I found a new outlet for my creative and outgoing personallity

[itsallgood25]

I discovered a fun new hobby that I would like to share with you all. Its called public speaking! I just joined this group called Toastmasters a few months ago. It is great! You have 10 speeches when you start and they can be about anything you want them to be. We ADDers are good at telling stories and that is all a speech is. I have found that I am more organized in my thought patterns when I am telling a story in my everyday life. I enjoy talking to people and this really helps me speak with a purpose. Also helps with listening skills because you listen to speeches all the time and you evaluate others. Heck I am even better at arriving on time to places becasue I am on time for meetings.

Its a fun challange to stand up infront of people and speak and everyone there is there to support you and encourge you. For the first time I feel like I belong and I am good at something.

Toastmasters clubs are everywhere, just google toastmasters.org and theres a list of clubs near you. Just go as a guest and you’ll see what I mean. I am part of Ambitious City Toastmasters and I love it.

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[Saffron]

Wow. Great pursuit — never thought of it (and I love public speaking too, as do many of us around here). Could be the key to getting the occasional adrenaline rush that I miss so much since calming down as a person and learning all the ways to hide my ADD. Thanks for posting this.

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[Patte Rosebank]

My brother was a Toastmaster, years ago, and he loved it. He won quite a few Table Topics contests. It really helped him later, when he was getting his MBA, and had to do presentations in class. In one presentation, he proposed a “revolutionary” change to the entire corporate structure of a test case company, and he kicked it off by having someone raise the Communist flag behind him, while the theme from “Red October” played on a boom box. In another presentation, he set fire to his hand. (Clearly, I’m not the only one in my family who knows the power of the “Razzle Dazzle” principle. Or is weird.)

Me, I used to be a tour guide and an educational presenter, and now that I’m an usher at a live theatre, part of my job is being an impromptu guide, answering people’s questions about the show, the neighbourhood, etc.

And my latest performing venture is being a monologist, telling people about life in the tiny, mythical, eastern European country of Kapustia, and reciting some of my very bad poems.

If you decide to pursue public speaking professionally, there are some agencies out there that book public speakers into events. Look into them…as, indeed, should I.

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[itsallgood25]

You’ll never forget your first standing ovation. What a rush!

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[Anonymous]

You can take it one step further and try improv comedy classes!

What a rush!

I think you have to have it in order to be able to do it!

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[Patte Rosebank]

Improv can really be a blast! And if you’re in Toronto, there are now several places offering courses.

I took improv and a couple of specialty writing courses at the Second City in Toronto, many years ago, when it was the only improv school in town. Back then, there was just the one program of (I think) 6 levels, of which, I took 4. (Nick Johne, who was on a couple of seasons of “Red Green”, was one of my teachers.) I remember that we could really tell the difference between the people who were there for “personal development” and the ones who were there with a view to an acting career. The former were often more timid, and couldn’t keep up with the faster thought processes and more aggressive technique of the latter. I suspect this was because so many performers have ADHD, which kind of makes us blow “normal” people out of the water in a setting like that. Still, sometimes, this clash led to some really interesting moments in our scenes.

About 15 years ago, the Second City decided to split its improv school into two streams: a regular stream for the “personal development” crowd, and a “conservatory” program for the thespian crowd. Logically, this makes a lot of sense—though, I haven’t taken any classes there since the split, so I don’t have any experience of it.

But I can tell you that, if you want to see some of the absolute best improv in town, you should go to the weekly “Carnegie Hall Show”, every Wednesday night, at Bread & Circus (299 Augusta Ave., Toronto). It’s hosted by the National Theatre of the World (which includes several Second City veterans), and it’s PWYC. Every week, they take audience suggestions and then improvise a salute to “the best improvised moments of all time”, followed by a completely improvised old-time radio show with sound effects and commercials. They also have a couple of guest variety acts each week. I’ve been one of those guest acts twice, and I hope they’ll let me come back again!

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[Mike]

You know what’s a great activity for kids? Magic. I have ADHD and I love magic. It takes patience and when I get practicing it really absorbs me. It also seems to do a lot for calming me, for increasing patience… and I think it actually gives me a bit of a feeling of power or having an advantage or something… I feel like I finally know something that no one else does. And most of my life it was the other way around, always feeling like I was missing out on something everyone else knew!

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[Anonymous]

Mike,

Odd that you should mention magic. My ADD dad just loved to watch magic shows of any kind. I could never understand what he found so fascinating about them. On the other hand, there was me, the ADD daughter. I wanted to bang my head against the wall if I heard my dad call us to come watch some magic show. To just sit still and watch? Torture. Almost no dialogue happening to help draw my mind in? More torture.

That’s what makes this world such an interesting place. We’re all so different but still delightful!

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[Patte Rosebank]

I like magic because it involves knowledge that most people don’t have (and you know how much we love unusual facts), and a strong performance style. Big gestures, special props, costumes, and a build-up to a big finish on every trick—instant gratification! Unlike, say, opera, which also uses big gestures, special props, and costumes, but you have to wait for hours before the big finish.

The other neat thing about magic is that it’s a special skill, and you never know when it’ll come in handy. Rick has talked about spending hours, as a kid, practising tricks until he perfected them. Years later, he used those skills in a sketch on “Four on the Floor”, in which he played an adulterous magician, who tormented his suspicious wife with his tricks, while calmly insisting that there was no “other woman” there. In another sketch, he rode a unicycle. I wonder when he learned how to do that.

A magician’s ability to figure out how to create an illusion is also very useful in the world of film and television, when you have to create a special effect, live on camera at the time of filming—as was the case all through “Red Green”. George Melies and Larry Semon were two very early filmmakers who were also skilled magicians, and used those skills in their films. Semon was so good at creating illusions that it’s very possible he may have faked his own death to escape the massive debts that had bankrupted him and cost him his studio.

Aren’t transferrable skills great?

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[itsallgood25]

I just wish I could turn a hobby into something I like doing for a Career

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[Anonymous]

Some things that I love about my job and that I find are great for adults and kids with ADD are all pretty arts based, now that I think about it. We play improv games, have drumming circles, kareoke contests, write our own plays and make up dances. You should see the dance we have for Raffi’s Banana Phone. I think I laughed so hard I cried when we were making it! Speaking of which, we also have giggle contests. I will never stop loving working Out of School Care!

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[Anonymous]

That sounds great! I’ve always been interested in Toastmasters, but I get really nervous standing in front of people. I’m always afraid I’ll ramble (which I’ve done in front of an entire congregation before as a teenager and resulted in me crying in front of them all and never finishing.) It’s just embarrassing. When I do have to talk in front of large groups, I get dry mouth, shaky, etc, but I think something like Toastmasters is a great way to overcome those things. Now if only I could commit to going.

Most of my “public speaking” isn’t live. It’s via the web to millions of people on a daily basis, but since I don’t see them, I’m not nervous about it, though I am careful to construct what I’m saying with great care.

I’ve been lucky that a passion of mine became a career. (I’m a writer and am part of a team that manages a global community of people.) I just know I can take it much farther.

Anyway, congratulations!

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[Patte Rosebank]

When you’re in front of an audience, the trick is to remember that they want you to succeed as much as you do. They want to like you, so let them!

Toastmasters is effective because it gives you a lot of practice at public speaking in front of an audience. Every week, you have to make a speech. Sometimes, you have to make one up with only a few minutes’ preparation. It sounds scary, but the more times you do it, the easier it gets. After a while, those butterflies are still there, but they flutter a lot more gently.

A couple of months ago, I was asked, last-minute, to do the reading at my grandmother’s funeral. I’m Queen of the Cold-Read, so I just concentrated on my usual thing of bringing the words to life. Afterwards, my dad said that everyone was spellbound—including the priest (who’d been on auto-pilot through the whole Mass), who looked as though he were hearing the words of the 23rd Psalm for the first time. And when an atheist can do that to a priest, it’s really something! Grandma would have been so proud, because she used to enjoy ruffling the feathers of complacent clergy.

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[kc5jck]

Years ago, perhaps about 30, my employer paid for me to go through the Dale Carnagie course. There were about 25 “students.” Each week there was some reading on various aspects of human relations, managing your life, etc. We met for maybe two th three hours and had to give a three minute talk about various topics related to ourselves.

Sometimes, I didn’t feel like going, but always did and was always glad I went as I left to go home. I saw some amazing transformations in some of the people in the class. I would highly recommend the course. I suppose that it is still being offered around the country and one could google to learn more.

Anyway, as I remember, it was somewhat geared toward public speaking.

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