Sunday, December 4, 2011

...to help you break the ice - a prize for delivering an Ice Breaker

"Come to the dark side!.. We have cookies :-)"
// reportedly a motivational phrase by Darth Vader

The Ice Breaker is what a first speech of a Toastmasters Club member is called. As someone once said, a journey of thousand miles begins with a step, and in Toastmasters Club this step is an Ice Breaker speech. And as it is the first - it is the hardest one.

Our conscious mind and logic tell us that since one becomes a member of a Toastmasters Club he should waste no time and start delivering the speeches, but our subconscious mind often has different opinion. Knowing that we're about to go on a many miles journey we will most certainly hesitate to make a first step, even though it seems to be an easy step to do on it's own. Similar things happen to new members as they are about to deliver their Ice Breakers - there's always some fear or uncertainty in our subconsciousness that causes procrastination and evasion, while our conscious mind just makes up excuses like "I think I'm not prepared enough yet" etc. Life is full of situations like this, I believe everyone at certain times in their lives have to struggle with themselves to overcome this kind of "invisible barrier".

But, as often mentioned, Toastmasters Club is a positive and mutually supportive environment. And now as a part of this support we are introducing a new thing that should really help you on getting extra motivation for delivering an Ice Breaker and getting your subconsciousness to become eager to deliver it - a prize! A prize for delivering an Ice Breaker.

The prize itself isn't something extra fancy, yet we believe it is just the right thing to have an effect on your subconscious mind - this nice cup with Toastmasters International logo:

click to see bigger picture

Looks good, doesn't it? Want one? Than stop hesitating and deliver that Ice Breaker! :-)