hi Reader,

For 3 decades, i believed confidnce worked like this:

Practice.

Repeat.

And get better.

Eventually fear disappears.. it made perfect sense.

So when i moved to Missouri US from Pakistan, i became obsessed with improving my English pronunciation & American accent.

I spent next 18 months practicing 5-6 times a week..

Listening > Repeating > Recording myself > Comparing.

Little by little i saw the difference (my friends saw it too)

I thought.. "Finally this is working."

Then i joined local Toastmasters club in Jan 2022 in Missouri: 10 people were sitting in the room.. i stood up to deliver a prepared 5-mins speech.

In seconds...

My heart started pounding

Nuts & bolts moving in my stomach

Voice became shaky & softer

And something even surprising happened:

The pronunciation & accent i worked so hard to improve over those 18 months... just GONE. On the drive home, i kept asking myself one question:

"Where did all that practice go?"

Was i just "imagining" all the progress?

Did i somehow lose everything i worked for?

Looking back now, i realize i was asking the wrong question.

The practice didn't disappeared.

My knowledge didn't disappeared.

My brain simply stopped giving me access to it once the situation felt high stakes (or perceived as dangerous)

That's a very different problem.

'cause if the knowledge is still there...

then the goal isn't to cram in more communication techniques or more skills, but it's to understand why your brain suddenly changes how it operates when the stakes feel high.

That realization changed the direction of everything i studied over the next few years

...and it's one of the reasons why i no longer beleive that "just practice more" or "speak more" is a complete answer for people who freeze under pressure.

Now Reader, i'm curious...

have you ever worked really hard to prepare for something that you really cared about, but only to feel like none of that preparation was available when the moment finally arrived?

let me know by replying to this email.

I respond to every email.

-Waqas

>> Root Before Skill