Celebrating your 'small wins'

I'm writing this at 9:48 PM on a Saturday night and I've had two glasses of wine (It was one of those days!) This week's blog post was actually going to be about something else entirely. I was going to write about the time that my first class (2^nd grade) teacher told my mother that she thought the only reason why I stuttered was because I was looking for attention. But I've decided that I will not write about that this week. (But yes, you will get to read that story too!) Instead, I will be writing about the importance of celebrating your small wins.

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As a person who stutters and as I have mentioned a couple of times before, I often used to compare myself to my fluent friends and how they could so easily make phone calls or say their name to strangers or give a presentation in college. And simply because I could not (or in reality, I felt I was unable to) call up the local takeaway and order my own food, I thought I was less valuable than my friends who could ask for theirs without a second thought.

As I have learnt, this sort of comparison used to be so detrimental to my self-esteem.

This sort of comparison, which stems from the fact that through no fault of my own I am physically unable to speak as smoothly as my friends, can have dangerous effects. When I was younger, I decided that my words are less valuable of sound, simply because they are, sometimes, disjointed. Or even worse, I began to silence myself simply because I feared how my words might come out.

This is why now, as a person who stutters, I try to celebrate, however quietly, my ‘small wins’. And even though these wins may not be, in the eyes of fluent speakers, anything to celebrate, they are worthy of celebration.

I’ll give you an example of a small win.

Photo by Tyler Lastovich from Pexels

Today I was in work, and everything was a bit stressful. There were lots of people coming and going and I was asked to make a phone call. And usually, phone calls freak me the f--- out and I sometimes don’t end up making said phone call! But this was part of my job of the day so I didn’t really have a choice but to make this phone call. Fortunately enough this phone call was to someone I knew, I had met this person a good few times throughout my work shifts, so it wasn’t so scary as talking to a complete stranger. So, I called this person, and the ringtone went on for a while. This gave my heart plenty of time to beat loudly within in my chest and my anxiety to come into fruition. I was really bloody anxious! However, for some unknown reason as soon as the person I was calling picked up the phone, I wasn't fearful anymore. I had a job I had to do. I wasn’t ‘Bevin the stutterer’ anymore I was ‘Bevin the employee’. I got through the phone call, I asked all the right questions, and I got the answer I was looking for. And even though I stuttered throughout the phone call, I still did what I had to do, regardless of my ‘disjointed’ speech.

To me, this is an example of a ‘small win’. As a person who stutters a ‘small win’ is when, regardless of your speech, you can get the job, or whatever you set out to do, done. And, even when your speech is not as fluent as you wish it was, you don’t let your speech get in the way of the task at hand.

Therefore, You have won!