Last week we organised a 2-day Youth Leadership Program for young adults by D'Utama Advanced Toastmasters Club. We got the original materials from Toastmasters International where we conduct training with games and practices to enhance leadership skills and communication skills. We covered topics such as How To Organise Your Speech, Your Speaking Voice, Your Body Speaks, How To Use Words to Enhance Speeches and etc.
I am Toastmaster member for almost 12 years now. I had conducted Youth Leadership Program many times over the past 12 years. This time, however, I facilitated the first day program thus doing ice-breaking and getting the participants to be ready for a leadership game the next day.
In the first morning when the young adults gathered, they seemed to be sitting in their own seats and keeping real quiet, not looking at each other. Being school going young adults, they open up and became talkative and playful just in about an hour.
So, to kickstart the program, I ask everyone if they know why they are there. Astoundingly, more than 7 out of the 13 students do not really know why they are there, let alone knowing what the 2 days are all about.
Some who seem to know thought that it is about learning the English Language, 1 or 2 are told that it is communication skills workshop but don't really know what it is. Only 1 out of the 13 students knows that he is there because he wants to learn to be able to speak confidently in public, well, that will give him a full 9 points out of 10, bravo!! (In fact, I want to get to know this young man more, to see from what family background he is brought up in to be so "knowing" about what he wants.)
These are students from 11-17 years old. On that bright sunny day, there is this particular 15-year-old girl whom I am impacted the most by her answer. I ask her if she knows why she is sent there, she said she did not know, her parents just wanted her to come, because it is school holidays. So, I ask her if she want to come herself, the answer is no. Then I ask her how did she feel? She said that she is angry. So I said, did you tell your parents you are angry? No, they won't listen anyway, she drops her head and retorted softly, but I could hear her.
Nevertheless, at the 2-day program, I could see that she enjoyed herself anyway, because after the first introduction, she sort of blend into the group and made the most of the 2 days. At least that was a pleasure to observe.
The point is this : if we were allowed to express our anger and being loved the way we are and being accepted as we are, that could have saved us from the beginning of the growth of, say, maybe even liver cancer starting at the age of 15. (Check out Louise Hay's book "You Can Heal Your Life" or click here for her website.) And we always thought that some degenerative diseases happen when we are 60 or older, and we can't imagine that the growth could have started that long ago in the past - when we are not allowed to speak up and suppress our thoughts (or in this case, anger)!!
Caroline Myss, a medical intuitive (click here for her website), in her ground breaking audio series and book where she expound on the subject of our "Sacred Contract", she mentioned an observation when she was in a little village somewhere in the middle east. She was in a wedding ceremony where the bride and the bridegroom sitting side by side receiving all the blessings from well-wishers. She saw that the groom was smiling happily looking at his bride whom he probably had her through some arranged marriage. But the bride held such sadness in her eyes, it breaks the heart of people who could sense it. It was like someone being forced into a contract she never wanted to sign. And Caroline said that it is a sign of the beginning of cancer.
So, is it time to really look within, where did I started hating someone, where have I started being angry, over what? when did it happen? For that young 15-year old girl in the Youth Leadership Program, the anger was already etched into her "memory disk". No wonder sometime we did not know how on earth we snap at each other over a parking space or an A4 size paper? Huh...??
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