When your stutter stops listening to you

Hey friend,

If you've ever attempted to stop stuttering, then you know exactly what I mean when I say:

It's as though my stuttering habit has developed a mind of its own and wants different things than I do.

Sometimes it feels like stuttering has a mind of its own... because it does!

But it's not just stuttering. This pattern exists for many well-developed habits.

For example, if a child learns early on that he doesn't trust his caretakers, and therefore starts telling lies, eventually that conscious pattern becomes so automatic that it starts working independently of the child's will or awareness. 

And if that habit continues to grow unchecked, you end up with someone destined to become a pathological liar.

Similarly, once the habit of stuttering becomes deeply embedded, you start stuttering outside of your will, and even outside your awareness.

It's at this stage that stuttering becomes functionally autonomous — working on its own accord and no longer paying much attention to your conscious intentions.

And this is precisely why overcoming it is such a challenge.

But here's where the tide begins to turn...

The first step to becoming a fluent speaker is NOT to stutter less — it's to become deeply aware of the nuances within your stuttering.

As you tune-in more to what is actually happening when you speak, you start to close the gap between the stuttering mind and your mind. 

See, the problem with speech disfluency is not the disfluency, it's the lack of control. 

All people are stutterers to a degree. It's just that most of them have the necessary control to quickly pivot from a stutter or block. 

But "stutterers" — those of us who have existed on the far end of that spectrum — have lost control of their stuttering as a result of the habit running on autopilot. This is a primary source of our struggles.

So now that we've established that you need more control over your speech behaviors in order to experience change, this begs the question: What's the most effective way to get control?

Start with these two:

• Awareness 

• Tools

By vowing to observe yourself more — despite the discomfort — you position yourself to have a much better relationship with the stuttering habit through a heightened awareness of it's subtleties.

And by mastering tools (like the ones I teach you inside my 75 Day Sprint), you create a framework under which you can create precise effects — and make precise changes — to your speech patterns. 

These tools provide you with novelty. And what's really cool about novelty is its profound effects on your ability to pay attention, to become aware.

So, my friend, you're not crazy when you get that trippy feeling that your stuttering feels "outside yourself" or works "against your own interests."

This is what undesirable habits do when given sufficient time and repetition.

Remember: You just need more control. And to get that, you must get closer to the stuttering habit so that you can, like a scientist, observe its patterns more precisely.

Combine that awareness with the right tools, and you're well on your way to gaining control of your speech — and the confidence that naturally follows.

Thanks for reading!

Your mentor,
Marcus Lapp