Chapter 16. SHUT UP AND LISTEN
Watch their mouth. Hear the words. Hear their tonality.
While in a conversation with someone, if you could even call it a conversation, it usually felt like a one way monologue with my occasional few words thrown in there, I was never focused on what they were saying. What you need to do is shut the f*ck up and listen to what they say, and focus on their words, and think about what they're saying.
You gotta do whatever it takes. So I'm gonna give you some gold here, my friend. To not think about your speech, good or bad. Because if you have good speech, and if you're fluent, I promise you, I've done this a thousand times, but like the moment you think about your good speech, it's all f*cking over. It's done.
You're future panicking, or stressed, or filled with doubt and fear in the conversation, and when it's time for you to speak, you don't know what to say. That's what I think it is.
When you're talking to a person, as a stranger, the first thing is, don't think about what you're going to say while they talk. When you stutter, that's all you think about. You start to think immediately about what you're going to say next. How you can say it, what words you can say, and what words you cannot say. Am I right? At least for me, I was barely being present. Which means I wasn't really thinking about what they were saying and just enjoying the convo. I was always figuring out what's next, or what am I gonna have to say next.
It gave my mind something to think about while the other person talks.
So my best tip there is, it's going to sound weird. It's not a sexual thing, but it's a fluency thing. Stare at their mouth. Whoever you're talking to, guy, girl, stare at their mouth. Again, not sexual. For fluency. Now why? It's giving your mind something to do. Because when I started to talk to strangers and gain fluency, I had to figure out the same thing. I
stared at their mouth, and it helped me to not obsessively think about what I was going to say next, and kind of break the cycle that we just spoke about.
Staring at their mouth, it was a great crutch while I learned things. Then I learned how to look them in the eyes and talk. But the first thing I did was the mouth, because it got me away from thinking. It was breaking the stuttering mental thought cycle. I mean, the stutter was still there, but it started to at least give me a better shot at better conversation, at a chance at fluency in that convo. I probably did that for like a year and a half while I was trying to figure out stuff.
Watch their mouth. Hear the words. Hear their tonality. Watch their mouth, stay present. Learning how to stay present just means, like, to concentrate on, like, what they say. To fight the pattern that you've done, which is habitually tune out, to essentially not listen to them, and start immediately pre-planning what we will say next based on what words we think we can say.
Staring at people's mouths reduces stuttering and improves your speech, Craig?
No, no, no. It does not reduce stuttering. Okay? I did not say that. What I said was it gave my mind something to think about while the other person talks. Because right now, if you talk to a stranger, when the stranger talks, the stutterer's mind starts thinking about what they're going to say next. What words they can say, what words they can't say. That's what happens in their head while the stranger talks. I had to earn that right. For me, there's no one who granted it. I just had to figure it out. First their mouth. Sure, you could use looking at their eyes. But like, that was what I could do. That's where my confidence was. That's where my level was.
Learning how to stand in the pocket
What you can do is look at their mouth move while they talk. That's a way how to focus your brain. Away from thinking your sh*tty future thoughts about stuttering, which is natural, right? Because I did that. You'll try to focus on their words, which means listen. Don't pre-think what you're going to say.
"I always try to end the conversation as quickly as possible. Most of the time I'm planning my exit." What you're doing, my friend, is learning how to have a conversation, and how to stand in the pocket, in the sense of like a quarterback, where there's like an opponent who's rushing to tackle him, and he stands there and throws, with these big guys, 300 pound guys, trying to tackle him. It's that sense of learning how to stand there. In the pocket. Where it's been nervous before, and just stand there. All of these tricks are things that I did when I did not know what else to do, to not think about this. They helped me.
In the real world, there's nothing to control, because it's all unpredictable. That's the magic. But you can ride this wave of being present, this wave of not planning. It's scary, but that's where the real special work happens.