There will come a time when the biggest decision in your life stares you square between your eyes: Avoid or Engage.
No question: avoiding is the easier way to go — just keep doing what you’ve been doing. You’ve gotten along this way for years. Why rock the boat?
After all, you know what’s going to happen. The moment you decide to do something about your speech, your fluency will tank. Fluency down, anxiety up. It’s brutal. Who needs it? It’s so much easier to stand pat.
The Costs of Avoidance (More Than You Think)
But there’s a cost to avoidance. It’s different for everyone. Maybe your cost is a lack of deep personal relationships. Perhaps a job you can’t stand. Or a frustration that eats away at you, knowing your life could be better.
There’s another cost that’s less apparent. The longer you avoid, the more daunting your stuttering will become — the more intractable, too.
This isn’t just my opinion; there are tons of studies on avoidance behavior. The Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) in its paper, The Vicious Cycle of Anxiety, notes, “while avoidance makes anxiety better in the short term, you have also made the anxiety worse in the long term.”
In other words, the more you avoid, the worse anxiety becomes.
The Costs of My Decision to Avoid
For decades, I chose to avoid. The costs were greater than I could ever imagine.
From the time I was 11, I dreamed of being an investment advisor. But I didn’t think I could talk well enough.
So, I settled for jobs that I thought would require less talking. I majored in accounting in college, got a Master’s in Taxation, passed the CPA exam, and took jobs at two of the finest CPA firms in the nation. I hated every moment of it. I hated my education, I hated my work and I hated myself.
I compromised my career and nearly my life, all to avoid stuttering. The frustration was terrible. The depression was worse. I knew I was wasting my life.
Starting to Engage (But Not Quite)
Finally, at the age of 47, I found an opportunity to break into the investment field. The new position would be at a third of my previous salary. That’s how desperate I was!
After two jobs in the investment field over seven years, I finally opened my own firm at age 54. This was the dream.
I loved my first year in business. I ran my firm just the way I always wanted: the highest ethics, a disciplined approach to investing, a total focus on clients. It was a dream come true. I was doing it my way.
There was just one problem: too few clients. Sure, over the years, I had greatly improved my speech. But I was still afraid of making phone calls and I couldn’t introduce myself. If you can’t make phone calls and introduce yourself, it’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to get new clients.
I had to do something or I would go out of business. The dream would be lost and then what? Who is going to hire a 55-year old investment advisor with too few clients and a terrible fear of making phone calls and introducing himself?
My Moment of Truth: Engage!
That’s when it came: My moment of truth. The inevitable decision: Avoid or Engage?
If I continued to avoid, I might lose my business and my career. The consequences for my family would be grim at best. I had a wife and two kids, including one in a costly, private college.
I made the decision. I chose to engage. I worked through my stuttering, built the business of my dreams, and changed my life forever. It’s still hard to believe.
In retrospect, I learned that to truly engage, you need to commit completely. There are no half measures. You’ve got to go all in. You need to venture beyond boundaries you’ve always feared and break barriers that have always paralyzed you. For a person who stutters, that’s an incredibly frightening prospect.
Fortunately, I came up with ways to make the journey more manageable (sometimes even exhilarating), which I detail in the next several months of blog posts.
It's Your Choice: Avoid or Engage
Are you willing to make that choice? To give up the status quo and engage? To push yourself to the very edge of your envelope, stick your chin out and risk taking punches as you break through your personal barriers?
Of course you are! This is the decision of your life. The decision that changes everything. You have to make it.
Go ahead. Take the chance. Engage. Put it all out there. Forge your path. See how good you can be. You may end up living a life you could never imagine.
That’s how it’s been for me. I hope it can be that way for you.
Comments