Been stalking to forum for a while and this is the first post I comment on. I want to tell my story and how I view my stuttering A bit of background : 26 years old, been stuttering for most of my life. Been to speech therapy a bunch of times, it helps to mitigate the stuttering but never completely removes it. As the author said there is so much negativity in this Reddit forum that you just want to crawl into a ball and cry since you are cursed with the unbreakable curse of stuttering. I thought for the longest time that I would not be able to get a good job, a degree, a girlfriend and happiness. People told me that I couldn’t and to some extent I believed them. But I came to realisation that I was not going to allow someone else to decide how my life was going to be. It’s my life, so I figured that I might as well try to become the man I always visioned my self to be. At 15 I formed a plan, I still had the thoughts then that I would not be able to get a good job so I need to work something out that generated money. I stated writing down 2 goals each day that I had to complete before I want to bed. The first one was to reach financial success, the 2 goals each day were money related for the first 5 years. I started working at warehouse jobs while and investing everything I earned. Over that period I swapped a lot of jobs, tried different things. At one point I stared a sales job where the majority of the selling was over the phone. Stayed there for three years was the best preforming salesman of the whole company during 2 of those years with a stutter. At 22 I had a portfolio of about 250k usd. Stared university when I was 21 pursuing a bachelor in finance. During that time I swapped my goal to finishing my degree and getting a better job. Guess what I got a better job, doing debt portfolio investments for a debt collecting company while simultaneously doing my masters in engineering with a focus on innovation and management. Last week I singed on a role for a major tech company and my investment portfolio is worth about 500k usd now. I have had 3 girlfriends since and a lot of different situation ships. Everything I believed as a young teen was wrong. This text might feel like a flex. But the message I’m trying to send to you is that without my stuttering I would have never done any of those things, it forced me to really challenge myself, learn, think and adapt to my disability. The stuttering made me do more and compensate for the disability I have, as my confidence grew the stuttering gradually got better as well as my mood and mindset. I still have bad stuttering days when I’m tired or very stressed, but I try to always bring happiness and attentiveness to my surroundings. Although stuttering may feel like a curse it gives something back : mental fortitude. As I progress my navigating of life during these 11 years I found out that I was not getting as tired as my fluent speaking peers. (It may be individual and not applicable on stutters as a group) but that’s your edge, your going to have a harder life then fluent speakers but the only thing you can do to change it is to work with what you have. Don’t wait for fluency to do things, do things while you stutter, challenges yourself and grow. One thing I have always try to do when I’m at work is that my colleagues are going to feel like work is 10% better when I’m there, this involves talking, asking question, compliment them, attentiveness and do small things for them without them asking. This has been a game changer for me, because work is not only what you produce it’s the attitude you bring to the group and the influence it can have on your surroundings. Lastly, don’t give up and never let other people dictate how your life is going to be. You can become whatever you want if you set your mind to it 🫶🏻 much love from a fellow stutterer