Change - Peter Varholak

Dear Toastmaster, ladies and gentleman. Did you do change your position at work or in free time this year? Did you become manager, boss or better leader? Did people accept this change smoothly? Sometimes this change is slow and sometimes fast but it is always challenge for person to adapt to these changes and for other people to get used to it.

1. Selection of right seeds:

Change is like garden. At first you don´t have anything. Only soil. So you start to choose seeds and plants for it. Be careful: we have a saying in Slovakia: "Who seeds wind, shall harvest storm.". So you choose right seeds or maybe seeds that you entirely don´t know but you still believe in them, or maybe someone else recommended them for you. Still everything is fine, you learn in the process and next time you will have more experience.

2. Growing your seeds and taking care of them:

From all your seeds only a couple of them will grow. Change is also like this. Something from your skills grow, something not. Do what work for you and what you like. If you gladly take care about trees, someone can help you gladly with taking care about flowers and all parties will be satisfied. Your garden needs water, good fertilizer and occassional disposal of unnecessary plants or dry parts of plants.

3. Patience:

And last ingredience of succesfull garden is patience. People usually overestimate what they can do in 2 months but underestimate what they can do in 2 years. You wouldn´t critisize a seed for not being a tree would you? Some of the seeds will grow sooner, some later like one Russian proverb "Every seed knows its time". Everything in this world takes time. Even such ordinary thing like brushing your teeth. Change requires patience.

3.1.

You ask yourself " why he is talking about garden?... This guy is not even a gardener!" I am not, believe me, I tried... Toastmaster club is our garden. Members of this club and guests are like seeds. Some of them will grow in this garden. Others will decide that this garden is too big, too flowery or too sunny and leave somewhere else. We have oportunity tonight to choose one from theese seeds to be more dominant than others. We decided about change on one of the most important positions in this club. We have chosen our president. It will be fast change but smooth. One meeting one of our presidents finish his role and next meeting another one will take his place. Next time we will choose supporting plants in our garden: our officers. These people will slowly grow and probably also influence or maybe change some things in this club.

3.2.

I want all of you encourage to think about suitable positions for you or your friends for club officers and register your interest. Like in the garden support them and help them. They need and not only them but all members and guest they need support as water, they need to create positive environment as a fertilizer and a commitment to do right things at right time even if they are unpleasant like disposal of unnecessary parts of plants. Sicilians have also proverb: "If you invest a lot but don't maintain it, you won't even harvest enough to re-seed". So invest some time and energy. "All work is as seed sown, it grows and spreads and sows itself anew." As one of our club members Jonathan said this time and energy invested can easily earn you more then 1 million pounds throughout your lifetime.

3.3.

And finally be very patient with new president and also with new club officers. They will slowly learn and change things to be even better and greater than there are now. This will be slow change.

Ladies and gentleman all of you are changing even at the toastmasters. Becauese you have learned something. What is it you can´t explain... shortly. But you know that it´s inside you and it is growing. Like a seed of a cherry tree. It still may not have beautiful perfumed flowers and then sweet red tasty cherries that are melting on the tongue, but you feel it will be soon enough. It just take work, time and patience. What I see on my cherry tree this year is first beautiful flower that will soon became the competent communicator award. But more importantly I see your beautiful trees and flowers. And I hope we will celebrate quantity and quality of our flowers and crops together in our beautifull, large, sunny toastmaster garden...