Spin the Wheel

I am repeating myself, but the wheel is way ahead of the first rut it made on the muddy road. It’s growth in a circular mode.

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

Last week, I gave my fourth icebreaker speech in my Toastmasters club. It marked the start of my fourth path in the Pathways program in four years. Pathways is a Toastmasters-featured training program. It has eleven paths, each path could go from a couple of months to multiple years. Each path helps us develop a specific skill set, from Engaging Humor to Dynamic Leadership, to Team Collaboration, and so on. All paths start with the same project: an icebreaker speech. And many further projects are the same too, like “Connecting with Your Audience”, “Vocal Variety”, and so on.

Now you might be thinking, “Fourth icebreaker? Has this guy got enough telling us who he is?” Well, although I am a simple person living a simple life, I am sure four icebreakers would only scratch the surface of who I am. When it comes to my mentor Darrell Zeller, he is the simplest person I have ever met. One day he told me he had given over twenty icebreaker speeches. Then he was like, “I need another one hundred icebreakers — only if I can live that long.”

I was thinking about Darrell the same at the moment, “Has he got enough telling us who he is?” Now after my fourth icebreaker, his…