Patience
When a PWS is introduced to The Lovett Method, they become aware that they must read aloud every day, do Auto Suggestions 2x daily and practice crutches and apply them every time they speak. This whole thing is a new pattern of habits which suddenly becomes your daily routine. It is going to challenging at first to make this part of your daily routine, but just be patient and keep trying.
Coach Lee often says that it is you vs you, measure your today’s progress with yesterday and, if you have improved just 1%, it is still progress and most importantly reward yourself for the progress that you made. The moment we start comparing our journey with other people we become impatient and seek to achieve the same result without enough practice and this only results in stress. Please do not compare your progress with another person because your journey is completely different. Do not expect results overnight, keep practicing with patience.
Patience puts us in direct control of ourselves. And there is no more powerful aid to success than self-possession. When we are patient, we give ourselves time to choose how to respond to a given event, rather than get hijacked by our emotions. It allows us to stay gathered no matter what is happening. For example, when a PWS forgets to be a speech cop, he fears, plans and forces words. Immediately he becomes impatient and complains our methods don’t work. However, if he had analyzed the exact cause for his stutter, he would have realized that he was just not being a speech cop. When you have a goal in front of you, and achieving that goal means the world to you, then you will do the required no matter what. You can’t just avoid doing something simply because you don’t feel motivated. A successful person does the hardest thing even when he is absolutely having a bad day. All it takes is discipline.
I recall a marshmallow experiment conducted by Stanford amongst children. In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the room for about 15 minutes and then returned. The reward was either one marshmallow now or several later. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes and other life measures. Similarly, you must be patient enough the complete the program.
WSSA offers a holistic program with several stages. But, unfortunately, many leave once they become a PWSS and never realize the full benefit of our entire program. This journey is not over. I have observed that when people stay patiently through the second stage “loving to speak in all situations” they become regular participants at the SAM meetings and become very active in the crutch practice sessions. Not surprisingly, these are the people who are not likely to have a relapse because they are learning to face different situations and work on their fears. My humble request to all of you out there is to please stay with WSSA until you achieve all the goals to have better speech outcomes.
Optimism
Winston Churchill said“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Whenever a PWS is faced with a pressured situation, he must see that as an opportunity to apply the crutches. WSSA is the pioneer in coining the concept of mind training in the stuttering space. Every day I do my ASTs, I always visualize myself being very fluent and my mind, body and soul brims with positivity. This feeling is very addictive and so I do my ASTs every day and I have seen profound changes in my life.
I work as an internal auditor and phone calls and talking to the client every few hours has been my work routine. With mind training and crutches I was able to thrive and be successful. I even managed to impress my German clients so much that now they offered me a job to work for them in Germany.
Resilience
Setting your speech goals are very important in order to identify the resilience rate. For example, a person who becomes a PWSS must not immediately jump into the kind of pressure situation which he/she can’t handle. This can shatter their confidence and damage the effort that was put into becoming fluent. Therefore, it is important to progress slowly but steadily, one step at a time.
Try to become comfortable speaking using the crutches in front of people whom you think are friendly. This can be your family or friends, or in some cases people feel more free and comfortable speaking to strangers than their own family members. So, identify your safe zone and practice the crutches within that zone. When you do this, even if you encounter minor glitches, you will be able to climb back on the fluency wagon without causing much damage to your confidence in using the crutches or doing your ASTs.
Often it is harder for a person to recover from a bad incident when he is not sure how to use a crutch. So, in that case please seek the help of the coaches and make use of the coaching sessions offered by WSSA. Sometimes we may think that we are using the crutches correctly, but only when you have a coach monitor you, will you then understand where you are going wrong and how to use a crutch properly.
Finally, we always suggest the PWSS to be active in the crutch practice sessions as this helps them speak in small groups first and gets them comfortable in that space. Also, it is important to participate in the SAM meetings and give short feedback etc. Remember, 80% of success comes from just showing up!
