Getting out of my comfort zone

June 17, 2021 6-minute read

Today I am writing this article because after years of cursing my stuttering and feeling frustrated about it when I zoomed in through the optimistic lens, I realized I should be thankful for it.

Let’s start from the beginning. I remember the first time I stuttered I was 7 or 8 years old. As a child, I didn’t realize what was it at first, but I did learn it wasn’t normal. I don’t know what started it, or how it started, I just knew I had to make it stop. This decision was the worst decision of my life because I decided at that early age that it was bad and I was wrong, and all this negativity was not going to help me get rid of it but would eventually make it worse.

Since then, the one thing I was always told by everyone around was I need to work on this or else it would be difficult for me to face the world out there. Now that I imagine the 13-14-year-old me under the stress of getting out of school into college, with thousands of negative thoughts pushing me down. Only if someone had been there to show me my future self after 10 years, I would have been much less stressed.

Let’s fast forward to today, 10 years later, what stuttering taught me and why I am grateful it was a part of my life:

Power of Listening

Since childhood, I resisted speaking to avoid embarrassing situations. I ensured to grasp things the first time, to avoid having to go back and ask questions. This improvised my listening and attention power in a way that I was much easily able to grasp and understand things compared to everyone else around me.
Kindness & Inclusive

I knew what I was going through, and before judging anyone I would first think from their perspective as to what they might be going through. Over the years, this habit helped me become a considerate, inclusive, and kind person.
Never lose hope

I have been through thousands of incidents over the past years which have taken me down, and from each of these I have learnt many important lessons, with the primary lesson being, to not lose hope even in the darkest times. I use the examples from my past to lead my life into the future.
Finding success out of comfort zone

I don’t remember even a single day in my life when I have been 100% in my comfort zone. Every speaking situation be it with someone close or a stranger, has been a challenge for me, and I have been on my toes because of this. But, as much as this might sound negative and sad, this kept me out of my comfort zone my entire life, which has been a major contributor to my success today.
Company of kind-hearted people

It was easy to find kind and true people around me because how a person reacted to my stuttering was the only factor I needed to know to conclude if that person was going to stay in my life for a long time or if he/she is just a temporary figure in my life. This may not seem like a huge factor, but believe me, this helped me to load off fake and pretentious people in the very early stages of my life, and today I have this amazing group of close family and friends whom I can trust with my life.

Incident - Job Interview

Let me narrate an incident that occurred 3 years back when I was in the last year of my college. With the job interviews coming up, my stuttering was at the worst state of my life. The first-ever job interview of my life was for an internship at Barclays. I stumbled, couldn’t get more than 20-25 words out of my mouth, one of the most dreadful moment of my life. I got rejected, came back home crying, with no hope left and here I was at the lowest point of my life. Luckily, I had someone special, my elder brother to lift my spirits and made me realize it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t get in, but I should take this as an opportunity to work on this over the next year.

Fast forward a year later, I still stutter but am more confident compared to last year. I go for an interview for the same company Barclays, got rejected again. Now I start doubting myself on two factors, is it my stuttering or do I lack technical knowledge to clear my interview rounds. Over my 4 years at college, I always knew my stuttering may never be 100% cured, so the only other option I had was to get 100% strong at technical skills, so that’s what I had been doing, getting perfect grades, extracurricular activities and so on. At this point, I already have two rejections from the same company, and I had another interview the next day with Microsoft.

I decided to try one thing differently this time, before the interview, I came out in the open, instead of hiding it, I said to the interviewer

“I might stutter during the interview but that’s nothing to do with the fact that I am afraid or less confident, so, if possible, try to look past that.”

This was enough for me to increase my confidence, because I had nothing to hide now. The only thing left for me to do was to showcase my technical skills.

And what do you know, I got selected!! The happiest day of my life, which taught me so many things. I would like to thank Microsoft sincerely for looking past my stuttering and focusing on my skills. This is the reason Microsoft is so appreciated for the Inclusion & Diversity culture that it has embraced, and I have realized this every day of my work life.

To conclude,

I just want to highlight the fact that I have no intention of presenting my story to prove that I have faced the most difficult problems in life, there are thousands of people out there who are facing life with a smile even with worse things going on in their life and we have a lot more to learn from such people about optimism, seizing the moment and not accepting the defaults but making our own choices. The only intention of this was to amplify the fact that even the things that seem worse and that you might hate, might teach you something that you might cherish for a lifetime.