without stammering so incoherently that I could not recite
in school and had to be excused from making the then-
required high school senior speech. The second reason for
using myself as an example is that I know exactly what
I did to change from not being able to talk, to being able
to talk fluently.
From my own experience, I learned that the
way to learn to talk fluently is to talk.
In the unlikely event that you must start from
the poor beginning that I did, you need to know two
important facts of life: (1) Do the thing and you will
have the power... (2) Start by doing what you can do
easily, then progress through easy steps to doing the next
most difficult thing.
Since my stammering was caused by self-con-
sciousness, and since most people are, to some extent, self-
conscious-you may benefit by reading this brief account
of how I cured it.
First: "Do the thing and you will have the
power." So I talked ... and I talked ... and I talked
... and I talked! How? Simply by using the second pre-
cept just described: "Start by doing what you can do
easily, then progress through easy steps to doing the next
most difficult thing."
In my case, since I stammered, I started by
"talking" silently to myself. I went through all the talking
impulses and motions, but I deliberately did not make a
sound. Since I was alone, I wasn't self-conscious, and since
I made no sound, I didn't stammer. Then I whispered.
No problem I So I whispered louder ... and louder ...