My thoughts on stammering

My Name is Nikhil Iyer. Right from the age of 10 yrs, I have been stammering. But instead of looking at it as a problem we need to treat stammering as our friend and move on with it which will remove the fear we are facing because of stammering. I joined TISA at the end of December-2014, and learned the value of acceptance. It’s very difficult to accept yourself and even if we have accepted ourselves 70%, we are successful. I have seen many different kind of people in my life. We have so many different languages in our country. Each language follows different culture and different traditions. Sometimes some people are good in English, some in Hindi, some in both,
some people in their regional language. If we are talking with people who do not understand a particular language we take the help of a translator. but everywhere what we follow is communication. Communication is the most important thing. It could be silent or it could be with some action or in a simple way. It differs from person to person.

I have seen even normal people stammering when they are too excited or when they talk very fast. Sometimes the thoughts travel too fast in our mind and when we try to speak out the same, there are minute interruptions. For example, Arnab Goswami when he was talking with 10 people at a time, he had minute speech interrupions. It is because our mind works faster and there are too many thoughts flowing through our mind. What i believe is that If we are able to convey what we want we have succeeded. I take 5 seconds or 10 seconds more, but at the end of the day i have succeeded in speaking what i wanted. That is the most important thing. What is important is what we talk
and not how we talk. What we speak and not How we speak. i ALWAYS SAY Quality is more important than Quantity. The most important thing is to speak the content out.
The other person who is listening to us should have the patience to hear us. If he doesn’t have patience that is his problem and not our problem. So the first important thing is to
to remove the remove the fear that we are going through.

5 Important Points that I believe-

1) Focus on your communication and not on Fluency. If your communication is good, fluency will automatically come in your way.
2) What we speak that is more important and not how we speak. Even if you take 5 to 10 seconds more, its absolutely fine.
3) Remove the thought of stammering and treat stammering as your friend, not as your enemy. Your friend will always help you at every moment. So, the conclusion is that your stammering will help you to overcome it if you accept it as your friend
4) Never think what others think about you. Accept yourself as you are. We cannot change ourself in a day or two. To change yourself we need to accept ourself.
5) You ARE not the only person who stammer. Every person in the earth has stammering. Sometimes in a small way or sometimes in a big way.

The hurdles which come in our way are fear, negative-thinking, over-excitement, impatience, etc and we can overcome these hurdles with the help of strength, positive-vibes and patience.

Sabr ka phal meetha hota hai, us sabr ko paane ke liye sabse zaroori cheez hai Shamta aur us shamta ke liye hamein apne aapko sweekar karna hoga.

We always focus on things that we don’t have. If we look at the world with a different eyes there are so many beautiful things around us which give us a reason to smile and to be happy. Around 6 months ago after the SHG meet we went to a nearby ground to speak with people about stammering and to know their opinion. At that time we came across a group who had come to the ground to collect food-grains for Diwali. They all were blind. We spoke with one boy Vishal who was blind. For him the entire world was dark. He cannot see anything. He could only feel things. Still we went to him and spoke to him. When we spoke, he spoke so freely. He was standing out of the queue and
we caught his hands and we helped him to accompany his friends. What we realized after this is that In our life we always complain and focus on things that we don’t have or we are greedy to have more and more. We fight for property, bank-balance, car and all other materialistic things. But we never look at the life that we are living.

The lesson is that think about the present. We keep thinking about the future and the past so much that we forget the present. We have so many reasons to cheer for which God has given us. We need to forget Stammering and move on. The only way is to accept yourself as you are. Its not an easy process. It will take a long period, but if we look at the world, in this globe no-one is perfect. We have 5 fingers in each hand, but all their sizes and lengths are differnt. Same way in life, rich or poor, tall or short, all have problems. Instead of complaining about it, make that problem your friend and then deal with it. It will give you a reason to smile.

There are so many hindi songs which have given me some good lessons. 2 lines which i remember-

1) Kal Ki Na Karo Baat, Baat Karo Aaj Ki.
2) Jo Thokar Na Khaaye Nahi Jeet Uski, Jo Gir Ke Sambhal Jaaye Hai Jeet Uski.

– Nikhil Iyer