Here is my first speech as a Burrard Toastmaster (the Ice Breaker). Titled “Recipe for Happiness”, props to Jess for help on the title (and editing of course)!

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Good evening fellow toastmasters and most welcome guests,

If you were to ask anyone who knows me to describe me in one word, I have no doubts that word would be “happy”. I find that being overly cheerful comes quite naturally to me, and I’ve never really known anything different. Some people might say it’s because I haven’t been jaded yet or I haven’t been through enough hardships to be bitter about life and its many challenges. However I honestly don’t think it has much to do with that. What I’d like to share with you are the things that keep me so upbeat and cheerful every single day.

Firstly, I have a great many interests and dreams; as most people do. The joy in each of my interests in some form ultimately finds me in some way or another each day. Whether it be listening to the tunes from my favourite musical, Hairspray, or uncovering a great piece of design which often comes from a certain colleague or old classmates. It doesn’t stop there either, I find simple happiness just from dreaming about the travels I hope to have one day, to experience the world I haven’t had a chance to see yet. It all begins when I wake up in the morning to my favourite radio DJ’s, with their upbeat tunes, and their silly banter, I can wake up happy, and then be ready to start my day.

I find that work keeps me happy too. To some, this might seem crazy. Yes, work makes me happy. What a notion, I know! Even back in the day when I used to be the opening manager of McDonald’s, getting up at 4:30am to go and make eggs and get yelled at in the drive-thru. The truth is, being cranky and working at McDonalds at 5am doesn’t really get you anywhere. So I found ways to keep me happy – singing and dancing while you’re making Egg McMuffins helps A LOT, although it does get you some weird looks.

Now, I work as a Production Assistant, for a web development company, and it doesn’t require singing and dancing to keep me happy. I just simply love what I do and I love the people that I work with; I see something amazing in each of them, just the chemistry that we have together is what makes me happy. In all honesty, even though work is tiring, I don’t know what I would do with myself in all that free time or if I would be nearly as happy without being able to go to work everyday and see all the people I enjoy spending time with.

Another thing that makes me happy is just singing and dancing in general, neither of which I do well, I might add. A lot of people don’t know this about me, but when I’m walking to and from work, I mouth the words to my favourite tunes and even bust a move once in a while, especially if I’m walking up Lonsdale Ave from the Seabus. Yeah, strangers probably think I’m weird (and you probably do too), but it makes me happy and that’s all that matters. Singing isn’t something I do out loud in public very often, however I love to sing, I just wouldn’t subject other people to the painful sound of my voice. Although I’m probably sure that people in my apartment building have heard me belting it at least once or twice to the melody of “You Can’t Stop the Beat”.

There’s a phrase I often use with my friends as we get older. Have you ever heard of being “maturely immature”? As we get older, we get more and more mature, or as some people put it, more serious. Serious? I just don’t do serious… unless it’s absolutely necessary. Sometimes to remember that not all things have to be taken so seriously we need to have our childlike immature moments. This is how I describe “maturely immature”, and it’s what I tend to be a lot. If something makes you feel like you wanna laugh, why hold it back? As some others say, “Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional.”

There are so many factors in my day to day life that keep me cheerful, so many, in fact that I can’t begin to think of all of them. Maybe, most of all, its just that I enjoy being happy and being a positive happy influence on the people around me. I hope that today, not only have you learned a few crazy things about me, but that you have also been able to take a piece of my happiness and add it into the recipe that is your life, to make the flavor just that much better.

And remember, it will always take more muscles to frown, than it does to smile.

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