.webp)
A working professional's story #6 :
“My anxiety and lack of confidence stop me from being successful.”
In conversation with one of our students a few months back, he told me this. I realized then that we don’t always talk about how our fluency affects our mental health. He said, and I quote:
“I am in a senior role in my company. I want to build a good image of myself and the team I lead. I have always been really good at my work. But, since I am not fluent in communicating, people take me as a joke.
In my company, written communication is more important. It makes up almost 70%. Spoken English is required only 30% of the time. I wish it didn’t matter much, but 30% is very crucial for me, as I am a senior, and being bad at it affects my mental health.
The major issue I face while talking in English is my pace. even when I speak other languages, I speak very fast. However, since my accent is heavy too, speaking fast in English just makes it worse.
Because of these issues, I have been laughed at several times when I do a presentation or a team meeting. This increased my anxiety and also led to a lack of confidence. It really scared me from there on to speak publicly.
When I am anxious, my pace gets even faster. My friends and colleague commented on my speaking style and speed. It became a vicious cycle of embarrassment.
When my colleagues continuously kept pointing out how they couldn’t understand me, it really frustrated me to work on it. I took classes here to root down my main problems with fluency, apart from the pace. I slowly worked on my English, my pace, my lack of confidence, stammering, and also anxiety about speaking which led to all of these.
I am sure there are lots of people out there who get nervous and speak faster. This shouldn’t hold us back from achieving our dreams or being promoted. I worked on myself every day and now I can see a visible change in myself. If we work hard, there is also a way to success.”
What is something that people around you make you self-conscious about?
Comment below.
#communication #selfdoubt #blacboardRadio