Toastmasters CC9 'Persuade with Power': Love Ourselves

Yesterday, I was presently my second last speech on the Toastmasters Competent Communication manual. Since it was "Valentine's Day" theme meeting, I was preparing a speech related to "Love". The actual speech was very different from my preparing speech. On that day, I try to inject some spontaneous examples that were mentioned by other speeches, when I was talking about knowledge of attending Toastmasters meeting. I also used word of the day, promulgation, at the end of the speech.

I agreed with the speech evaluator, Ee San, that my speech was not impacting enough to the audience. She recommended me to follow the motivated sequence: attention, need, satisfaction, visualization and action, which was suggested in the manual. She also lend me her favourite presentation book, "Effective Presentation" by Sarah Dickinson. She want me to do my very best of the last speech on the Toastmasters Competent Communication manual. Anyway, below was my prepared speech with the title, "Love Ourselves".

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Show some hands if anyone here love ourselves? Especially this Chinese new year. I did not love myself. Usually during this holiday I just eat, watch film, sleep, eat, watch film and sleep. This year even worst. Additional of the extremely hot weather. 38 degree. Hot weather and heaty food and lack of exercise will make us fall sick easily. That's why call of action. Love ourselves.

Good evening my fellow toastmasters and guests. This evening, I am here to convince you guys to love ourselves. I share the love into two parts: body and mind.

Love our body. We need our body to work, study, take care our family in our daily life. If we don't have proper diet, our body will either over stress when we eat too much, or dry when we eat too little. Drink water is one of key step to love our body. Especially during these hot weather season. We can be easily dehydrated if we don't drink enough water. According to food guide pyramid, Balance diet is eat everything a little bit and not too much. Whole grains will give us carbohydrate of energy. Healthy oils from olive oil will give us healthy fat. Vegetable and fruits will give us fibre. Nut and bean will give us protein and vitamins. Fish, and poultry will give us protein. Dairy will give us Calcium and Vitamin D. But reduce intake on red meat and refined grains such as white bread and white rice.

Beside food, we also need to exercise to have a healthy body. Healthy body does not mean to have very sexy body like supermodel. We just need to move our body daily. There are many ways of doing simple exercise in our daily life. Running up and down the staircase. I remembered my ex manager, instead of using lift, she will use staircase all the time. Even stretching is also one type of exercise. Whenever you are sitting at the office chair for long time, we can stand up and stretch our hands, neck and body. Walking is also one type of exercise. Instead of parking our car near our office block, we can park our park further a bit to get extra exercise while walking from car park to office. If we don't have healthy body, our muscles will become weak. Our join will be inflexible and can be easily injured.

Love our mind. Beside strong body, we also need strong mind. God makes human as the smartest creature in the world. We need to fully utilise it. Fill it up with knowledge. Knowledge can gain in many ways. Reading books. Watching discovery channel. Learning swimming. Or attending toastmaster. With all the knowledge, we will have a better and successful life. When we turn the knowledge into action. We will make a better decision, such as deciding on joining toastmaster. Our friend won't call us, nice body but no brain.

After I end my sharing, show some hands if anyone will start love ourselves starting now? Act now. Thank you.

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