Message from Eoin Carney
President of East Coast Toastmasters 2014-2015

I am looking forward to my year as President of East Coast Toastmasters.  When I was elected for this role, I started to compare myself to the recent past Presidents – Carola, Maura and Vincent – and I began to doubt myself, as I have not got the skills they had when they were in the role.
Then I remembered back to when I was younger and I was doing martial arts.  My instructor told me I was ready to move up a grade to the next belt but I compared myself to all of the people who were already at that higher grade.  As I wasn’t as good as them, I declared that I should remain at the lower grade.  My instructor then said that being at the higher grade was not about having all the required technical skills for that grade before moving into it.  It was about working at and developing the skills I already had and bringing myself up to the higher level. He said that even if I increased my skills by 1% every time I trained, that was progress.  It was the continuum of  small steps that would help me become competent at the higher level. When I had achieved this, I would be ready to move onto the next level.
This for me is the essence of what East Coast Toastmasters is about. We develop an awareness of what skills we have and practice to develop the further skills that we desire. So with this in mind, I am committed to continuous learning this year, so that by the end of the year I will have developed my skills and grown into the role as President and also grown with the club.