A article to my club members dated Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 2:50 PM

What advice would you give a club when it needs to get out of a rut and become a new improved club?

I would say this.

L – Love what you do and find your passion. By doing so you will rekindle your enthusiasm why you joined toastmasters in the first place.

A – Aim higher, think bigger and dream further than what you wanted. That is one way in which you would want to motivate yourself even more.

G – Give others a support if you feel they are not up to the mark. Give your time, your effort, your support and your care. Remember, you are as good as the rest of the others in your club.

O – Open up and share those problems upfront. There is no point in keeping a blind eye to the existing problems and hoping they will vanish.

O – Observe Opportunities that come up. Remember it takes a big heart to undertake a big challenge – Take a committee role! And if you succeed in your club you have sowed the seeds to make a big difference in every area of your life.

N – Never ever ever ever settle for anything than the very best. It takes courage to make a difference in the place and environment that you are in. It takes a coward to run away from a problem. So make the difference, NOW!

20 points to start a fire…that should not die out.

Go for the first meeting.

Meet new people for the first time.

Give the first and longest speech of your life.

The 10 seconds introduction to a group of strangers.

You realize you did not die.

Curiosity gets to you.

You come back again.

This time you do it a bit more.

You go for a table topic.

You win a Cup.

You get hooked.

You join the club.

Do the most amazing speech of your life.

The ice breaker.

You do the next.

It feels great.

And everyone lives happily ever after….

Sorry…

Not in this story.

Somewhere down the line Something happens.

You get burned out.

The fire burning in you is now burning you out.

The Office work, the family commitments, the targets, the traffic, the poor speeches given by fellow toastmasters, the victory that went to someone else when it should have come to you…Slowly things get to you.

What do you do then?

Here are a few tips that I have tried.

May be they would work for you too.

1. Go to other clubs and see what you can learn there.
2. Take up Dual membership with a tough club and learn from them or take up Dual membership with a weaker club and contribute as a leader.
3. Make a meeting creative and different with every TM of the evening.
4. Write articles to your magazine and to other magazines.
5. Give speeches outside to schools and universities.
6. Take up a new mentor.
7. Speak to senior members who can give you time and help you.
8. Read self-improvement other books.
9. Do something exciting or involve the club for a non-toastmaster evening.
10. Make up your mind to win the next speech contest.
11. Take up a challenge to win the District.
12. Find out a new skill that you can adopt.
13. Take up a senior committee role and see what difference you can make.
14. Bring in 20 new guests for your club, turn them into members and revive your club environment.
15. Bring out the issue on a business session of your club meeting and discuss the seen / unseen problem.
16. Rent out some interesting educational material and adopt it to your skills.
17. Find out what you need to adopt to make you a better person and see how you can learn that skill within the toastmasters world.
18. Make a new goal and stick to it.
19. Seek the help of new members and start your own new club.
20. Remember that the process of improvement never ends…..find a weak point and improve on it. And you will surely finds an area to improve upon.