A NEW WORLD

I have heard it said that the only constant in life is change.  The word change used to bring the most unnerving feeling of fear and uneasiness over me; so it’s ironic that change is the thing I’m most grateful for right now.  After months of anticipation, I have just completed my first week as a Georgia State Global Partners MBA student.  That is a drastic change for my life.  I used to look up from my desk and see nothing but a dead end, but now I wake up every day and see nothing but opportunity.  I now welcome change with open arms and embrace the fear that comes along with it.  Change is my best friend and greatest agitator.  Facing fear is never comfortable or easy however, it is necessary and this life changing experience is driving me to face many fears even when I want to run.  My new motto is; conquering life one fear at a time.

I suddenly find myself no longer hiding from the world but pushing myself to discover my true potential and deeply buried talent.  I get to do all this while traveling the world with a group of intelligent, talented, insightful, very diverse and encouraging people that I suspect will feel more like family than classmates by the end of this journey.  This experience feels nothing like graduate school but like a completely new world is opening up for me that I didn’t think existed for me.  I think the rest of my life has just begun.  Thank God for change!  

FROM BS TO MBA (Pun Intended)

I find myself in a rather rare position these days.  For years, I have been saying that a monumental breakthrough was coming in my life, but year after year passed and I found myself in same situations repeatedly.  I felt as if I was on hamster wheel just going in a perpetual circle and making no progress.  The word breakthrough began to hold no meaning for me except something to say on New Year’s Eve to describe what I hoped the coming year would bring.  The day I finally finished my undergraduate degree was an important milestone in my life and what I thought was the beginning of that big breakthrough that I had been talking about for years. However, not soon after it was as if I found myself back on that damn wheel going nowhere as fast as possible.  Now I find myself on the cusp of the greatest adventure of my life so far and I’m reluctant to even claim the victory that I have worked so hard to achieve.  Over the years I have developed what I call the “loser mentality” and what I realized is that I had become so accustomed to loss and disappointment that I don’t know how to respond to winning.  I spent a year trying to get into this unique and prestigious MBA program and it’s hard for me to even tell people about it. 

Today I find myself in a position of promise, unlimited potential, endless opportunity for success, and a chance to travel the world as few have the chance to.  Yet when people ask what I’m doing these days, my response is just “I’m going back to school, I just got accepted in to GA State’s MBA program.”  My response should be I just got accepted in GA State’s Global Partners MBA Program!  Which will take me to China, Brazil, France, Brussels and many places in between.  I got here by studying countless hours for the GMAT, learned enough Mandarin Chinese to pass a spoken language test, and made my way through one of the toughest interviews of my life.  But for some reason I can’t bring myself to say that and why?  Don’t judge for this, but I was watching Oprah’s finale episode and she was talking about the one thing that all of her guests had in common was the need for validation.  She went on to say that, everyone deserved the opportunity to have what they want out of life for the simple fact that they were alive.  I had never thought about life in those terms.  You mean just because I was born I deserve the opportunity to be happy and live the life that I want, who knew?!?  

From that day I began to ponder two things; validation, entitlement and how they are related.  What I came to realize and except is that God made who I am and for good reasons still mostly beyond my comprehension.  He gave me everything I needed to realize all of my dreams and so much more.  He didn’t create me to fit the standards of this world, but to be the man He envisioned I could become and anything or anyone who tells me different is a LIE!  Many times in my life I have felt entitled for expecting so much from myself and out of life; I believe that was mostly due to the fact that I felt I didn’t deserve to have what I wanted.  I felt that way because I thought I was inadequate and inferior.  What I now realize is that I do deserve to have what I want out of life and to live my dreams; and if I don’t then who does?  I also realize that it’s not out of a sense of entitlement to feel that way.  It is fueled by a drive to live up to the potential that I know is inside of me because if I let all the talent that I have been blessed with go to waste then I really will have proven myself inadequate .

My misconception of taking pride in my accomplishments versus boasting is one of the main reasons this is an even an issue for me.  All of my life I’ve felt the need to dumb myself down and that problem persists today.  Yesterday I read a daily inspirational message entitled “Don’t Downplay your Blessing”.  That message really put things into focus for me.  Take all of the hard work and effort I put into this endeavor out of the picture and what I realized is that I’m insulting God’s work by not acknowledging the results of all of His planning, which is the real reason why my future looks as bright as it does right now.  He orchestrated so many people and events so that I would meet the necessary people at the right time and show up at the right places when I needed to be there.  So how dare I not tell everyone about what He has done with my life.  It’s starting to really become clear that my life is about to soar to heights that I had always hoped but always doubted were possible.  In order to live this life I have to let go of fear, doubt, hesitation and embrace the man that God is molding me into.  It’s time to live the life that I want, be who I want to be, live life to the absolute fullest and keep pushing towards my dreams until they are my reality.  

SPEECHEASY: THE MIRACLE CURE??

CIC: Completely in Canal Model

Speech management has been a continuous pursuit of mine since the third grade.  I’ve had many rounds of speech therapy over the course of my life up until as recently as a few years ago.  That’s twenty grueling years of trying to control and management my own voice!  About four years ago I heard about this miracle device called SpeechEasy and after I saw what it did for the person that was using for the first time on Good Morning America I thought I had found my miracle.  But at that time I was already in speech therapy and making some progress so I decided to finish the sessions and hoped that I would finally be able to get a handle on my speech; making further research into the device or any other therapy unnecessary.  After about 10 sessions with a speech therapist and some hard work I had made some significant improvement.  However as a few years passed I witnessed my fluency deteriorate with every word I spoke.  All of the progress I had made was undone and it felt like my speech was worst than it had ever been.  I was defeated and I wallowed in it for a lot longer than I should have accepting that my speech would never improve.  I’m not sure how SpeechEasy popped up on my radar again but it did and I had hope again. I also had some major obstacles in front of me; the predominate one being the cost.  I was shown a price list during the initial evaluation and I was floored.  The device cost as much as my car!!!!!  This was not a decision to be taken lightly, but after experiencing the effectiveness of the device and evaluating what I had to gain by having it I decided to go for it.

But let me go back and explain what the SpeechEasy is and how it works.  At an early age I noticed that when I spoke in unison with others, such as reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, my stuttering was drastically diminished. That always puzzled and amazed me; I don’t why it didn’t occur to me to research it sooner.  Years later I found out that this is called the choral effect.  The secret of the SpeechEasy lies in this phenomenon.  The SpeechEasy resembles a hearing aid and one of its main components is a microphone that picks up the sound of the user’s voice feeding it back into the device.  The device then alters the pitch and frequency of the sound making the user think someone else is speaking in unison with them; there you have the choral effect only needing your own voice.  The SpeechEasy is quite a marvelous piece of technology and it took 7 months of persistence and research to finally lease the device.  The first 60 days is the trial period and if unsatisfied I would be able to get a full refund so I really had nothing to lose.  The speech pathologist really took the time to explain the realistic expectations of the device and the limitations taking away the guise of the miracle device.  I appreciated that honesty because it prepared me for what to expect when I received my SpeechEasy.  Once I got the device it really became clear that it's not a miracle cure; it is a tool to manage your speech and it requires a lot of hard work.  The tagline on the workbook I was given read “Where technology meets techniques” and it proved to be true.  In some cases using the device was effortless and in other situations it was a struggle.  Reading aloud and speaking one on one with another person in a quiet environment was not that much of issue but if the noise level got loud, the device was rendered useless since it amplifies all surrounding noises.  Sadly at the end of the 60 days I decided to return the device because I didn’t feel that range of use for the device for me was justified by the cost.  That's not to say the others won't be elated to pay $5,000 for this device and experience great results for a prolonged period of time, but it just feel I need to explore other options.

Despite the fact that the device didn’t completely meet my expectations, I still learned a lot from my time with the SpeechEasy.  I gained a new sense of hope for the improvement of my stuttering and I also realized that I’m in control  and I am not helpless against this impediment.  The techniques that I have learned over the years were also reinforced by this experience and I realized that they worked once so why can’t they work again.  Now I’m refocused on the tools and techniques that improved my fluency before and even trying some new approaches. I’ll talk more about that later. 

REDISCOVERING MY VOICE

Best Original Screenplay "The King's Speech"

David Seidler, writer of the King’s Speech, accepted his Oscar on behalf of stutterers throughout the world and proclaimed that we have a voice and we have been heard.  I know he certainly found his voice in a major way.  What he also did was inspire me to rediscover my voice and allow myself to be heard.  I feel that if he could confront his stuttering by telling the story of the man who inspired him as child and be bold enough to make an acceptance speech seen by the millions of people, I can take a small step to confront my stuttering.  The first thing I want people to understand is the impact a stutter can have on someone’s life.  Mr. Seidler made a point of asserting stutters have found a voice because that’s the most precious thing it can rob you of.  The worst part is that stutters can become so accustomed to silencing themselves that they might not fully comprehend the full extent of what they have really lost.  Stuttering has the ability to change a person’s life and identity.  Think about how much someone’s personality is based on how they communicate and interact with others.  Now factor in a condition that completely changes how a person communicates.  What you now have is a circumstance that could completely change how someone deals with the world and people around them.  If a person is verbally open, unafraid to speak their mind and engage with people, they are considered confident and outgoing.  A person who holds their head down and is reluctant to raise their voice is considered timid and introverted.  The impact that stuttering can have on someone’s personality can in turn have ramifications that touches every aspect of life including career choices, decisions to take risks, social life, relationships, and the very goals that a person sets for themselves.  My point is that having a stutter is much more than a mere annoyance; it is a life changing condition.  It instills so much fear, self-doubt, and anxiety in a person that it feels as if you’re being suffocated by your own voice sometimes.  If you have seen the King’s Speech you might have noticed that he approached an audience like a firing squad and a microphone as if it were a noose; that’s a very accurate representation of how a stutterer feels when forced to expose their voice.

Communication is one of those essentials of life that we greatly take for granted until something happens to inhibit our ability to use it.  Having to fight to use your voice everyday can get tiring and discouraging at times, but I don’t say this to solicit any pity because that is the last thing a stutterer wants.  I say it to give some insight into what it means to struggle with something that most people do effortlessly and clearing up some long-standing misconceptions is the first step.  Stuttering is not something that can be turned off like a light switch and even with intense speech therapy; it can still be a lifelong struggle to manage it.  Due to how little is known regarding the causes of stuttering, people tend take liberty to become experts and give simple suggestions to cure a complex condition.  Simply taking a breath before you speak, relaxing a little more or just spitting it out isn’t a cure for stuttering and no matter how much I wish it were, I don’t think it ever will be.  Even though it may be well intended, it’s rather insulting to the hard work and struggle a stutterer puts into managing their speech by implying that one simple action could have been the cure all along.  It also hints at the idea that a stutterer can stop at any time by putting a few simple actions into practice and that’s also incredibly false.  Like it or not most stutterers are burdened with this for the rest of our lives and the only thing we can do is to manage it to best of our ability and in the process of that retain the confidence to use our voices as we deem necessary.   

I’m 30 years old and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized how much of my voice and self-expression I had lost because of my impediment.  I was told that by choosing to silence my voice to avoid the embarrassment of my stutter, I had also unknowingly suppressed other things in myself.  I can vaguely remember when I decided the best way to handle my stuttering was to just shut up and hope that I wouldn’t have to speak at all.  However, in this world, communication is not an option and that was a terrible choice, but as a kid, it was the best decision I could make at the time.  Now after 20 years of locking away my voice and everything else of value I have to offer, I think it’s time to try something a different.  I see now that I have given this thing more power over my life than it ever should have had by being afraid to confront it openly and honestly.  I compare it to an old wound that is kept covered with a band-aid.  It may stay protected to certain extent and kept hidden as much as possible.  However, you still feel the pain of that wound and it is never allowed to heal because it can’t breathe.  I have kept my stutter and all the issues surrounding it so guarded for all these years that I allowed it to fester and infect so many areas of my life.  And even up until less than a year ago I couldn’t be approached about it without getting upset.  But no more of that!  It’s time to rip the bandage off expose the wounds and let them heal.  There is nothing I can do about the havoc I allowed my stuttering to wreak on my life so far, but I can take my power back now and reclaim my voice.  I hope I can even speak for others who aren’t yet ready to raise their voices.  In an interview David Seidler talked about his attitude towards his stuttering and how it allowed his overcome it at a young age.  His attitude was “If I have to stutter for the rest of my life then people are gonna bloody well have to listen to me!”  I think I will try that for a while and see how it suits me.