September 2011 - District 25 Toastmasters

the results will be to your advantage.
If you release control to the circumstances,
you may become of victim of
the circumstances.
Excellence. A commitment to excellence
will gauge your capacity to benefit
from change. Try to improve what
you do in whatever circumstance you
find yourself. What you are doing may
be great today, but don’t be content
with today’s greatness when tomorrow
arrives.
On December 31, 1999, when
seemingly the whole world was talking
about the momentous change the new
millennium would bring, I decided to
change the type of daily messages I left
on my business telephone. I had been
using quotations from my first book,
published two years prior. I settled
on a theme of excellence. Each day in
January 2000 I changed the message.
I learned two weeks into the month
that people were calling my phone just
to hear the message. This knowledge
sparked the idea for my second book
– The Excellence Book: 104 Principles
for Living and Working.
When you have committed yourself
to excellence, you are not only committed
to maximizing the benefit that
comes from change, but you are compelled
to be a catalyst. As a catalyst
for change, your attitude, desire, vision,
in-nergy, control and excellence
are fully engaged. A commitment
to change causes you to look at the
realm of possibilities to see what can
happen instead of waiting to see what
will happen. Of course, you don’t
have control over everything, but you
can change the things over which you
do have control.
No matter who you were when
you first joined Toastmasters, today
you are a different person. Your circumstances
have changed. The membership
of your club changed. The
international organization changed.
Ours is an organization about
change. The reason that you put your
membership fee down and pay your
semi-annual dues is that you are expecting
change. Fortunately, we have
elected international leadership that
has accepted the challenge of being
catalysts for change. Don’t resist or
run away from it. You can maximize
for yourself the benefit of the changes
that will take place by taking the
A-D-V-I-C-E that I offer here. T
Dana LaMon, DTM, AS, is the
Toastmasters 1992 World Champion
of Public Speaking. He is a
member of two clubs in Lancaster,
California. This article was adapted
from a 2009 keynote speech he presented
to District 1 Toastmasters.
Reach him at dana@danalamon.com.
“I love quotes!
These are some of the ones
that kept me inspired as I
went from Chump to Champ!
... you can quote me
on that!”
Like Quotes
Go to:
www.365InspirationalQuotes.com
Darren LaCroix, 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking
TOASTMASTER SEPTEMBER 2011
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