Welcome back to the Achiever’s Corner!

This week, I'm sharing a personal update that I know will be both interesting and insightful for you

My 3 month journey towards becoming the Division Director for Toastmasters in the North of England reached a successful milestone last Saturday.

I'm keen to share the goal-setting steps involved, as they underscore practical strategies for reaching ambitious goals.

What’s Toastmasters?

If you’re reading this, and not sure. It’s NOT a Cult.

Simply put, it’s this. I’ve been a member of a club called Sheffield Speakers for about three and a half years.

What’s a Division Director?

There are fantastic leadership opportunities as a member, within your club, your Area and all the way up to World HQ. This is a pyramid that summarise the leadership ‘hierarchy’.

A Division Director’s role is to ensure that the clubs in the division achieve its mission (and fulfils its responsibilities to members.

In my Division, there are 19 clubs and 428 members. So, not a small job!

For the past three months in pursuit of this goal, I’ve:

i) Attended interview training ✅

ii) Been interviewed privately for my nomination (just to be accepted) ✅

iii) Reached out to new people in the District to understand the role better ✅

iv) Been Interviewed publicly for 6 minutes (called a candidate showcase)

v) Given a speech in front of the ~100 strong voting Committee for between 1 & 2 minutes.

I’ve put a tick next to the ones I knew or felt I could do. That means that 4 & 5 really needed some goal setting work. So, how did I tackle these more daunting steps?

The Code

You might remember me mentioning visualisation before..

It’s definitely one of those words at risk of becoming a buzz word in the personal development space.

It doesn’t need to be. Let’s normalise it.

In the 30 days leading up to the Division Director candidate showcase and the speech, I used three specific types of visualisation that I learned from Maya Raichoora's book, ‘Visualisation’.

Maya Raichoora's book, ‘Visualisation,’ is fantastic!

She introduces a wealth of visualisation techniques, many of which were new to me.

The fact that she also appreciates Robin Sharma and even featured him on the cover suggests she's really onto something.

Of the many techniques in her book, these three resonated most with me:

I selected these 3 after trying a range of them. These ones are just the ones that seemed to help me most.

My Batman Effect

I felt that I needed to become the best version of myself. I called this ‘True Dan’ and felt that these were the qualities I needed to fully express during the showcase and my speech to achieve my goal.

Outcome Effect

With the “Outcome” visualisation, the key was to see myself as those “True Dan” qualities in both the candidate showcase and the speech.

One concrete example of this was that when I introduced myself, I pictured myself waving with a grin to the audience to say hello.

The reason for this is that a lot of Toastmasters are very formal with their greetings, I wanted to be the opposite of that, injecting some warmth and approachability.

I did exactly this, and it worked both times, getting a laugh out of the audience on both occasions.

Process Effect

The "Process Effect" for me involved identifying the necessary actions to achieve the "Outcome" and embody my "True Dan" values.

This included thorough preparation of my speech and the "Opening Statement."

I carefully wrote them out, using bold text to highlight key words for impact. The final step was the straightforward act of giving the speech and opening statement.

The Result

So, there you have it. You're reading the newsletter of a newly elected Division Director! In other words, this approach worked.

The key takeaways for your own goal planning? Remember to:

• Picture the person you need to become.

• Actively practice seeing yourself embodying those qualities.

• Visualise yourself taking the necessary steps.

This isn't just for big, public-facing goals like this one. Imagine using this before a challenging meeting at work or a sensitive conversation with a friend.

My challenge to you: How can you apply this method in your own life this week?

If you found this helpful, please subscribe or share it with someone who might benefit.

Keep those visualisations coming!