Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone wants to get attention. We have lots of words in our heart and want to be known and appreciated by others. We want to speak out and present our true self. We feel free to speak in the presence of the people we are familiar with, but it is not easy to give a speech in front of a group of people. At least that’s my feeling. So I took part in the workshop “Heroes Talk”, given by our resident teacher Guido Crolla.

I am not that shy to stare at people’s eyes but I had never stared at others’ eyes for almost 1 minute before the workshop. The first thing we learnt was gazing at our partner’s eyes. It was hard to concentrate my mind for the whole time. It seemed that many thoughts were piling into my brain when gazing. Then I caught one and fell into a reverie. Guido told us that if we just let go of all the thoughts and try to come back, we can be more concentrative. It’s true but it’s difficult to do that. It was even difficult to focus on my partner’s eye while I was speaking. It is a habit of many people that we avoid eye-contact and start looking for something else to remind us of the speech. As an audience, I don’t think that a confident speaker will act like that. We avoid people’s eyes to struggle from the embarrassing situation but that makes things worse. This does no help to relax ourselves, and to recall our lecture. After the eye contact practice, I think, on the contrary, gazing at people’s eyes and making eye contact with my audiences make me more comfortable. It seems that, in the whole room, there are only me and the person that I am staring at. The eye is the window of the soul. When I focus on one’s eyes, I can see his or her soul, which is the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. The soul makes me calm, makes me relax, and makes me peacefull enough to concentrate on my lecture. When I feel embarrassed, the beautiful soul gives me a big hug and tells me that it is ok when you can’t say a word, what does matter is that you tell me something because everything from you is what I want.

Then it’s the group presentation practice. At the moment I stood in front of the group, I felt my heart beating fast. I really wanted to go back to my seat; I really wanted to escape because it made me feel uncomfortable standing there. But I stuck to it. There is nothing else but courage to stand in front of a group and make peaceful eye contact with your audience. We stood in front of the group and made eye contact with group mates. We gave our appreciation and gratitude as an audience. We received the appreciation and gave our gratitude as a speaker. From all of this, I learnt the importance of appreciation and gratitude. I can stand there with peace and tell my stories. When I stand in front of people again, I will think of what I have learnt from this workshop and be ready to give my speech. I am so grateful that I have had the chance to be in the workshop and have learnt such a beautiful work.

Stand bravely, gaze at audiences sincerely and speak out loudly. Then we can make it. We can be our own heroes, representing ourselves.

Written by: Cloris Lam