The stutter left. The scanning didn't.

By Chriss Smith Jr. · First published in Sow the Seeds, 01

I was eleven years old, and I had a stutter bad enough that finishing a sentence was something people braced for.

One night, I was lying on my bunk with my sister asleep above me. I grabbed a pencil and started writing on the wooden frame of her bed.

"I will not stutter tomorrow."

The pencil was hard and the wood was soft. It felt like I was engraving my will into the wood.

The next morning, the stutter was gone.

I haven't stuttered since. I still talk really fast. Anyone who knows me will tell you that.

I can't explain exactly what happened that night. I know what I wrote, and I know what happened the next morning.

But there's another part of that story I've spent a lot longer trying to understand.

When you grow up being judged or made fun of for how you speak, you learn to read people. You watch their faces. You choose your words carefully and try to get yourself out of trouble before you get into it. Sometimes, you just stay quiet.

Those habits helped me get through that part of my life as well as I could. The stutter went away, but the scanning stayed.

And that ability has served me well as an adult. Being careful, scanning a room, and reading people opened doors to career paths and projects I never could have imagined as that eleven-year-old kid.

BUD/S. The SEAL teams. My marriage. My businesses. Three thousand miles of open ocean rowing.

That tool came with me through all of it. I'm grateful I learned it so young.

But I also carried that carefulness into rooms where I didn't need it. I held back when I had something to say. I let others speak for me, telling people what I felt, what I thought, and what I wanted.

Even now, I catch myself doing it. Something bothers me or makes me angry, and I look calm. Inside, I'm swallowing everything I want to say.

"Hey, that bothers me."

"I'm angry about what happened."

"I was going to say something."

Simple words. Sometimes I've had a hard time letting them out.

I don't need to abandon it completely. There are times when being careful and reading the room are exactly what I need. There are also times when I need to put it down and say what I'm feeling.

I want to choose when I use it instead of reaching for it automatically. To do that, I have to slow down enough to notice what's actually happening in front of me.

I see versions of this in the people I coach.

Handling everything yourself because asking for help once got you nowhere. Saying yes because disappointing someone used to come with consequences. Staying on guard around people who have earned your trust.

These habits can be hard to question when people praise you for them. They call you dependable or easy to work with. Meanwhile, you're exhausted, and nobody knows how much you're keeping inside.

I built Mission Reset to help people work through this. It's a five-step guide, and it starts with Name the Tool.

What do you do to protect yourself? What has it helped you do? And what is it costing you now?

For me, answering those questions also takes grace.

Some of us have people to forgive. Some of us need to forgive ourselves. Sometimes we need to surrender our grip on what happened and say, "Okay. That was part of my past. I understand why it affected me. I don't need to keep carrying it into every new situation."

That can take time. Start by noticing.

This week, when you hold back, take over, or say yes when you want to say no, pause long enough to ask:

Is this tool helping me now, or am I reaching for it because I've always carried it?

That's what I want to do here with Sow the Seeds. Share something from my life that helps you look at yours, and give you something useful to practice.

I'm still doing the work too.

Sow the Seeds is a weekly letter from Chriss Smith Jr. — former Navy SEAL, speaker, and Mission Reset coach. Subscribe here to get each issue and the free Mission Reset guide.