Chapter 6. THE JUNGLE
You See Me Now, but When I Was Working on My Speech, I Was Not Here
I stuttered badly from ages 7 to 21, and then, at age 21, the 10 year journey started. 24 years of stuttering of some kind.
I swore to myself that one day I'd beat the sh*t and overcome the stuttering, no matter what it took.
I tested the results in the real world.
See, when I did not find help in the stuttering world, I went outside of it. What I did is I went into the self help world, and I started to read all I could. Then the biggest key was not just I read this book, right, and I applied it. I figured out how to apply it, but I tested the results in the real world.
Always practicing. Always.
I used to live in a condo for 5 years. Always practicing. Always. Because I learned how to have confidence, because I went out a thousand nights or days and talked to people. I'm not trying to pick up girls, I'm trying to practice fluency.
I had to work on mind and beliefs, and a bunch of things in that realm, including the way I thought of myself, identity. Once I went out into the field to do what someone might call exposure therapy, which I would not, I had a plan. A plan of how I would talk, of how to engage in conversation. I still sucked at first. You know, to work really, really hard for a long time to become great. These tools, by the way, are stuff that I borrowed from non-stutterers from a long time ago, or things that I've adapted. It's not breathing techniques. It's not easy onsets. It's more mindset. That, from my own experience, which is all I can say on my journey. The mindset type of tools, again, might sound simple, but they're not. They were more sustainable for good fluency in the real world. Because at work, at school, I was surprised, my boss said something, I had a call, I got nervous. All of these times, along the way,
I failed. When I say failed, my fluency wasn't good, or the tools weren't working. I had to learn from all of this experience. So the tools that I created, just for myself.
The first time I came out, I felt scared as sh*t practicing. The more you come out, the more you feel comfortable. We have to work up to this. Because before I got this good, I used to think just going out and talking to strangers was like one big world that I did not know. But when I was working on it, when I was practicing, when I was grinding away, it was a different story.
The real gold for me was found in the classics
So there's no judgment for me how long it takes you. It took me 10 years to go from where you are to where I am now. Of course, if I knew all the sh*t, I could have saved a lot of time, because I had to find it all. But no judgment for however long it takes, and there's no judgment if you choose to stay where you are, because it's all personal. I treated it like it was the most important thing to work on. Because it was to me. I filled my head with positivity daily. Social media posts, books, podcasts, blogs. I obsessively thought about how great my life would be when I finally stuttered less.
I took 10 years. 10 years of learning old self-help from the 20s and 1930s and 40s, up through the 50s, 60s and the current stuff. The modern stuff, it's okay. The real gold for me was found in the classics, from the 40s through the 60s, really. Then I spent the years applying it. Going out on dates, applying for jobs, doing it at work, standing up in front of colleagues, calling people at work. All of these nonstop chances to work on my speech, test it, figure out what works and what did not.
Because I had to be in front of people. I had to do sh*t. I flew across the country for job stuff. That 10 years includes work presentations, standing up in front of stuff, all this stuff. So it includes hard stuff.
You see me now, but when I was working on my speech, I was not here.