My Toastmasters Icebreaker Speech — Facing My Dark Side!

Would you like to read the transcript of Jerry Banfield Toastmasters icebreaker speech because you will discover his dark side and enjoy it?

My Toastmasters Icebreaker Speech — Facing My Dark Side!

Jerry Banfield is the speaker tonight at the Toastmasters meeting and we hope you will enjoy reading an edited transcript of his speech.

MC:

The speaker this evening is completing his icebreaker speech. He has a business online and intends to organize and inspire entrepreneurs in building businesses that raise human consciousness.

He discovered Toastmasters via John Hunter, and is grateful for the chance to introduce himself this evening.

Please help me welcome Jerry Banfield.

Jerry Banfield:

Thank you all for being here tonight. What a pleasure to have so many of you looking and paying attention to me. Man, I've been fantasizing about that since the first time I sat down in these chairs.

I'm like, I'm going to get up there and speak one day, and today I kept thinking about it and at one point I was making a salad and I thought, "I've been thinking all day about my speech, what I'm going to say. How many times have I thought about what somebody else might want to hear or what somebody else is going to say."

Damn, there goes that selfishness again.

Every time I kept thinking about, "All right, think about somebody else, think about somebody else."

I love that you made the topic "the shadow side" tonight because I'm very comfortable with my shadow side.

I'm a little too comfortable with my shadow side sometimes. I'll whip out the worst to me and just put it in a book and publish it, and then bring it to my AA meetings and have a whole bunch of great things, gossip going around.

That was a good time.

The dark side of me is destruction.

There's a part of me that loves destruction and pain, and my strengths are creativity and healing. Those are what I do really well and that balances out perfectly.

I love creating.

That's why I've made so many videos.

I try to help people live a better life and I have the experience to do that because of all the pain and suffering and destruction I've put myself through.

I'll give you an example.

In college, I decided I would be a criminal justice major. I was thinking, I want to understand what's wrong with me, and maybe if I figure out what's wrong with everybody else who's messed up, then I can kind of secretly figure myself out.

I made it difficult, the last year in college I smoked marijuana right before I wanted to apply to be a police officer, and naturally that didn't go well on applications.

Fortunately, Corrections was happy to have me as a corrections officer.

They didn't even ask about that.

In fact, I never even got in trouble coming into work drinking there and I got into the dark side real good from there.

I became a police officer after that, somehow passed a polygraph and by 2009 I was drinking very heavily off duty and doing many of the same things off duty I was arresting people for on duty, and it was splitting my soul.

I got to the point where I could hardly arrest somebody.

I pulled this lady over one night for drunk driving.

I could hardly arrest her because it just made me furious that she gets to go to jail, but me, I just don't get caught for stuff, and I can go do the same thing and I'm not going to get pulled over.

The other officer had to tell me, "You need to arrest her and take her to jail."

I almost cried and said, "This is just stupid. It's not fair."

When I got to be a police officer, my dark side kicked in and several times when I was drunk, I'd tried to shoot myself and fortunately my hand would not obey orders, it would not follow directions.

I said, "Pull the trigger."

And it's like, "Nope, I'm not doing that."

Thank God I reached out and I asked for help.

I told somebody that's where I was at. I told my father and the most pain I've heard in my life from my family is when I told my dad.

I called him up and said, "Dad, I tried to kill myself the other night and I still feel the same way and I'm going to get it right one of these nights."

Man, the pain just came out of him, he came to rescue me for my 25th birthday, and shortly after that I quit / lost my job and moved home.

I thought I was all better. I just needed a little bit of love, needed to get back in a good place, meet a good woman, get a better education, and I did all that.

I met my wife shortly after that, got a master's degree shortly after that, and I got myself in a good place, and I thought, "All right, my life's fixed" and the darkness just would not stop.

I kept drinking, I found myself in 2014 realizing, "If you drink again, this is what's going to happen. You're going to kill yourself and that's certain and you can't stop whether you want to or not."

That scared me because I knew I would change my mind and the darkness would come out and again.

I prayed to God for help, I said, "Please God, I'll do anything to stay sober."

One of the thoughts that came through my head was, "Well, going to one of those AA meetings might be a part of that anything you just offered."

I thought, "Well that doesn't sound too bad. I think I can do that."

That's where I got comfortable with my darkness, going to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I go every day for six years now.

I'm very comfortable with my darkness and that allows me to fully express my light and to love myself.

I have a miraculous life now. I have two children. I make videos on YouTube and teach courses. I do whatever I want. All that's not true. I help out other people all day every day.

I help my wife out, I help my kids out. I try to be of service and do something useful every day.

I've thought a lot when I speak, what can I say that will really make a difference for you?

I prayed before this, "God, please let me say something that will be useful to each person here who is listening tonight. Let me be an instrument of your peace and your service."

I've been as excited about this speech as some of you might have been in my head. I don't know what I'm going to say, but I realize what could possibly come out, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I'm grateful to be here with you tonight.

Thanks for listening to me.

If you would like to have Jerry Banfield speak at your event go to Jerrybanfield.com/contact/

I love you.

You’re awesome.

I appreciate the chance to serve you today and I will see you again soon.

Love,
Jerry Banfield

Edits from video transcript by Michel Gerard.

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://jerrybanfield.com/toastmasters-speech-dark-side/

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