The first speech you give when you join Toastmasters is called The Icebreaker. It’s designed to ease you into public speaking. The assignment is to speak for 4 – 6 minutes about yourself.
Creating the speech was more challenging than I thought it would be. But the writing was fun and so was delivering it.
Here is The Icebreaker I gave tonight.
Tonight, I’m going to tell you a few quick stories from my life… for two reasons:
The first: to give you an idea of who I am.
The second is selfish: to help remind me of lessons I’ve learned but seem to have trouble applying to my life.
When I was 10, my parents bought a small motorcycle from a neighbor. I wasn’t allowed to ride it. I didn’t know how and for whatever reasons, my parents wouldn’t teach me at the time.
One day I went to the library with my mother and checked out all the motorcycle books I could find, took them home and read them all several times. I learned how every part of that bike worked. I learned, in theory, how to operate it. And I would explain this all to anybody that would listen.
My parents knew how badly I wanted to ride the bike. So they started letting me coast it down the hill in our yard and then push it back to the top to do it again. With the motor off.
Not a great start. But it was a start.
Soon after they would take me out to ride it under supervision. Eventually, they let me ride it on my own. With the motor running now. Of course.
This taught me that you don’t have to wait for other people to start taking action towards the things you want.
I competed in my first mountain bike race in 1991. I was 15 years old. My friend and I finished somewhere in the back of a group of 100+ racers. That race was harder than any riding we had ever done up to that point. I was hooked.
In the beginning, I always trained with my friends. They were getting good results from their methods so I figured I would too. But I didn’t. Yet I continued to train with them for years. Finally, I broke off and started training on my own. I immediately saw vast improvements in my performance and had my best season.
It drove the point home for me that everybody is different and that it is important to figure out what works for you. I also learned that hard work is rarely enough. It must be properly directed in order to be effective.
When I was 22 I heard a piece of piano music by Sergei Rachmaninoff and was again hooked. From there I learned about Scriabin, Chopin, Prokofiev and others. I told a friend I wanted to learn how to play all this music. She told me I was too old start piano now. I promptly went out and bought one.
I took lessons and practiced hard for 2 or 3 years, constantly butting heads with teachers. They wanted me to start small and build my technique and skill slowly, correctly. I only wanted to play the music that I liked, the music that moved me.
By the end I could play some of that music but not well. Not as a musician. I realized what it would take to be really good and decided I wasn’t willing to pay the price at that time. I sold my piano.
I learned that hard work and passion can take you pretty far–but only so far. It takes time and patience to lay the foundation on which to build something of real value.
Also in my early 20s, I worked in retail and despised it. School was always a struggle for me but I was going to community college anyway to get a 2 year degree. I dropped out of 2 programming classes and almost failed a 3rd. Not promising.
Despite those problems, I spent one summer reading books on building web sites. Things were simple then. I published my first website at the end of that summer and managed to get an interview at a local technology firm. I got the job, even though I was short on skills.
I worked from home at first and it was ugly. Technical books spread out all over the desk. Me cursing and talking myself into quitting, then out of quitting. I struggled through my work day. Then I’d take a break and come back to struggle for a few more hours trying to learn about programming and databases. For a while it was a nightmare.
But one day it all clicked. I remember it vividly. One minute nothing made sense. The next it all snapped into focus. I’m not sure how it happened. From there I quickly improved, eventually becoming a partner in that company.
I learned that sometimes you just have to keep working even though you’re not seeing the benefit immediately.
In 2007, I left my job at a local financial software company. I was in a terrific spot by any external standards: good pay, great manager, the respect of talented colleagues, a group of people that were like family.
But something still wasn’t clicking. I was holding the job because, although it wasn’t that good, it wasn’t that bad either. I decided that I no longer accepted this standard and I told my employer I was leaving. I had nothing lined up after that. Coworkers, family and friends told me I was crazy. I did it anyway. And it worked out to my advantage in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.
Deciding to leave that job was one of the harder decisions I’ve made. But I learned that it’s important to set your own standards in life and to act according to your values, even if other people don’t always understand you.
Thinking of stories like these helps remind me of important lessons life has taught me. And I hope sharing these things has taught you a little about me.
Thank you.