How to Give a Successful Icebreaker Speech

“We are the sum total of our expe­ri­ences. Those expe­ri­ences – be they pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive – make us the per­son we are, at any giv­en point in our lives. And, like a flow­ing riv­er, those same expe­ri­ences, and those yet to come, con­tin­ue to influ­ence and reshape the per­son we are, and the per­son we become. None of us are the same as we were yes­ter­day, nor will be tomor­row.”

I am Dhenn (Dhenn Mark Espir­i­tu) and

Like all of you, I am the sum total of my expe­ri­ences and tonight I would like to share some of those expe­ri­ences that great­ly shaped for who am I right now.

1. First, I will start with my par­ents. My mom nev­er failed to remind us of the impor­tant things we need in life. I still remem­ber when I was young, when my mom was mad at us, she repeat­ed­ly remind­ing us that “what if tomor­row we die? Who will take care of your sib­lings? Who will pre­pare the meal for you? Who will clean the house? Who will clean the back­yard?”

And so as a young man who doesn’t ful­ly under­stand why we need to learn it, every night I pray to God, “Lord, make my par­ents live longer because I love them so much”.

My dad was not usu­al­ly at home because he needs to stay in the camp to ful­fill his duty as a sol­dier.

I grew up as an intro­vert, I don’t like being with many peo­ple as much as I can, I don’t care if I don’t have friends but it changed the time I messed up, almost gave up that one day I was just roam­ing around a mall near to our home­town, and entered a large room that was full of hap­py peo­ple, and that place re-shaped and change the course of my entire life.

2. Sec­ond, church because I’m a Chris­t­ian. Remem­ber the room that was full of hap­py peo­ple? That was the church. I don’t like to sound like reli­gious or preachy about here. But the church has become my sec­ond home and my sec­ond fam­i­ly, because when the time I messed up, I almost gave up, that’s when God showed up. In church, I learned every­thing I need­ed to know about life, about my pur­pose, about my sig­nif­i­cance and my exis­tence. They teach me that the rela­tion­ship with God and peo­ple is all that mat­ters.

In church, I expe­ri­enced mis­sion trips that entire­ly changed my life, approach­ing locals from dif­fer­ent nations and build­ing rela­tion­ships with them for two weeks. It was tru­ly life chang­ing. I nev­er envi­sioned myself to becom­ing a mis­sion­ary per­haps because of fear but then after my mis­sion trip in Myan­mar last 2014, it was fol­lowed by anoth­er mis­sion trips in Thai­land in the year 2015 and Chi­na just this year.

What else has shaped who I am?

3. Books! I used to hate books. Men­tion­ing the text­books we car­ried in our bags for years, they are sim­ply bor­ing. But my hatred for books doesn’t last for a long time. My men­tors in church taught me the impor­tance of read­ing books, a lot of books. I only start­ed read­ing books at the age of 22, since then I start­ed to have an insa­tiable thirst for knowl­edge and under­stand­ing. And now I con­sid­er myself as a book­worm because the smell of book for me is addict­ing and I love to col­lect books that I’ve read and dream­ing myself one day to have my own library at home.

Books have shaped my mind and change my per­spec­tive towards life. I’ve become to be more opti­mistic than pes­simistic.

4. last­ly, is Hewlett-Packard Enter­prise, I’ve been work­ing with HPE for 3 and a half years already, first as a Lev­el 2 Sup­port and just this year in my new role as an Automa­tion Engi­neer. In the past, I’ve worked with two dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies both are great but in HPE, I did not only grow pro­fes­sion­al­ly but also per­son­al­ly. What I love about HPE was its cul­ture. The cul­ture of empow­er­ing peo­ple to achieve both their career and per­son­al goals. Plus HPE is like a cam­pus, employ­ees have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join dif­fer­ent clubs and ini­tia­tives being offered.

In HPE I also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join the toast­mas­ters. I joined toast­mas­ters because my men­tor influ­enced me to join. She is an author, she told me that she was like me when she was just start­ed, intro­vert, and she shared how she cried in front of the audi­ence dur­ing her first speech. Because of that, I searched google about the club. Then a col­league told me that she is a mem­ber of toast­mas­ters, so I joined meet­ings not just once but thrice as a guest than final­ly signed up as a mem­ber. And I am look­ing for­ward to devel­op­ing my speak­ing and lead­er­ship skills in this club.

And that how I was shaped as a per­son, speak­ing in front of you.

Going back to my point ear­li­er, we are the sum total of our expe­ri­ences, be they pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, they bring out the best or worst in us and make us the per­son who we are today and what we will be in the future.