The Talking Traveller

One more resting cycle and I will be leaving London. Last night I worked my final shift at the football stadium and it was the toughest shift I ever had. A final between two much supported football teams ensured a abundance of supporters. The game was delayed by 15mins and that caused stressed upon the kiosk staff as we ran out of stock(beer) during half time. It was however, my best "speech shift" of all. I could really focus and concentrate and did not experience one speech block, only a few stumbles. Afterwards I disclosed my mission to my team leader and he was impressed. I did experience stress during sales,I could feel it in my stomach,like in the old days before an oral exam, but it did not reflect in my speech. Afterwards I rewarded myself with a pat on the back, and a nice chocolate.

Two other "wishes" of mine have also been fulfilled. I had wished that I would have a white christmas in london, that didn't happen, but we did receive some snow yesterday! And it was beautifull! See the photos http://blog.com/photos/album/274680/?page=3  

The second wish that is being fulfilled is that I wanted to see a stage performance in London. Tonight me and a friend will delight in seeing "The Lion King" being performed. Tomorrow I will get on the plane and head of to South-Africa. Once there, I will start preparing my MOC (Master Of Seromony) speech for my brother's wedding. Next week I will also make important decisions about my next travels........I've researched intensively on teaching english in taiwan...I feel really excited when I think about that......

The week is finally over and I make calculation to come to 5735 contacts. This week was fully booked and I will be reimbursed for a total of 38 hours of work. On thursday I travelled with a newfound engineering friend during his business.Unfortunately because of high winds causing traffic jams we didn't do all the visits we planned, but spend valuable time discussing different topics from electronic design to sales goals.

10 of my hours I worked was a football stadiums.The kiosk that I worked at today wasn't very well orginazed. It was quite a popular game and come half-time, we didn't have anymore hot-food left. I enjoyed using extreme concentration to control my speech answering hungry supporter questions and keeping a neutral friendly face while absorbing some insult and aggresive speech patterns. One particular customer, partially tipsy, asked for two cups of tea. After I prepared them he told me that he won't pay full price because of our bad service.I explained to him that unfortunately he has to pay full price.We both repeated our statements a few times. After I calmly convinced him that our predicament is out of my hands, he told me to get rid of the cups in a particular way.I feel proud that I could cool and calmly tell him, Sir,they won't fit there....   

For the past two months I have experienced the London life as many of young people from all over the world do. Coming here with just enough money for a few weeks survival, with high aspirations of getting a job as fast as possible and taking those golden pounds home, and maybe do some travelling. I have met numerous individuals who have succeeded, and those who have failed accomplishing this. I have made a few observations about actions and mindsets that I believe will help anyone accomplish this especially for short term work 1-4 months. Let me share a few of these “tips”.

- Don’t be fussy about what you are willing to do unless you want to seriously work on your career. Be thankful for whatever job you can get, smile, and make the most of it.  
- Don’t expect that work will come to you watching TV. You have to search newspapers, jobcentres and the internet. Call companies and go for interviews as much as possible! You WILL be rejected, my rule “I will never take rejection personally”, get over it, try the next one. be proactive, act quickly, take action and you WILL find a job.     
-London is expensive, but you CAN live cheap. Don’t fall for buying take-away meals(KFC MACD’s etc) for the price of a McMeal(£5.95), you can be a weeks worth of healthy food at supermarkets such as Tesco, Asda, Iceland etc.
- There are many temptations in the city….the best what to save is not to have cash/cards on you to spend! Decide, and plan what you have to spend (travelling, groceries, phone cards) and take only enough cash for that.
-Take a packed lunch to work, the pennies you save make the pound, seriously.
-You will meet people that will treat you like trash, forgive them. You will meet people with golden hearts that treat you good, thank them and learn from them.
-One option to save accommodation, travel and food is to have a live-in job.
-Don’t hesitate making travel plans, stick to them! Travel! For me this is money well spend and the best way to reward myself for those hours of hard labour.

I have been working as an event-furniture-equipment-mover-contractor for the last few days. I helped to break down a Boat Show Exhibition in the Excel Centre. Hard work! I met some new people, gained great perspective about the different aspects of such an event, and saw some Luxury Ocean vehicles that made my hart skip a beat. One was a replica of the boat used in the new James Bond (Casino Royale).I am working trough a different company and I’m now officially on three payrolls! Work is picking up from the quiet X-mas season and I have had 5 continuous days of work. Thursday I am looking forward to visiting a few big Electronic Companies with a Sales Engineer/friend. Thanks Stephan for that contact! This is going will be a very exciting professional speaking challenge……

MISSION STATEMENT

I recently became part of a speaking program for stutterers that have shown me the road to freedom. A technique that can give me total control if correctly applied and frequently practised.
- I still believe that practicing and correctly applying the technique gives me full control in any speaking situation. I am proud to be associated with this speaking program

I have finally been able to translate my thoughts, Ideas and emotions FULLY to other people without fear or struggle for the first time in my life. It is called the McGuire Programme.
- The program name is still the same, and also the results J

My progress has been TREMENDOUS since I've joined this program and I've had plenty of enjoyable speaking situations.
- I am continually progressing and moving forward and have added many memories and references to enjoyable speaking situations J

Unfortunately I still have situations where I hold back, where I avoid, where I stutter uncontrollably and experience the fear I hate. I not am willing to accept this anymore, I refuse to regress to the way I used to speak and have the same experiences. My current living status does not allow me enough speaking situations to improve myself as a speaker, therefore I declare the following.......
- Yes, I do still have some situations that remind me of the past. I still refuse to see those experiences as acceptable and use them as motivation. My present living status is providing me opportunities to improve myself on all levels.

I hereby declare war on uncontrolled stuttering.
- You bet! The war is on! My armour is getting thicker and my weapons technology improving daily. There’s a whole army behind me. If you are a uncontrolled stutter trying to get me, be afraid, be very afraid, I am going to kill you!!!!!!! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! 

I declare that I am going to devote a certain amount of time (and money) in my life to improve my speaking skills. I am going to travel the world with the focus on improving my verbal communication skills.
- Yip, eight months so far, and a whole lot of well spent money in seven countries.

I declare that I am going to do the following.......

• - To let go of my current living status,
  Goodbye engineer, Helo talking traveller!
• - To attend as many of the McGuire program courses and support groups as possible,
  Attended 1 course in New Zealand, 2 in Australia, 1 in Scotland, 1 in Ireland and 1 in Holland. Attended the Melbourne and London McGuire support groups. I attended the Speakeasy support group in Tauranga, New Zealand, and the Stottercafe group in Rotterdam, Holland. I also attended 2 Toastmasters meetings in Sydney and 3 in London.
• - To speak to as many people as possible and make friends worldwide,
  I have spoken to 5503 people(to the best of my calculations) of whom about 500 where full disclosures. Not bad, I feel there is a space available for improvement and means discovery. I have made good,honest friends in every country that I have visited!! J
• - To always practice controlled eloquent speaking,
  To be honest, No, not always. During certain times I have given in to spontaneous, sloppy, uncontrolled speaking. I do however realize that I was aware of all those situations, this has given me the knowledge and experience to know on what I have to work on. In many situations however I was extremely eloquent, to such a point that I had to convince people that I actually stutter. I motivate myself to always aim for eloquent speech.
• - To enter situations I have always feared, to deliberately use words that haunt me,
  Yes! I have entered many exciting situations and have documented many of them on my blog! I have deliberatly used many feared words in speaking situations. I am however aware that I still have word avoidances and I realize there are still situations and words that I will enjoy improving on. 
• - To try and help other stutterers on their way to eloquent speaking,
  I am thankfull that I can contribute to other stutterers recovery through coaching, support and giving advice. This is adding enormously to my own recovery.
• - To learn as much from other people and experiences, using that to help and inspire.
  -I have met many people, stutters and non, from different cultures, backgrounds, abilities and mindsets. I feel that I have gained valuable knowledge and have used that to help and inspire(even with a maori war dance!) and looking forward to continue doing this.
• - To improve my skills that I desire to be better at and become a better and eventually eloquent speaker
  I have unleashed dormant potential that has given me joy and confidence. I use these skills not only be a good speaker, but and effective and entertaining communicator.
• - To see the world, grow as person and enjoy my life journey.
  I see, I grow, and I am having a whole lot of fun doing it!

I feel that this is an opportunity, necessity and life adventure that I now am able to do and should grab hold of. I believe that by doing this I will conquer my fear of speaking, my fear of people, fear of myself, because that fear will prohibit my survival ......and I WILL survive!
- I am successfully surviving and am not letting go just yet! I am conquering, but more important, discovering.

Written by     Hein van der Merwe on 18-03-2006 in  Brooklyn, Pretoria, South Africa.
Evaluated by Hein van der Merwe on  11-01-2007 in Leytonstone,London,England.

Wow, what a week. Last week friday I had a very unpleasent message on my voicemail. It was the news that my medical trail I was suppose to do has been posponed until february This off course means that I wil not be able to to take part in it. After a 15 min harsh discussion over the telephone about how much inconvenience this "adjustment" has caused me in terms of acommodation notice, lost job oppertunities and changed flights, I had to make peace that I won't be reimursed and that more fighting won't help. 

I am currently working throught two books of Anthony Robbins calles "Unlimited Power" and "Awaken the Giant within". These are both self-improvement books and uses NLP(Neuro Linguistic Programming) and some other techniques that Tony developed on how to live life to it's maximum capacity and use your brain to empower your actions. I would highly recommend this to anyone. It gave me great insight on what type of person I am and tips on how to effectively make changes in believes, values and behaviour. One of the issues I am working with is to change my identity on how I talk to myself. I am changing my identity from "recovering stammerer" to "diaphramatic speaker", If you visualize it (I discovered I am a totally visual person) labels on my forehead as recovering stammerer. In tought times the "recovering" label fades away....and what is left.......yip. I'll experiment further with this new thoughts and evaulate the results.

During the week I took part in the flight simulation as promised. 8 hours on a grounded plane, 3 airplane meals, 4 tubes of blood and 700 answers to questions such as "How do you experience the temperature of your feet?" later I received reimburesement for that. The aim of the study was to test whether long haul flights affects inflamation in the body, and some blood-clotting issues. They use our blood to test two kinds of protien and also our peak-flow lung capacity for this. The questions were more for a physcological test and cabin environment optimization. A very interesting experience.

I spent new year enjoying the fireworks display of London. It was held in Central London at the London eye with Big Ben in the backround. Two hours standing in the cold on Westminster bridge was well worth it. I will upload some photos shortly, and you will see why. I also went for a job interveiw yesterday and will have some electronic soldering work for next week hopefully. Today I moved furniture in Leichester Sqaure and tommorow I am working at Queens PArk football Stadium.

The medical trail door closed, but motivated me to search for more open ones. Keep moving forward, no holding back, take action. What a week....