I consider myself a successful person today, having achieved most of my dreams in life.
But 10 years back, I would not have even dreamed of reaching this far!!!
I also had my fair share of failures, disappointments, endless struggles laced with welcome wins, far and few in between; like any other successful person of today’s era.
But in addition to all that, I had to surmount one more problem, one which was ingrained within my DNA.
I was born with a speech disorder. I stammered incessantly, mostly in every syllable.
This story talks about how I conquered over this biggest weakness of mine to reach where I am today.
The Struggle Years
As far as I remember, I never really liked my early school days. Every day, I used to wake up with an unknown dread, a hard knot forming inside my stomach, thinking about yet another day to be passed in isolation and humiliation. I spoke to nobody. Nobody spoke to me.
It was not that I was shy or I was a Dumbo. In fact, the love for reading which I had cultivated from a very early age had made me far more knowledgeable than other students of my age. It was only the “fear of ridicule” over my speech that made me crave isolation over mingling with others.
Every time somebody completing the words “which I could not speak”, used to feel like a knife stabbed down my heart. Every time “somebody” asking me to “write” what “I was attempting to speak”, felt like a hammer shattering the remnants of my self-esteem.
My teachers were good no doubt. My fellow students supported me the best they could, I have no regrets or complaints. But what I used to hate was those “eyes” filled with pity towards my handicap. I loathed those eyes. They made me feel worthless, like a born failure. I knew, I was being kept away from many “prestigious school events” and “contests”. I swallowed all that “pain” in silence, without any protest. What could I have done, if the product itself is faulty?
Then one day, while I was attempting to start a daily journal, for penning in all my sorrows, I discovered that I have a flair for writing and it has the potential to be my biggest strength in the years to come.
My life changed drastically after my self-discovery. I began to write in school magazines, scripts for school plays. elocution contests, one-act dramas and even love letters for budding love birds!!! I finally managed to come out of my self-imposed exile of isolation and in the process gained a lot of “friends”, many of them being “friends for life.”.
My writing became my biggest asset and along with it, it brought back my self-esteem and the “respect” which I had been craving for so long from my fellow students. I soon became a sort of mini-celebrity with a bit of fan following. It was not that my speech disorder was forgotten; only the “pain” of the deficiency was obliterated by the surplus of my resounding success.
My Life, As on Today
I still stammer, but I have come in terms with it.I have learned to control the devil to be submissive to me and give it no chance to be a mental roadblock on my path to further successes.
My writing still serves me and serves me well. Only thing that has changed is that, nowadays I write in Medium publications, tech conferences and office magazines. The scale has changed but the passion is still there undiminished! My writing not only gave me a new lease of life but it also gave me the motivation, the impetus to fight and win over the biggest weakness of my life.
I, as a leader today, leading diverse teams across the world, might not have the powerful oratory skills of Winston Churchill, but can still say with pride that, I can at least stand outside the room as a writer, where Ernest Hemingway used to sit.!!
The One Lesson I learned
Life also provides us with the “antidote” for every disease, it inflicts on us. It is only up to us, how much we can dig deep within our unexplored reserves and find this antidote at the earliest. The scale of our success is directly proportional to how much we can leverage our existing strengths-the antidote we have. More we utilize our capabilities, the more is the success.