Confidence was something I learned. One of the first connections I made was with the music I played when I ran or worked out. I already knew that a song could make me feel more alive and willing to push myself. I started bringing that into how I prepared to speak.
A lot of the work I did was alone. On the drive somewhere, I could spend ten or twenty minutes thinking about embarrassing moments and imagining the next one. Music gave me something different to arrive with.
It didn't fix my stutter alone. I said that plainly. It gave me a better chance, in my experience, because I felt less intimidated and a little more confident when I got there.
What did that look like before an ordinary errand?
Before the grocery-store demonstration, I explained what I did before leaving the house. I read something I liked out loud. I wanted to hear some confidence in my voice and get into the material.
I also remembered a time when my speech had been a little better. It did not have to be perfect speech. I wanted to recall how that small experience felt. Then I played music on the way there that helped change my emotional state.
Those were things I could do before I walked in. I still had to speak to someone.
Then there was a real person in front of me
Inside the store, a man was looking at cookies. I commented about them, talked about how I used to eat junk food and asked about him. He told me he was diabetic and couldn't touch it. I said, “But you still look at it. Smart.”
That was a short, ordinary exchange. My preparation did not give me his answer ahead of time. It was how I was trying to put myself in a better position to notice the opening and take part.
I also used smaller conversations before a harder setting
At the busy market, the conversations on camera weren't my first ones that day. I had already chatted with people on the way from where I parked. I described that because I wanted to get going before stepping into the busiest part.
I used the same idea when talking about going out at night. I might already have been talking around town or doing work in a coffee shop. I wasn't always coming straight from being alone on the couch into a room full of people.
I call that building momentum. I build it through the little interactions, the music and what I am thinking about before I go in.
How confident did I have to feel?
I've described feeling two inches tall around someone with authority. What I wanted was to feel less intimidated. I didn't always need to go from feeling tiny to feeling ten feet tall in one move. A little difference gave me something to work with.
I still felt scared when I volunteered first in the yoga-class introductions. That is part of the story. Using my voice while nervous was something I learned through practice, not something that waited until every bit of fear was gone.
The amount of preparation changed as I got better. I later used the more deliberate preparation mainly before the biggest calls. I am describing things I learned and used at different stages of my own work, including the smaller steps that helped me start.