to experience chest pains. Following a six-artery heart bypass operation and a long recovery, I was ready to finish the trail. Little did I know that my previous four years in Toastmasters would change my life.
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire there are a series of buildings, far removed from civilization, electric power and roads, known as “Huts.” They are maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club and each evening during the hiking season they have as many as 70+ paying customers that hike up to the huts for a “mountain” experience.
The Gale Head Hut, has a work-for-stay program for those hikers passing through, or “thru-hiking” the whole trail. Before assigning me a task, such as kitchen cleanup, floor cleaning etc. they asked which talents I might have. Drawing on my Table Topics experience, I started to joke about various abilities, such as “managing the parking lot, or maybe the casino, or to be a life guard at the hot tub.” Looking at me a bit askew the manager assigned me to be their speaker that evening. Their scheduled speaker failed to arrive, and he asked if I could lecture about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Little did he know how elated I was with this assignment!
With only an hour to prepare I put together some talking points. It was then that the manager came back and told me he had forgotten to mention that the audience that evening was coming from Quebec, Canada, and he wasn't certain if they spoke English. This was going to be interesting.
As the guests arrived I greeted them and in best Toastmasters fashion tried to assess my audience. They were mostly speaking French, but I was assured that they all did speak English as well. Whew! I was quickly envious of their bi-lingual abilities.
After the evening meal , the manager introduced me as their speaker. Drawing on the After Dinner Speaker manual speech I was confident and knew what my audience would need: good vocal variety, body language, lively speaking and humor to keep them from getting sleepy: after all, they had just hiked ten miles up a mountain trail and had a big meal.
The audience was thrilled with the presentation and none dozed off. Afterwords, and the next morning almost everyone that attended came up to personally tell me that not only did they enjoy the speech, but suggested that I should write a book – something I had never done. It was at that moment that I realized how much Toastmasters had impacted my life. I did write the book, THREE HUNDRED ZEROES: Lessons of the Heart on the Appalachian Trail and that experience has been a life-changer!

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