Countdown to the First Speech of the Season

I'm scheduled to give a speech on Wednesday night after a summer of laziness in extremis (as far as speeches go-- okay, in general lol). I am nervous and feel that strange blankness that feeds into my anxiety. I have a topic, but I'm not 100% "up" for it-- enthusiastic, maybe. I plan to go into the group and demonstrate the Vita-Mix by making a Green Smoothie. The project is #9= "Persuade with Power".

Persuade with Power

The idea with this project is to get others to understand (that to be healthy we need to eat about 12 servings of fresh fruits, veggies and grains every day), accept (we can cook the veggies and destroy their enzymes or the only way we can break through the tough cell walls of the fresh fruits and veggies to get at the nutrients is with the amazing Vita-Mix-- no other appliance can do this) and act upon the ideas I present (go away with a strong commitment to start making and drinking Green Smoothies at home).

I'm having trouble starting this project because I'm trying to undertake TOO MANY goals for a 5 to 7 minute speech (where I also plan to do a demo of the Vita-Mix and hand out small samples of Green Smoothie-- frankly, that terrifies me.) I want to convince them of the health benefits of the Green Smoothie AND of the necessity of having a Vita-Mix to get optimal nutrition from the Green Smoothie. Can this be done effectively?

Here is what I would like to convince my audience:

for health and longevity, you need to consume fresh fruits and veggies in abundance each day

to get at the nutrients in the fresh fruits and veggies, you need a powerful way to break through their cell walls

you can get more nutrition from a quart of Green Smoothie than you can from chewing up a bag of oranges, a bag of apples and a whole stalk of celery, for example.

you can get more nutrition from a quart of Green Smoothie than you can from a handfull of vitamin pills ("supplements") and "green" powders.

you need only one appliance to get at the benefits of the Green Smoothie, and that is a Vita-Mix (10 appliances in one).

you will get more benefit from drinking a Green Smoothie than you will from drinking a fresh juice extracted with the conventional juicer

Green Smoothies are not only healthy, but also delicious

I want to inspire them to be hopeful about their health (energy, vigor, etc.)if they have current problems. I want to have them clamor to look at the Vita-Mix materials I will be taking with me to the meeting, to ask questions, and, ultimately, to go home and decide that they are going to make changes in their lifestyles.

They must trust me. I must have credibility.

Hmmm. Will they trust me? I guess that I have gotten to know quite a few of the Club members through our weekly meetings and more casually on Facebook, but what do they see when they look at me? Someone who is healthy and energetic, or someone who is still struggling to lose weight and regain lost energy? I am pretty healthy, I think. While people all around me have been succumbing to sore throats and nasty summer "colds", I have remained unscathed. Every morning I have a Green Smoothie after a walk with my dog and husband, and a 20-minute jump on my rebounder. I guess it is important for them to know that the Green Smoothie is not the "silver bullet"-- that good health is still a process. I can testify, however, that since I began using the Vita-Mix for Green Smoothies, I have indeed lost some weight (35#)and regained energy (I'm digging a lily garden in my front yard and don't need naps during the day like I used to). Like the man from the Gilette commercial, I was so enthusiastic about my Vita-Mix that I chose to get involved with the company as an Affiliate. (Just like my Clubmates, if you choose to buy a Vita-Mix 5000 from me you can get FREE standard shipping just by giving the order clerk the code number 06-002685. That's a saving of $25 for Americans, and a whopping $35 for Canadians. Just mention this number when you phone in your order to 1-800-VITAMIX or 1-800-848-2645.) I believe it will be useful for me to prepare a bit of an introduction to give to the ToastMaster so that I can include some of the "qualifications" that I bring to the presentation with me.

Burden of Proof

In previous speeches involving health I have had the kind of feedback that leads me to believe that some of the class members are already 'on side' with the benefits that I believe in. I know that there is one clubmate, for sure, who believes that we are created to eat animal proteins, so he might be a harder 'sell'. Logic and EMOTION are needed to encourage people to change their points of view. They will also want to know "What's in it for me?" so I must focus, as much as I can, on the benefits.

Finally, I am going to have to organize my thoughts very carefully and thoroughly before I produce a clearly understood message.

Thank you for going through this with me! For more information on the amazing Vita-Mix, please see the following:

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Looking for Inspiration?

Here is a really inspiring video:

Proper Elocution

I blog quite a bit. Recently I have begun a sort of amateur attempt at video blogging... For some odd reason, when I suggested that I had a Blogger account, they sent the videos here. So you can see them on July 23 and 24... fairly unrelated to ToastMasters, except that I am holding forth and I certainly seem to be calling for some evaluation of my speaking skills!

Last night I went with a friend to the summer session of ToastMasters in our community-- two clubs amalgamated to form one of sufficient numbers to hold a meeting. My friend had an opportunity to observe quite a bit of fraternal "networking" take place. One chap asked her what sort of work she was in and when she said she was a pharmacist he told her that the manager at the Safeway was looking for someone, etc. We got a business card from a massage therapist for a friend of ours who is experiencing pain (she is a pharmacist also, with a counter that is too high for her petite self). One of our members has just launched a foundation so we are all going in to look at her new website. And the chap who knows the head honcho at Safeway also arranges yachting expeditions, so I gave him my husband's name and phone number. And lots of laughs as well, of course. ToastMasters is great.. if you haven't thought about it seriously, you might want to.

Smoothie Moves: Toothy Froothie Green Smoothie July 24, 2007

Smooth! Canteloupe & Blueberry Green Smoothie

Summer ToastMasters

"Toast" by Richard Jack

This is just an update, since, formally, our ToastMasters club doesn't meet again until the Fall... However, we are given the option to meet on Tuesday nights with another club.

I am so lazy.

However, this morning a friend called and asked about ToastMasters in general, and then suggested that she would like to come with me, as a guest, to the next meeting. Hmmm.

So, I will be calling the woman who is graciously co-ordinating this 'extra' bit of effort and let her know that we will be coming along to the meeting tomorrow night. I'm sure there is a good reason for this....

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Since 2004, over 4 Million people have decorated their walls with splendid art
posters such as the piece called "Toast" by Richard Jack above today's blog. You can too! Simply Click on the picture above or on here

Joy of Feet-- No. 8 Speech

Here's my Speech #8 ( I used visual aids)

When I was growing up on more than one occasion my Grandfather R.—who came from a family of about a dozen kids and who had six kids and multiple grandchildren—would say to whoever was visiting, “When Cyndy was born, she had the longestttttt feet I had ever seen…. I have never seen such llllllllooooooooong feet on a baby."

I loved my Grandfather and I was brought up to not ‘speak back’ to my elders, but I really wanted to say something like, “Put a sock in it, Grandpa” I didn’t get the point of his repeated exclamations over the size of my infant feet.

I grew up feeling very ashamed of my oversized feet. And frustrated. All the really nice shoes were displayed in a size 6…. Or so it seemed…. By the time it got to my size 9-10, all the nice parts of the shoe were out of proportion and looked like they had been designed for Bozo the Clown.

But, really, I came to terms with my feet in my thirties. I suddenly came across other women—lots of them actually—who wore bigger than size 8s. Shoe stores started to have additional racks for bigger sizes. Seemed like the American female actually had a bigger average shoe size than we had been led to believe by all those dainty little shoes that they used as samples.

Then, somewhere in my late 40s I suffered from something called Plantar’s Fasciitis, a painful condition that led to expensive orthotics (that were covered by my work’s health plan). Now I had to look for big shoes with inserts that could be removed so that the orthotic could be placed inside. Not too many pretty or elegant shoes for women with big feet AND orthotics. So I began to settle for sturdy and comfortable.

That is until I went to my son’s wedding in Manila. Here I was with a shimmering satin gown that needed a lovely pair of sandals to set it off. No problem, I thought—is not Manila the home of the mega Shoe Mart malls, the shopping haunt of that maven of multi-shoes herself, Imelda Marcos?

Yes. There are entire shoe ranches in the malls of Manila…. Acres of glorious shoes.

Cheap too.

But imagine my frustration and humiliation to find that Size 8 is a rarely requested shoe size in all of Manila. They have the most professional and courteous clerks I have ever come across in Manila—but it didn’t help. I could sense that they wanted to hide their laughing mouths in disbelief.

There are only two times when my dear and sincere husband’s over-solicitousness has really bugged me. Once was when we were walking through a grave yard of my ancestors final resting places in the Niagara region of Ontario. I had spent a year gathering all the information of who’s who, and was looking forward to a leisurely walk, savoring these dried fruits of the family tree. But there was Ed, running excitedly and helpfully up and down the rows, yelling out, “Here’s one and here’s one and here’s one”.

Well, it was a similar situation in the Manila mall shoe hunt. Acting partly from self-preservation, I am sure (that is, “If Mama not happy, nobody happy), he went off on solo reconniterrings, brandishing a sandal or shoe, and yelling from across the store something along the lines of “this one looks pretty big”.

I did finally find a pair of sandals in some larger size. They pinched across the toes, but if I carefully slipped them off while I sat, I was comfy and my dress hid the fact that I was unshod. As long as I didn’t walk—or put them on—they fit fine.

When we came back I went back to comfy again. What a thrill to find that my little granddaughter, with her mom’s small feet, has fun with the big clunky shoes in the family—real fun. And nobody is going to tell stories about any part of her that was too big, or too little, or stuck out, or whatever…. Or not in my presence they won’t.

And music has even veered away from the nasty Fats Waller’s “Your Feet’s Too Big” theme to a children’s song by Bob Sakayama celebrating big feet and other out-of-proportion body parts.