To ensure that we’re in the right mindset, toastmaster Alex launched the meeting by getting us to give high fives! Once we are refreshed and ready to learn, she shared us a lesson from her recent experience of her hair dye, which actually was a hair job gone wrong.  Although it was not what she expected, her new vibrant look gave her a new perspective of herself.  From her story, she encouraged us think about where we could change our mindset from our own daily activities.

It was another full meeting with three speakers and a new member induction.

Our VP of Education, Wes led the induction.  Welcome our new member, Amanda!

All speakers incorporated our theme, of changing our mindset, or at least provoked us to think.

3 speakers on different projects: Cara presenting how to say it, James on visual aid and Andrew hosting a workshop.

Cara persuaded us to seek for the truth versus accepting ‘alternative facts’ or ‘truthfulness’.  When it comes to truth or facts, there should not any alternatives.  Alternative facts are especially dangerous in areas such as medicine, science, and justice, where truth and principle matters.  We agree completely.

James spoke about forming habits, using a nerf gun, a bag of chips, and apples as demonstration. Cue, action and rewards!  After his speech, we assimilated his speech by devouring the chips (cue: everyone was hungry, action: bag was easy to open and rewards: tasty!) I guess his experiment worked! But remember, we can use the same process to form good habits.

Andrew gave us a workshop on how to give speech introduction.  Introduction is like first impression.  Nail your introduction and you give yourself a head start.  His workshop was full of vivid languages, vocal variety and humor.  Relating to Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, ‘I have a dream’, to his own speech about hair and bacteria, Andrew showed us how to give powerful and memorable introduction.

Our meeting, as it always does, ended with a fun table topics.  This time, led by Luke, asking us questions on dealing with big changes.  It was our guest Saad who won us over, with a discovery of his cooking skills.  Congrats Saad!