## Chapter 5. SPAIN ## I had a good breakthrough temporarily. The next turning point, the real big one, was when I studied abroad in Spain. I went to Valencia, Spain. I lived on a college campus, and I roomed with a couple of friends who I met on this trip. The whole thing about why it ties into stuttering is very simple. My thought pattern used to be obsessively thinking about stuttering, right? All my bad memories would play. I would pre-plan, which means pre-failing, right? I would pre-plan all what I was going to say, and pre-scripted, and all of that sh*t. The thing about Spain for me was, look, I've said I'm not a genius, right? I took Spanish one twice. That's how bad my Spanish was. For me, going into Spain, I had to work very hard to speak Spanish. So my brain was focusing full time on absorbing it, hearing it, translating it, trying to just go out with girls and speak Spanish, right? But when I would call my friends back home, my speech was flawless. It was impressively flawless. That was my first big sign that beating a stutter was in the mind. ## A glimpse of absolute fluency When I was 21 I came back from this trip, and I started to, like, I was like, what the hell happened there? Because the fluency that I gained there, it didn't translate long term. But I had a good breakthrough temporarily. So I was wondering why. If you're anything like me, that pisses you off, makes you mad, you get frustrated, because you know you can do better. Because you've had moments or times in your life where you were fluent, because you've had confidence, or more confidence than you have now at some point, and then you just can't be consistent, right? Where you just can't, hey, I had good speech this morning, I need to have good speech again when I make this phone call. It's impossible to rely on. It was like when I went to Spain. I caught glimpses, right? The moment I saw it, it was like, aha. Then things just click from there. I had no idea how. I just caught a glimpse of absolute fluency, and I was totally obsessed with figuring out how to have it always. It took me 10 years from when I first caught a glimpse of what it would be like to beat stuttering, to when I learned how to.