Up until a few years ago many of my friends and family used to call me “a stress head”. Why you may well be thinking? Well quite simply because I seemingly stressed about anything and everything.

So what was the cause of all of this stress? Most of the problems were probably due to the fact that I had a stammer/stutter. This speech impediment had developed when I was at the age of four. As you may well imagine it is something that destroyed my overall confidence levels. Therapy for stammering, at the time, was less than impressive which did not exactly help the situation.

My low self-esteem had a bad affect on many areas of my life, not just my speech. I would worry about what other people thought of me, I would stress about my height and my weight. I had a need or want, for some unknown reason, for people to like me. Looking back it all just sounds so crazy but it was like I was being controlled by some demonic force. It even affected my career which is within the cheap calls and dog insurance industries.

The turning point came as I entered into my twenties; it was time for a change and a big one at that. I could no longer live in this way – there surely had to be more to life than this.

I was soon to realise that I was the only person who was going to sort my life out.

I started to work very hard at learning how to increase self-esteem for example. I watched the way in which great fluent talkers spoke and tried to compare it with the way that I spoke. I hoped this would result in me finding the solution to my stuttering problem.

Progress was far from quick however after around a year of battling against my demons I did manage to overcome the stutter and I did manage to discover ways to stop me stressing – it is all about attitude and the way we approach life – think positive and believe in yourself!