## Chapter 11. THERE AIN'T NO SCRIPT Alright, let's be real. Let's face the facts. When you stutter, like you do, and I did, we want to control it, to where we're always thinking, what are they going to say? What can I say next? What words can I not say? What do I have to avoid? Prethinking equals pre-planning. Learning to stop prethinking your words and start speaking spontaneously. No, that does not mean that you have no idea what you're going to say. But what it does mean is you don't ahead of time think about the actual words you're going to say. Okay, I'm going to talk to Tom at 2 o'clock. Here's what I'm going to say. He's going to ask me this question. Here's how I'm going to respond. I can't say that word. What are all of those head games? You got to learn how to stop. "90 percent of my social interactions I have to pre-plan. I would be thinking about 3 or 4 things that I can rehearse in my head quickly, and the entire time while I'm rehearsing, I don't really listen to what they're saying. Rehearsing in my head does not lead to speaking more fluidly. It just causes me to waste up space in my head." Then, "I still go back to rehearsing thinking that it'll be different the next time." I agree. I agree so much, my friend. ## Do I have ideas of what I'm going to talk about? Yes. Let me tell you, I wish I learned this years ago before I figured it out. Because that spontaneous speech, that's where the gold is. The spontaneous talking, that's where the flow is. What you hear from me is all freestyle. Do I have ideas of what I'm going to talk about? Yes. Do I write a few things down? Yeah. But a few words. I don't write this whole script down, right? There ain't no script. I mean, like I said, right? I'm smart enough, but I'm no genius. ## That control factor is something that I learned to let go slowly. But there's a fear factor that we got to discuss, and this is real. That is, it takes courage, or balls, or guts, to stand in there and not pre-plan your sh*t when you stutter. Because you got to trust that you'll be able to find the words spontaneously. It's like taking a jump and believing you will catch yourself. That control factor is something that I learned to let go slowly. You're going to need to face the choice to let that go as well. Just ride with the flow. I got to be straight, right, and say I failed a lot of times. There's a ton of times when I was practicing this, when I would be in spontaneous talks and someone would say something and I wasn't quick enough, or I blocked. So there is a lot of practicing to figure out how this works for you. But in my opinion, this is one of the most sustainable ways of how to beat your stutter, and how to talk without pre-scripting your words. "I've tried the spontaneous thing that you've been telling me in the past few days, and it's helped me a lot, man, I can't lie. It was a big change for me." What you're doing now, all of the pre-planning, all of the pre-scripting, all of the fear, that sh*t isn't working for you now. It didn't work for me too, so I dropped it. Because what's not working can't help us, so we got to change that. It'll take time to undo the years of bad practice habits that you've been doing.