No. I worked on my mind and I did a lot of practice in the real world. In one conversation, I described it as fifty percent in the mind and fifty percent practice. That was how I explained the work I had done.
There was a lot inside each part. The mental work was hard. So was learning to feel comfortable talking with people in public. It took a long time.
What else did I have to work on?
In my dictated notes, I corrected the idea that simply changing my beliefs would fix my stutter. I had also built up fear around speaking and introducing myself. I said that had to be addressed too, and that it took time.
I had spent years worrying, stressing, and thinking about my speech. Changing the way I thought about myself was part of the work. So was learning to be in the situations where I wanted to talk.
Positive self-talk had to go with something I could do
When I explained positive self-talk, I said what worked for me was having that alongside new tools and speaking practice. I had to go out and use what I was learning.
I took ideas into classrooms, work, phone calls and conversations. I tried and refined them. I failed more often than I succeeded while I was figuring it out.
What gave me something to believe?
One thing was the commitment itself. I got happier when I committed to working on my speech. That didn't mean I had good speech yet. It meant I had promised myself I would put the time in.
Another was a small success that had actually happened. I ask people to remember one of those moments and the positive thing they said to themselves afterward. I wanted something to be excited about and build on.
I was working on the thoughts I kept bringing into speaking, and I was practicing speaking. Both are in the account I have given of what changed my life.
What did I actually do with a written statement?
In a group call, I put a written statement in the chat and talked about affirming what I wanted: speaking confidently. I told the person, “Change it.” It was one thing I had used among a lot of things.
When he asked what I did with it, I said, “I would write it down 20 times a day, but I'd say it in my head probably a hundred.” That was how I described my own repetition. I wanted to work on beliefs I had carried for years.
In the same conversation, I also described talking to one stranger a day while I still stuttered. The written work and the speaking practice were both in the account I gave him.
Words I actually suggested in another group call
In a different group conversation, I offered a thought to somebody who didn't yet believe they could have confidence:
Craig: if you on the call don't believe in yourself enough, know that I believe in you. I believe in you. I believe that you can have confidence.
Craig: And that's a thought, if I was you, I would say to myself, I can have confidence. Confidence is possible.
A participant could say the words and still not believe them
LBZ described another difficulty. During the call, he was trying to think of himself as fluent. He could form the thought. He also noticed he didn't believe it.
LBZ: I can have those thoughts. Like it's there. Like, if I want to, um, I can think it, but I, but I also noticed that I don't actually believe it.
I answered through the way I understood my own beliefs: years of stuttering and memories of embarrassment had reinforced them. Telling myself something once wasn't the whole change I was trying to make. That was my explanation to him of why the belief could feel different from the sentence he could think.