TOASTMASTERS: IMPROVE YOUR COMMUNICATION, UPLIFT YOUR SELF-ESTEEM

A story about genuine love and connection

Facebook has been a strong tool in creating illusions and impressions that are not always true. Ideal couples, ideal lives, ideal jobs – we have seen plenty of them. Ideal us with amazing bodies, or us living rich lives, or us always on top of the wave.

However, if it wasn’t for Facebook, I would have had a much narrower circle of connections, smaller chances of socializing and surely so much less opportunity to live abroad in such emotional comfort. I won’t even mention the idea of living so far away from my family and hear them once per week on the phone, or, getting a letter once every month. Instead, I feel more connected to them, being able to chat or see they are good.

I love the era I live it. I love what chances I get by using social media. Yes, I do feel lonely sometimes, and I do have days when I see someone’s grass does look greener. But those days are rare. I do have friends whom I can go out for a drink or do some things together once in a while.

But what I love most, is my Toastmasters ‘family’ to whom I am connected despite the geography and languages that separate us.

What is Toastmasters? – many, but so many people ask me when they talk to me in person. Sometimes it’s difficult to relate in a few phrases what it is, after all. Sometimes the Toastmaster’s main keywords ‘public speaking’ scare people (did you know public speaking is #2 fear after death?). Sometimes it’s just not everything that Toastmasters club is about. So I’ll start on the opposite side – what people look for while landing to our meetings. 

Do you have a minute?

“Until you cross the bridge of your insecurities, you can’t begin to explore your possibilities.”

It’s my last month with my remote company. Today I have announced that I am quitting. It’s been a very difficult – not to say – toiling decision to leave, which I have thought over for the last 8 months. 8 months of looking for reasons to stay, weighting all the ups and downs, it never really went the vertical line.

Most difficult in terms of employment, yet most worthy year of my life. Because I need to learn something.

They say work shouldn’t be something you necessarily adore. It shouldn’t be the reason for your life either. It should be a place where you get your money from, a place where you give to take, in a tricky exchanging balance, that keeps us going.

Well, let me tell you what I have learned this year.

While your job shouldn’t be the reason of your life, it should still be a place, where, first of all, you ARE NOT AFRAID.

You are not afraid to go to the office in the morning, because someone will bully you. Not afraid to take initiative, because someone will fence you. Not afraid to make mistakes, because you’ll have to explain the history of your decision that lead to that mistake in those small descriptive texts, called post-mortem. POST-fuc*ing-MORTEM.

Or feel nauseous every single time YOU GET A MESSAGE OR AN EMAIL from ‘them’.

Don’t stay at jobs – where you’re afraid – far too long.

Out there, there are jobs where they praise you, motivate you, encourage you. Where they support you, care about how you feel, because that would endanger your results. Where they trust you can make the deals, and empower you to learn. And where – most important – they treat you equal, and where you don’t have to be afraid.

They are waiting for you, there,  while you stay, here, closed in your own fear of speaking out for yourself. Speak out.

Speak out for yourself.
Speak out gently and decisively.
Cause you’re worthy.

Sam the Smallfoot

Deci, tare-tare demult, cand eram inca pe la facultate (Stone Age, deci) citisem o povestire in engleza.
Era despre doi oameni adulti, care au decis ca e timpul ca familia lor sa se extinda un pic.
Ei au discutat serios, au facut cercetari, au dat analize, au fost pe la oameni care ‘le-au dat niste sfaturi’ si in fine au fost gata sa adopte.

Un pisoi.

Povestirea fusese construita in asa mod, ca pe parcursul la toata istorioara te gandeai cum acesti doi oameni vor adopta un copil.
Ca in fine sa intelegi ca oamenii astea ‘din Vest’ au facut atatea pregatiri pentru un … animal.
Noi atunci mult am analizat povestirea din perspectiva procedeelor stilistice de acaparare a atentiei (si mentalitatea astora din Vest), insa ceea ce mi-a ramas a fost – cata dragoste pot avea oamenii pentru un animal (sters) – cat de stranie totusi imi parea aceasta situatie.

Nu stiu cati ani au trecut de atunci, imi pare ca vreo 13-15, daca calendarul nu minte.
Adica tare multi. Eu nu traiesc in Vest, insa m-am mutat intr-o tara la Sud unde a avea un caine/pisic/peste acasa e acelasi lucru ca si cum ai avea copil (in rest, totul e tare departe de Vest, si tare aproape de Moldova, in termeni de mentalitate). De tare multi ani imi doresc sa am un pisic si eventual un copil (don’t ask, exista terapeut pentru asta). De tare multi ani nu-mi puteam permite un pisic (ba partenerul impotriva, ba trasitii geografice, ba mai stiu eu ce).

Vara asta, impreuna, am decis ca luam pisic. Ne-am pregatit trei luni. Emotional – fizic – psihologic. Am cautat (pisica roscata), ne-am certat (cand alegeam nume), am ales (asa ca pina azi nu inteleg de ce ne-au trebuit aceste 3 luni) – un pisic. Din toata lista de roscati, dupa toate revizuirile albumelor a orfelinatelor de pisici – ni s-a trimis o poza cu the cat in need, cu ochi mari si tristi, gasit in Halkidiki, si l-am luat.

Sa va inchipuiti, am luat masina, am mers 3 ore total in ambele directii, sa il salvam pe acest pisic si sa ii dam o casa si o familie. Aaaaaaa!

Stii, acea senzatie ca te pregatesti de sarbatoare un an intreg, alegi rochie, coafura, machiaj, flori, lista de oaspeti, iti imaginezi cat de gustoasa va fi mancarea, ca in final sa nu iti aduci aminte de nimic. Ce a fost asta? Unde e sarbatoarea?

Pe weekend, am ramas singura cu acest barsuc. Pisic mic de 3 luni. Abia vede, inca e cu ochi albastri deci. Miauna constant cat nu doarme. Doarme 20 de ore pe zi. In acele 4 ramase te simti singura pe o planeta pustie, cu o fiinta firava si total dependenta de tine.
Pina duminica ne-am facut deja si regim, si obisnuinte, si poze. Duminica a revenit si co-parintele pisoilui, din comandirovca, zicand ca a cat in need must become a cat indeed.

Asta e. Avem pisic la casa.
Meet Sam!

The math of choices & results

The book I came across today said clearly from the first paragraph – we put too often the blame of results gone wrong on the decisions we have taken. We should be putting the wrongdoing on the bad luck and move on. We should be putting some perseverance & determination to move on. Instead, we slide much too often into blaming ourselves for things that couldn’t be avoided after all.

Or blame others. We blame ourselves and others for the anger or disappointment we face and cannot control when things go wrong. We blame others for our own emotions. Does it ring a bell?

And one simple rule I have learned in the last decade of my life – you cannot control everything (and especially, control someone’s emotions).

Yes, this loss of power scares. “I should have behaved better, so he wouldn’t leave me”. “I should have stayed more hours at work so that they wouldn’t have fired me”. “I should have been a better daughter so that they would have loved me more”.

But sometimes, you have done just enough. Enough to have had a good result in another place, with someone else, in another country, with another occasion.

Here and now, the external conditions have not been favourable. Someone else didn’t sync, had other priorities. Had other needs. Had a different angle of the issue.

So the results didn’t come up as wanted. The decision to make it work (maybe) was well thought, but the result failed to come as wanted. You didn’t fail, though.

How about trying to leave no blame (or complain) for 21 one days (enough to create a habit, they say!). Remember the viral purple bracelet challenge? Maybe it’s time to hack some of your habit metadata.

Autumn Letters

That summer was long. As most periods when you try to step into the unknown and you wonder what’s there, beyond the foggy surface. Everyone wanted to know, what’s there, next. So did I!

I faked it, yes. I faked that courage that led me hand in hand into a day when I would be able to think in safety, finally in a more or less safe environment about less practical things. For example, allow myself think in the middle of the night not the mundane – how am I going to pay the bills. But – how fragile we are. What I couldn’t and wouldn’t fake was that silence and trust that grew up on me eventually, like the second skin, during all this unsettled period when anhos (anxiety, gr.) became my second name.

It was the moment that hit me hard. I thought – how fragile our relationships are, how fragile we can be, how easy it is to spoil something really beautiful just by a wrong turn of the head. Or not? Fear. I didn’t allow it. No, not like that. I let it pass by. It was fake. We, on the contrary, were so real.

Suddenly, I thought how much we give and how much is left is the clear sign of how healthy the relationship is. I thought, how challenging is to invest in the right relationship, leaving aside, or keeping quiet the fear of failure.

Yes, I get scared along the way. About how close we are – because there will be days when we will be far from each other at the distance of a hand.

How in love we are – because there will be days when we will struggle to accept that sometimes love takes other shapes we fail to recognize.

How easy it feels to communicate – because there will be days when we will encounter difficulties in saying things that might hurt.

How exposed we are towards each other – because there will be days when we will have to turn the other away in order to survive our own personal moments.

How easy going we are – because there will be days when anger will blind us and we will (get) hurt.

I just wish, during those days, that we still remember that it is worth it.

And if not,

I wish we remembered our good.

***
The summer has suddenly turned into autumn: from a Wednesday afternoon at the beach to rainy Thursday, carrying jackets around.

Sometimes I wish we stayed there, in the middle of the summer, on top of the highest peak I have been to, warmed in the sun, not knowing what is there next.

But then, have we ever known what is next?

October, 23rd. 2017

one third of the road

Freelancing in the form of writing articles taught me one simple lesson of achieving success.

When you get that – task to be done, mountain to be climbed, difficult conversation that to be held – the most important is to cover the first 30%.

Write the draft, start the road, make the introduction. Once you make it 30% it means half done. 30% means you are writing/doing it, you are walking through it, you are discussing it. The next 50% are just rolling on the way towards the achievement.

And when you finally cover 95%, stop. Take a break. Inhale and exhale.

And give the last 5% most of your creativity, most of your attention and address it with gratitude and love.

How to live a ‘fulfilling life’

Take a paper and a pencil. Draw a few crossing circles of different colours and name them into categories. By each side, describe the priorities you have. Make a very developed list of everything you want to do, would like to do. For the first time or continue. Fill in the paper. Write everything that comes to your mind.

Now, all these dreams and plans and desires on that paper are not going to make you fulfilled. They are going to waste all of you, keeping you running from one dream to another. Things that should make you have are not that many if you look realistically at it. And you need to prioritize that first paper and make a couple of realistic goals and keep one seemingly impossible dream by their side and persuade your life into them.

Take a paper and a pencil.
Draw THREE crossing circles of different colours.
Look at the previous list and choose THREE things you want to achieve in the next half of the year. Put these THREE categories into circles (like family, love, job, health, etc)
Write 3 to 5 specific goals by each circle that matter using the colour of the circle.
Take 1-2 goals from each circle and develop them into a paragraph on the verso of the page with how you will achieve it. With details. With visualized results. Stating challenges. Describing the importance of it.

The joy of your fulfilling life will depend on the importance of the priorities you shall put into those three circle.

Review them yearly and learn to evaluate your last year set plan versus the achievements and joy they brought you.

Tell me who your friends are.

Or, when contacted for further steps in some job positions, do you feel comfortable giving the references? Do you have that bunch of people who you trust they know your best and your worst and this is exactly why you would list them as primary contacts?

I got this nice Europass CV I have been sending forever to companies that would barely replay. I have re-designed it, putting in front what I can do, skills and abilities, where I listed languages and whatever I can do vs. the rest that comes as I have been doing that in some positions. Vs. education that simply resulted in knowing English (well if you think, of course, it’s more, but at first sight, it is exactly this)

Funny enough that my education provided me more or less an ability to know and maybe teach a language, and whatever else I have been doing was something different, yet still connected to what I have been learning. But connected because I could make some dots connected in lines and webs. Job careers nowadays are no fun if you didn’t study something very specific and got a job in something very specific. Not my case. I got distanced from teaching, doing so many other things and believing that there is something else I can do, yet I always need to learn along my way. Some tell me, it’s not serious, your CV. You got too many pieces and for your age… Age. Age matters after all in some companies. When they want to pay less they tell you “you’re not serious and time to get serious, cause the age”. So don’t wander around, take what we give.

Yesterday, reading this huge article on careers, I had these multiple hits of consciousness. It was not regarding what career I should follow, after all. I had my way and I stuck to is and now it made more sense why. Cause I actually know exactly what I want, I just don’t know the details. The Yearning Octopus in me had some priorities changed over time, so obviously I was struggling. ‘The way’ I had known ever since I was young was no longer an example to follow. I tried things, they resulted in my deep unhappiness over time because I tried to settle for what wasn’t mine, then got a stubborn, leaving no longer place for ‘anything’.

The Journey

Researching those ‘point to point’ destinations,
planning them to an extent,
going with the flow
and
improvising along the road when needed;

offering other people your flexibility
or
taking the lead in more specific situations;

being open to trying things, places, people, food –
but –
have limits and know them after a while;

keeping yourself open and slide enthusiastically into those moments that are first-timers;

feel like you belong there, for that single night, week or period while it last;

gratefully take the return trip towards home,
remembering those unique or continuous moments
cause
they are the reason we grow

What is this, if not life itself?

photo: Thessaloniki 2018

Ring’ing the bells

When my ring got broken last year, I got very-very upset. I tried to fix it twice. Didn’t happen. It was dear to me – the first ring I bought myself, at the age of 28. Doesn’t that sound weird?

I had rings before. Some of them – gifts – from parents, uncles. Others -symbolic wear for certain events. I had been given the freedom of choice for some, but that was still different.

At some point, when all those didn’t matter, I left them all aside.

Then I went and bought the one I liked. It served me well, reminding me of TWO things. One – it was no one’s business to define myself and choose my road.

Two – when rings get broken, lost, when they no longer identify you and your relationships, it means you got to leave them behind.

And one day you go buy yourself a new one. Yes, I bought a new one today and I know it is going to carry a third lesson.

And that lesson connects to everything I got to experience these days.