Tips for Being You

Another speaker I listened to this past week talked about his struggle to overcome a stutter. When he was a kid, he suffered from severe anxiety because of the stutter. This anxiety carried over into his adulthood as well. He told about how he spent an entire year as a young adult pretending to be deaf and mute, writing notes for what he needed. The message in his story was that the world needs to know exactly who you are. There is someone out there who will be inspired by your story, who will change their own life because you demonstrated a positive change in yours.

People both cried and cheered for this guy. They cried because they could relate to the struggle of worrying intensely about what others thought of them. They, too, had pretended to be something they were not just to give themselves a break from the stress. They cheered because he stood in front of a room of hundreds of people, and through his stutter, he gave an amazing and moving speech.

The lessons I got on how to be a better version of myself were…

1. Face your challenges head on. They are there to grow you, to expand your reach, to develop something within you that this world needs.
2. Share your story. His story inspired the people in that room and will continue to inspire as many people as he will share it with. Someone is waiting for permission to succeed and you can be that person who gives it to them.
3. Keep growing and moving forward. You will face some jerks that want to pull you backward. Don’t pay attention to them. They don’t deserve your attention. Keep your eyes on the prize of making this world better because you are in it.