ETMC changed my mindset

It has been more than three years since I joined ETMC. I found that our club changed a lot compared with what it was three years ago. Our president changed, our officers changed, many fresh guys joined in while some guys left due to different reasons. For me, I am still here, an old face keeps boring you in the regular meeting, of course, including this time. “Why do you keep staying in this club Lance?” The answer is ETMC. It helped me and changed my mindset and let me change from inactive status to reactive status, and now being active.

First state: inactive. From year 2014 to 2015. The first two years after I joined ETMC. I attended the regular meeting every two months, too few, right? Much worse was I did not deliver any CC speech. Perhaps you have got the answer why I named it inactive. At that time, my mindset was ETMC was an international English club, and my purpose was to practice my oral English. (Perhaps some guys here today have the similar willing as what I thought at that time) After I attended the meeting two times, I found that the meeting was out of my expectation. I was looking for a pure English environment but it seemed that most of our members didn’t have this trait. The strange thing was someone who didn’t say fluent English could get the best speaker. It was crazy, I felt a little sad. I thought I could be the best one if I presented on the stage. With this mindset, I rarely attended the meeting in the next days. I narrowed my mind in oral English and forget the important things that I could learn more about the skills of communication and leadership. In return, I didn’t get much benefit from our club. The only lucky thing was I was an easily persuaded person and when renewal season came, our VPM successfully convinced me to stay in our club.

Second state: reactive. In the year 2016. I began to change myself somehow. I was not staying in the inactive status, upgraded to reactive. What did reactive mean? That was I didn’t register and attend a regular meeting actively. However, if someone else talked with me and encouraged me to attend, I would like to do. Perhaps in their mind, I acted like the animal koala, needed to be pushed frequently to go ahead. At that time, there were many active members, such as WQ, Charles. But I couldn’t understand why they were so passionate to put energy in regular meeting frequently, what drove them to go ahead. It was a question for me. My mentor, champion Weiqiang, was good at public speaking, but failed in pushing me to deliver my CC1 speech. The better thing compared with the first inactive state was I seldom rejected to attend the meeting and began to think why I still stayed in this club. I found some guys had strength in presentation skills and they were confident on the stage, I wanted to own this trait. I began to change my mindset. The attendance for a regular meeting changed to every two weeks. When the renewal season came, I decided to continue.

Third state: active. In the year 2017. Our club organized an activity to reselect mentor, a good opportunity to choose your favorite mentor, right? I thought this time I should select someone who can help me somehow and I wanted to give up the elder Wang Laoshi. During the 2 minutes presentation I said that I was preparing PMI certification and finally selected Lillian as my mentor because she was a project manager who could help me. By chance, our former president Xinsi captured my information. After the meeting, he sent me a lot of materials about how to prepare the PMI examination. Our VPE Shen also shared me some training videos freely. I was shocked. I never told this request to them but they stretched out their hands to help me. This time, I thought carefully, why they were willing to help me? Should I do something for our club? Later when Xinsi found me to act as CO-SAA because SAA Bruce travelled to Sweden for work, I promised her. During the next several months, acting as a SAA, I needed to arrange the meeting room and greeted our guests. I began to build my responsibility to server our clubs and extended to serve my family. I could feel that our club officers’ responsibility to server us and their hard contribution behind it. I learn to build. In the next season, I tried a new role as VPE and now as a VPM. To practice my communications and leadership skills, except serving others. Even through it took some of my extra time and energy, but I enjoyed this experience. I could feel that I am improving compared with what I was three year ago.

Dear fellow members, have you got my point on what changed my mindset? Yes, that is ETMC. It never gave up me and changed my attitude. From inactive to reactive, and being active. I am changing. Have you got benefit from our club? If no, trying more, I believe you will find the answer sooner or later.

-  one speech targeting to practice the project "research your topic" by 木头人