Recently, I have read a book Talent is Never Enough, written by John C. Maxwell. At the end of the chapter "Initiative Activates Your Talent", he asks the readers to think about something we strongly desire to do but are currently afraid of. Lost in contemplation for an hour, I found my answer: I am afraid to speak up in public. For years, fears have never failed to grab me whenever I need to speak up and this has resulted in me becoming withdrawn in class participation. Undoubtedly, it hinders my learning process.
Realizing effective communication is the very essence of life encompassing relationship, career and study, I want a change in myself. I want to learn to communicate comfortably and effectively with everyone regardless of their professions and the setting. I want to speak like great speaker Steve Job who can deliver his speech fluently and concisely to the audience. All these wants require initiative and constant practice, nevertheless.
I have come across this quote lately: Where you finish in life isn't determined so much by where you start as by whether you start. By taking ES2007S, I am glad to say that I have started my journey towards improving my communication and writing skills which will be beneficial to me in my life.
Sheau Shiuh, appreciate the quick work!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post! Concisely written, yet not compromising on content. I like the way you developed the post; the hook at the beginning grabbed my attention, and the quote in the concluding paragraph ended the post memorably. Excellent! This is a very well-focused post - keep up the good work.
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ReplyDeleteHello Sheau Shiuh
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have yet to meet you, but I could completely understand your fear as I often feel the same way too. However, I believe that just like physical trainings, there is no shortcut to overcome the fear except to practise more often. Only through this, we will be then able to gain more experience and at the same time feel more at ease and comfortable with public speaking. I guess the unfortunately thing (or actually fortunate) is that this course will force us to speak up and present our thoughts and ideas to everyone.
I hope we will both overcome our fear of speaking up publicly and gain ourselves more confidence in this aspect. =)
Hi Sheau Shiuh,
ReplyDeleteYou are not the only one with that kind of desire but fear to speak up, because I am one of them too :) I think most of us here are trying to throw ourselves out of our comfort zone and train ourselves to be more confident and speak up more. Hope at the end of this course, we can all achieve what we aim to at the start. Welcome onboard to this amazing journey...