For these reasons, and because I would like to think of myself as a genuinely nice guy, I always make a real effort to make each and every client feel very welcome throughout the duration of the course. There is nothing in the content of the course to fear and I would never force anybody into doing something that they were not comfortable with in any case.

I am more than confident, from going on past course experiences, that you will not only gain real benefits from the course but that you will also find it enjoyable.

For the last four weeks I have been on a "get fit" campaign. To do this I have been walking 5K every day at the gym. I also, from time to time, use the rowing machine and the exercise bike.

As well as helping me to lose weight it has done wonders for my self esteem. There are periods in my life when I can become rather stressed - I do, after all, have an eleven year old son and an eighteen year old step daughter! After I have returned from the gym I feel totally refreshed, mentally, and ready to face the world head on.

During the period when I had the stammer, I feel that I would have found this form of exercise to have been a great benefit to me. Why do I think this? Well the stammer badly affected my self esteem and caused me a great deal of stress. As explained above walking the 5K a day helps me with both of these.

Anyway I need to go now - to the gym!

Steve

The majority of what he wrote in the e-mails struck a chord with me as I went through similar problems.

One aspect which he continued to write about was his struggles when speaking on the telephone. He found that at times he could not even face answering his phone at home and would simply let it ring and ring until it stopped. To a fluent speaker this would just seem like the actions of a crazy person. I however have left the telephone to ring out in this way on numerous occasions, when I had this form of speech impediment. The sheer lack of belief of even saying "Hello" was quite overwhelming at times - even bordering on the scary! I would be standing there shaking for some reason - and I hadn't even answered the phone!

It was also a question that I asked my speech and language therapist when I was aged fourteen. The answer he gave was NO. So that means that I will have this stutter for the rest of my life? I asked him. YES was his reply.

But guess what? I managed to overcome the stutter when I was aged 22. I am now 38 and have been fluent for for the last sixteen years.

Just as well I did not listen to this so called specialist. I have to thank my parents as they helped me to install a "never accept second best" and "do not listen to negative people" attitude to life. This is an attitude I continue to live by today.

I received a very interesting e-mail this evening from a man from India which I thought I would share with you - with agreement from the sender of course.

It will give people who do not have a stammer a further insight into the life of a person that has. He is going to watch the seventy minute stammering therapy DVD and I am going to be helping him every step of the way.

Here is the e-mail:

I am writing to you as I have a stammering problem, like many others, I am also able to speak properly at times but its that fear which just grips me many other times and it becomes difficult to even say a word, especially when I have to speak a specific word and it suddenly strikes that what if I stammer. Making phone calls and to ask for someone by name is one of my biggest problems, similary ordering food or drinks in a restaurant, names of places, buying tickets and saying my surname was another big threat. As in these cases, the word comes to my mind and intimidates me badly.

I would like to give you a background about my stammering and what cure I have tried. I am sorry that my story would be a bit long, but I think its important to tell you all what I have gone through so that you can suggest the best guidance. After reading the testimonials on your website, I am comfortable that I can share all this personal story with you.

When I was in the 4th year of my engineering college, about 4.5 - 5 years ago, I went to a speech therapy center where the basic concept was to speak very slowly, this way they would remove the fear of words and then you would increase your speed gradually over the period of time, each will find his own comfortable speed. This course really helped me a lot, I started liking speaking slowly and it made me feel so happy. So many people complimented me about the changed & confident person that I had become. I could also say my full name with confidence most of the times now. I started speaking fluently 90% of time, but not completely fluently, as sometimes suddenly the fear would overcome my confidence and with racing heartbeats, I could not even speak slowly, I wanted that moment to get over as soon as it can and in all this I would end up stammering. Though I must admit, that these failures were due to the fact that I was not able to follow the therapy rules, I could not speak that slow at times, sometimes due to shyness, sometimes just the fear was too much to think of anything else.

But still, I was much much better than before, I was confident enough to pick up a job. Though I failed couple of times in Group Discussions, but I cleared the interview with ease as I was comfortable in one to one discussions.

You can understand how it would feel when a person with stammering problem is able to speak fluently apart from one or two bad incidents in a day. Then love happened, I got a girlfriend, life was great. I joined the job and I was quite good, though as I said not 100%, but I could do all the tasks most of the time and with ease. The important thing to note here was my confidence was very much related to the degree of my happiness, these days I was really happy and gathering confidence was not an issue most of the times.

Then things changed, due to some reasons, I had to separate with my girlfriend, this was a shattering time for me. I was so much dependent on her and when she was not there, I almost lost myself, I was absolutely shattered. This was the time when the stammering instances started increasing, though still I think the confidence I had got in the last few months was with me and it was still not that bad, like it was instance specific problem not a daily problem. In fact, many people at my work place didn't know for more than a year that I have a stammering problem.

Since then, it has been like I am good most of the time, I have done pretty good job at work, the stammering problem has not come too much of an issue at my workplace, but again in cases where I have to ask for something very specific, especially over the phone, buying anything, things get worse. It has gone quite bad in the last few months which has made me start looking again for a solution. Now at times, in normal conversations also, I have started stammering, maybe I have started speaking too fast. It is still in front of people with whom I am not comfortable or in a meeting etc. I really want to get over this problem now, I don't want to waste the whole my life in frustration of this problem.

I would like to know more about your course as a brief about your course, like what is the basic concept of this cure? If you could please let me know some brief details about the course and then probably I would buy your home based course as I can't come to UK. Also, please suggest what would be the best course for me out of the options you provide.

Thanks for taking your time out to read & understand my problem. Since we are not meeting in person, I think it was important to give you a background of my problem.

People are already speculating, or guessing, as to why Gary Speed killed himself - I just wish they would leave their comments and opinions to themselves as they are of little value. For now we should reflect and honour Gary and leave his family to grieve.

He has kept in regular contact with me since he first bought and watched the seventy film. When speaking today he stated that his aim was to achieve complete fluency by Christmas. It is superb to have a goal and I wish him every success. I, for one, will be helping him every step of the way.

There was one major issue that was holding me back, of course - the fact that I had a stutter.

Why would any girl want to date me? This was a question that I would often ask myself. Now I guess that some of the readers of this blog post will think that I was a little crazy and rather negative however this was just the way in which I used to think when I was 14.

This was a typical example of the way in which the speech impediment affected my life and my overall self-confidence.

It was a couple of years before I had the confidence to start talking to girls in a chatting up sort of way. And what did I find? Well it was that girls are happy to date people that have a stutter.

So for all you teenagers that have a speech impediment please do not let it hinder you as much as I let it hinder me - learn from my mistakes etc.

Steve