On June 15th, 2005, I did my #5 speech at Toastmasters, and got enough compliments on it that I figured I would share it here.
There are a few important aspects of a speech: Start off with a catchy phrase or something to get the audience attention; welcome your audience; have a open, body and close; wrap it up by tying the beginning to the end. With each speech we learn some new 'tricks'. This speech #5 was to use gestures and body language to convey your message.
I came up with an idea just from imagination. In my speech I used gestures to describe 2 jugs, a bag of potions, bottles of ingredients, and my fairy godmother.
This was my speech:
"Blessed is he who has a friend, for friendship is one of God's greatest gifts.
"Good evening Mr. Chair, fellow Toastmasters, and welcome guests.
"A few nights ago I was having a bit of a lonely night because so many of my friends live so far away. We all get that once in a while. My fairy godmother came to visit me that evening. She is a plump little lady about this high, with big angel wings, and a little magic wand. Your typical fairy godmother. She and I had a nice little chat about friendship. She explained to me that in order to have friends and to be a friend, we need to spread good cheer. We often think about spreading good cheer as associated with the Christmas season, eggnog, and hot buttered rum. Well, we can spread good cheer any time of the year by making friendship nog. My fairy godmother has been so kind as to lend me her bag of potions to make friendship nog with you here tonight.
(With each of these, I dug around in my imaginary bag and showed the bottles, and added them to the jugs)
"There are seven essential ingredients in making friendship nog. The first ingredient is Honesty. You just can not have friendship without a level of honesty.
Second, we need Faith. We need to be able to believe in ourselves and in others.
Third, we have Hope. There is a little dove on this bottle, as you can see here. We need to be able to look forward to things.
Next we need Love. This bottle is a little heart shape. Love makes the world go around.
Next, we have Charity. A famous person once said, you can give without loving, but you can not love without giving.
In friendship we also need Patience. Now, I am a redhead, so we need LOTS of patience here to put up with me. (I got quite a few laughs on that one with my exaggerated dumping of the bottle into the jugs)
Finally, last but not least, we need a bit of Sunshine. I'm glad this one came in a bottle, because we sure haven't had much of that outside lately. (more laughs)
"Now we just stir up our potions, and put one jug on this side of the room, and one jug on this side of the room to share with everyone and spread good cheer. All of this has made me realize that I have been blessed with many friends, and you are all blessed too, because you have me!"
My main evaluator said she quite enjoyed my speech, and she thought it was very 'cute' although she didn't like to use that word to describe it. She said also that since I have been in the Club, I certainly have spread good cheer around there with all my enthusiasm. She admired that I didn't use notes, but did notice though that each time I dug around in the bag I subtly looked at my hand. Everyone had another laugh when I admitted to writing letters on the tips of my fingers to remember the ingredients. My speech was supposed to be 5-7 minutes, and I was a bit short on that, but no one seemed to mind… they all thought it was very good anyway. I also didn't have any "ah's and um's" this time. (I think I hold record for the most in the club right now otherwise!) I do have to work on my eye contact, and speaking a bit slower. Eye contact is hard. With my modeling experience, I don't have a problem getting up in front of people, but to have to speak and look at everyone, I get tongue tied and nervous. I like John's (an experienced member) idea…. "You will always get butterflies, but you can make them fly in formation." Good advice!
Well, hope you enjoyed my little presentation. You all know my favorite saying about myself… at least I am good for entertainment!!