Life is too short to sweat unimportant thoughts! Prepare for the worst but expect the best! Life’s Surprises was the theme for our Toastmasters meeting on Oct. 6, 2021. The meeting started at 7 p.m. sharp. All the attendees came prepared for learning in another session this week. Samantha and Nikhila presented our two prepared speeches. Each speaker highlighted the surprises in their lives.  Our first speaker, Samantha, demonstrated the difference in the use of the English language by people from India and people from the US. She sighted the example of using the word “trolley” in India to ..read more

At our VERY first hybrid happy hour today, we appreciated our founding team members, officers, and team members for their vision, execution, and hardwork.  Women L.E.A.D. has grown a lot since we’ve chartered. This is all possible because of our leaders and members!  We have reached people from more than 70 countries Our public web pages have more than 10,000 views We now have more than 30 paying members  We have written total of 88 blog posts  We have posted 43 YouTube videos  We have hosted 20 workshops  Because of our dedication to members’ experience and m ..read more

Last week, we had the great honor to host Kirubakaran Periyannan (PK), who is a professional speaker at NSA, an executive presentation coach at Western Digital, and a semi-finalist of 2015 World Championship in Public Speaking. He gave a workshop on “How to Craft Advance Level Speeches Using Simple Techniques”  He opened the workshop with the importance of storytelling to preserve life back in the stone age to share with us that we are all wired to storytelling. Then we were introduced to the various elements in a story – underdog, struggle, villain, and hero.  An underdog is a per ..read more

Two weeks ago, I hosted a short workshop on how to win an evaluation contest. If you haven’t seen the first workshop, please feel free to take a look here.  Here are some key takeaways of my second workshop:  Why have Toastmasters Evaluation Contests?  To encourage development of evaluation skills and to recognize the best as encouragement to all. To provide an opportunity to learn by observing the more proficient evaluators who have benefited from their Toastmasters training. How a Toastmasters Evaluation Contest Works?  How to Win Evaluation Contests? I first shared w ..read more

I worked on Toastmasters Pathway: Presentation Mastery. Level 1-Evaluation and Feedback. The purpose of this project is for me to present a speech on any topic, receive feedback, and apply the feedback to a second speech. I decided to talk about my father-in-law in my speech, “Man Who Loved Donuts.” Here’s my speech:  1956, a young man of 27 living in a village in India, first heard of a donut from a relative who had visited the US. I do not know how the latter described it to the former. But this villager started craving for a donut. Nobody knew about his craving till he landed in t ..read more

(Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels) When you’re upset, how do you cheer yourself up? Maybe you go for a run, talk to a friend, or lock yourself in a room and yell. My level 3 Pathways project prompted me to reflect on how my emotions impact myself and others. I have seen how destructive my negative emotions can be, so I reflected on how to quickly regain a positive, balanced state of mind. Below is a speech I recently presented about how to switch from glum to glad. Recognize Your Emotions “I’m upset because you’re upset, and now I don’t feel like hanging out.” That’s what I said to my friend a ..read more

Do you sometimes feel like you act differently in front of different people or in various situations? You perhaps unconsciously code-switch without realizing it.  What is code-switching?  Code-switching is a linguistic term, involving the shift between different languages or dialects depending on the social context or conversational setting. More often, we refer to code-switching in the professional workplace. Code-switching involves adjusting one’s style of speech, appearance, behavior, and expression in ways that will optimize the comfort of others in exchange for fair treatment, q ..read more

Brené Brown is a professor, author, well-known TED speaker, and researcher who studied courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy for 20 years. Starting with her first and self-published book, “Women and Shame,” she authored many best selling books including Daring Greatly, The Gifts of Imperfection, and Dare to Lead. I wanted to share about her today because her book Daring Greatly was pivotal for me to develop more self-awareness and live a more fulfilled life.  Brené Brown taught me to own my story and love myself is the courageous thing to do. Her words helped me take off the heavy ar ..read more

Sound is the most potent form of communication. You can learn a lot about the emotion of the person who is speaking, like anger, lust, love, passion, and disgust. Remember radio from over 90 years ago? It had the same effect! Words that are spoken cannot be taken back, so the emphasis on listening. “Podcast” is a portmanteau, a combination of “iPod” and “broadcast“.[5] The term “podcasting” was first suggested by The Guardian columnist and BBC journalist Ben Hammersley,[6] who invented it in early February 2004 while writing an article for The Guardian newspaper. In October 2000, the concept o ..read more

Last week our club meeting’s theme was mental health. It was to remember that the month of May is mental health month and be there for each other when needed.  Here’s my speech on my learnings about mental health.  One, and Five!  The answer is not Six. It’s the percentage of mental disorders in 2019. Nearly 20% of U.S. adults live under a mental struggle, roughly 51.5 million of the population. Last year was even worse: about 40% of U.S. residents reported symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorder that negatively affected people’s mental health during the pandemic.   ..read more