One night in Casablanca

Last session was like if we were in the movie of Casablanca, there were tears, laughs, music and so on.

All started “raising the curtains” (I liked that expression Prince) with our shining President, Pilar, who is capable to revive almost dead people after a long week (inspired in T. topic 2) with her energy and contagious smile. Followed by our toastmaster of the night, Cormac, who is able to calm a shacked orchestra (T.P 1) just before the entrance to the show. He followed his agenda meticulously, being aware that he had some impromptus.

Manipulation of mind, trust and perseverance.

With these three topics our speakers of the night inspired us very much.

Have you ever wondered why we do like McDonalds so much? It might be because of the hamburgers, or perhaps because the other 90 billion people who are buying the hamburger. If someone looks up and there is nothing, why the hell we also look up? (If he is going to throw himself from the window, would we do the same?) With these examples Ricardo talked about manipulation. It seems difficult that we, as intelligent humans, can be easily manipulated. The reason why this is possible is because our minds don’t want to spend too much time and energy thinking if we are acting appropriately. Hence, I don’t know if the scientific data of Polecat was true or not, you manipulated us with your well reported and excellent speech and we believed you…or perhaps, we trusted you, Ricardo.

I probably won’t give you 1 million Euros to deposit in an account, but as Ben suggested in his speech; there is a way to improve someone’s trust in you, beginning with taking care of him, being competitive, open-minded… Being trusted by someone is not easy; you need time and patience, it all will come if you keep on like that and never give up.

That is what Gabriella tender speech had conveyed us. Her mother was an incredible and little shining figure, the first woman to create a marketing company in Chicago, but at the end of her life she was not fighting against her illness and she gave up.

Parents are the main examples to follow during our lives. During our childhood we think they are strong, powerful… but while we are growing up, we can see their weaknesses as other people have too. Gabriella found her mother’s weakness, and she realized that is what she did not want to do; to give up. Instead, she wants to fight every time she’s struggling with something or there is moment of fear. With this in crescendo (w.d) emotional speech, we ended up with the idea that we can always achieve our goals; so long we keep fighting until the very end.

Something scare us the first time we showed up in Toastmaster, however Toasties helped us to get relaxed with a peaceful environment and got us into the club: like a little manipulation exercise. We saw how to enjoy an speech and provide constructive evaluations, like our evaluators did last night;  Prince, Celine and David.

Even though there are things to still improve in our speeches, we don’t give up and continue coming to toastmasters, because at the end we know that we trust Toasties, who always wants to improve our public speaking learning.