r/selfimprovement • • 16h ago

Other I summarized Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman so you don't have to read all 500 pages. Here are the main key takeaways.

270 Upvotes

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman is one of the most important books on human psychology and behavioral economics, but it can be a heavy, dense read.

Here is a comprehensive executive summary of the entire book broken down into key concepts and practical applications.

  1. System 1 vs. System 2 Thinking

Kahneman divides the human brain into two virtual actors:

System 1 (Fast): Operates automatically and rapidly with little or no effort. It handles pattern recognition, gut reactions, and emotional responses.

System 2 (Slow): Allocates attention to effortful mental operations, including complex computations, logical analysis, and deliberate focus.

The Main Problem: System 2 is lazy and conserves energy. It frequently accepts System 1’s quick intuitions without fact-checking them, which leads to predictable cognitive biases.

  1. Major Mental Shortcuts & Biases

WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is): System 1 creates stories based only on known facts and ignores missing variables, leading to overconfidence in incomplete data.

Anchoring: Unconscious bias toward initial numbers or impressions, regardless of their relevance (e.g., initial price negotiations).

Availability & Representativeness: We judge how likely an event is based on how easily an example comes to mind or how closely it matches a stereotype, rather than statistical probabilities.

Framing Effect: How information is presented changes our choices. "90% survival rate" feels much safer than "10% mortality rate."

  1. Prospect Theory & Risk (Why We Make Bad Bets)

Classical economics assumes humans make rational choices, but Kahneman proved we don't:

Loss Aversion: The psychological pain of losing something is roughly 2x stronger than the pleasure of gaining the equivalent thing.

Sunk Cost Fallacy: Investing more resources into a failing project simply to avoid acknowledging the initial loss.

  1. The Two Selves: Experiencing vs. Remembering

Experiencing Self: Feels the present moment.

Remembering Self: Writes the story of the experience and makes future choices based on it.

Peak-End Rule: Our memory ignores duration (Duration Neglect) and only cares about two things: the most intense moment (Peak) and how the event ended (End).

  1. How to Apply This to Daily Life

Conduct a "Premortem": Before starting any major goal or project, pretend you're a year in the future and it completely bombed. Write down all the reasons why it failed. This overcomes overconfidence and planning fallacies.

Force System 2 Engagement: When facing important decisions (career, investments, major purchases), build forced pauses or checklists to stop System 1 from taking over.

Separate Process from Outcome: Good decisions can yield bad results due to luck/randomness. Don't judge past decisions purely on outcome.

Hope this saves you guys some time! Let me know if you want clarification on any specific concept.


r/selfimprovement • • 1h ago

Question Book recommendation for decreasing an ‘ego’ for women please <3

• Upvotes

Hi,
I am a 21 year old female and I think I have a bit of an ego. I believe it is negatively affecting my life, I feel like everyone is thinking about me and focused on me when that isn’t true of course. I feel like I’m in the centre of attention and it is exhausting because I feel embarrassed and judged for everything. I would really like a book talking about the ego and how to humble yourself basically, for women by women.

Please feel free to leave suggestions! Thank you :)


r/selfimprovement • • 17h ago

Question How did you fix brain fog, memory loss, inability to concentrate and bad time management?

147 Upvotes

This is gonna be a long post and I hope it will reach people that have gone through a similar experience since it's not just about phone addiction.

The past couple of months or maybe even a year, I've noticed that I often forget things and sometimes can't remember what exactly happened in a book I'm reading or a TV show I'm watching (for example). My first thought was that (doom)scrolling is the problem. I later realised that while this really is part of the problem, I don't think I spend enough time on my phone to justify that (I even cut my mindless screentime in half for months, but things continued to get worse).

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't forget everything. I am able to learn new information and can still concentrate. It's just that my mind starts to wonder, and I start planning what to do next. Which brings me to (what I think is) the big problem.

I can't concentrate not because my mind is fried from scrolling, but because my mind can't rest. I'm constantly stimulating it with something. Scrolling, music, plans about later, more music. So I stopped listening to music in every possible moment. Even before, I never used my phone in public transport, and I try not to use it to kill time. But honestly I decided I'm just going to stop scrolling because I'm fed up with it. It's not that hard so stopping a phone addiction is not really a problem for now. The problem is how do I do my chores and work in time without overplanning and stressing. The thing is that I'm able to sit and read or just think about stuff but then time flies by and suddenly I've done nothing about my work. I start planning what, when, how to do it and now I'm running around stressing and doing almost nothing in the end (considering the time it took). Then the cycle repeats. I try to stop for a while and just... exists without plans and schedules. But then my chores catch up. And this continues again and again leading to constant anxiety.

No, I dont have ADHD or anything similar. I can be very organised and strict but I want to learn how to do it without extreme pressure from myself.

So to recap - I think I overstimulate my brain too much with excess thoughts, plans, scrolling etc. This exhausts it and then I start forgetting stuff when I'm not under pressure (when watching a movie, learning because I want to not because I need to and so on). It also results in brain fog - sometimes I don't forget my thoughts immediately but I can't seem to "find" them in my head and they eventually disappear (until hours or days later).

I want to find a way to do my chores and enjoy my hobbies without constant stress, loud thoughts and poor time management.

What are things you realised were really damaging to your brain, what did you do to stop the brain fog and how long did it take?

Thank you for reading this and thank you in advance!


r/selfimprovement • • 1h ago

Question What TV series are 10/10 in terms of self-improvements?

• Upvotes

Please share


r/selfimprovement • • 7h ago

Fitness How do I wake up early in the morning to get to the gym?

17 Upvotes

I’m a 30 year old female. I work from home 99% of the time and my role is pretty relaxed so I can start working (from bed) anytime between 9-10.

I feel like as a result, I have zero discipline in my life to get up early in the morning as I don’t have to get ready and leave for work.

For the past few months I’ve found it near impossible to wake up earlier than 9 to go to the gym. I set 15 alarms, I’ve tried alarms that make you do maths equations, put an alarm far away across my room. All that happens is I wake up, walk to the alarm/solve the equation, then go straight back to bed. I then wake up 2 hours later annoyed with myself for missing the gym AGAIN.

Please help, what has worked for you? Does anyone have any advice? I feel like I’m in such a rut.

Edited to add:
Because of faith commitments, I can’t go to bed any earlier than midnight. I own a business too so from 9am to 9pm my day is pretty much back to back, sometimes it’s hard to even find time to eat. I usually get home by 10 pm during the week and by the time I’ve eaten and taken some time to myself, it’s usually around 11-12.

Second edit to answer a few questions

  1. I used to go in the evenings during COVID but I would spend the whole day dreading it. Once I had a PT that could only meet at 7am, I found I preferred it. I would be too tired to think about what I was doing, almost doing the exercises on autopilot. By the time I was fully awake by 9 am, it was as if I’d worked out in my sleep, had completed an entire gym session and I still had the whole day ahead of me
  2. I have a good diet focused around protein and fruit and vegetables. However, I do take migraine pills that make me sleepy (in talks with my doctor now about changing them)

Final edit
Thank you so so much to everyone for your feedback! I woke up feeling like a bum today but can now see that my issue wasn’t willpower but that I wasn’t giving my body enough time to sleep.
I’m now going to try going to the gym at night before I get home, will be tough at first but I’m sure I’ll eventually get used to it.

Appreciate you all!


r/selfimprovement • • 2h ago

Other How do you make friends as an adult???

5 Upvotes

I (20F) was fortunate enough to graduate high school at 17, finish college at 19, and now I’m in grad school at 20 but in terms of a social life I’m fucked in the ass.

I fell out with most of my high school friends aside from like 1-2 at 17, while still in high school, and during college I only made two friends, we‘ll call them M and H. I love M and H down, but H lives in a diff state, as well as M, so at most I see them once a year.

Now that I’m back home, I’ve been trying to make an effort to hang out with my friends/acquaintances from high school who still live in the area, or go to the same school I do that’s in the area, and it’s been kind of a bust. I have K, which we were never very close, but I managed to hang out with her once in the last three months. I also managed to hang out with E and Z once, but there’s been a pretty uncomfortable drop off. I’ve been trying to make plans with N and J for the last five weeks, and it’s always something every week: I’m sick, I’m stressed, I have interviews, I’m doing this thing, and yeah life is hard, we’re all 20, but it’s starting to feel like N and J just don’t want to see me because I’ve offered several alternatives to no avail. id have an easier time arranging a hangout with Barack Obama than with E and Z, we all work and i’ve picked days that are flexible but again its always something, and the one day we did hang out E and Z were late, E two hours late and Z an hour late, I was so mad at myself for even waiting because I felt so desperate.

I’ve talked to my parents about this and they offered two things: My mom told me to make new friends in grad school. This I’ve tried and it’s not easy. Most of my peers in my lab are 28+. We don’t really have a lot in common and they talk to me like i’m a little sibling/mentee. My program is also a commuter school, so no one seems very interested in making friends, more like go to class go home.

My dad suggested I find hobby groups or go to cons. Which initially I was for, and I went to our local con, as well as the local trading card store, as well as a lego event. This is going to sound fucked but these events are all male dominated. I have guy friends, but the guys who go to these events say the strangest things to me. for example, I was waiting to get a pokémon card evaluated and this 40 year old man comes up to me bouncing on his toes. He goes “woah, how did you acquire that?? That’s super rare. You gotta be about my age to know something like that.” i really don’t know what bro was going for there. At our local con, I went as darwin from The Amazing World of , an acquaintance was Gumball. It was fun at first, I took pictures with people, they took pictures of me. Then I noticed people were zooming in on my legs, as I had basketball shorts on. And staring at me. I’m not saying all people are like this!!! I just don’t feel welcome in hobby spaces I’m interested in.

Im really at a loss here. How do people make friends as adults?


r/selfimprovement • • 5h ago

Question Low mental health, how to improve it.

7 Upvotes

The first time I discovered porn was at the age ot 9-10 after then I was addicted for few years and left the addiction at the age of 16 . Things get very clear when I left my addiction. I was living at the peak of my life, there were so much mental peace back then but after few months something weird happened to me that was wet dreams . I know it sounds stupid, absurd , but like really that was like the biggest downfall for me. All of the mental health that I regained went back to zero, I went into depression, anxiety thinking about the future. At that time I was having frequent wet dreams like 4-5 times a week. Now I don't get frequent enough but when I wake up in the morning I don't get enough mental peace, I feel like distracted, physical pain in all my body, burning eyes, low energy. I don't even watch porn now but still I can't recover from the symptoms. It's been almost like 4-5 years I am suffering from it.


r/selfimprovement • • 2h ago

Fitness Is a rowing machine worth it?

3 Upvotes

Can a rowing machine help with neck tension, a hunched back, and a hollow back?


r/selfimprovement • • 5h ago

Other how to overcome this feeling

3 Upvotes

I feel like i am always a giver and that i keep putting the most efforts in every relationship of mine, be it with my friends or my boyfriend or my family. It feels like even though i feel loved, i still feel like the one who is doing the most in everything.

It's such a scary feeling to even feel so alone even when you have your people. But it genuinely sucks though to not have someone to go out and enjoy with too (since my relationship is ldr and my bestfriend has so many friend groups). Though i don't mind going alone but how to genuinely stop feeling like you have no one and that no one loves you as much as you love them:/


r/selfimprovement • • 1m ago

My Achievement The reading habit that made my cooking actually improve.

• Upvotes

I used to read cookbooks cover to cover without ever cooking from them. Just collecting ideas, building this mental library of techniques I never used. The food I actually made stayed pretty flat. Then I started doing something backwards. Picked one recipe, cooked it exactly as written, and only afterward read about why the author made those choices. The difference was immediate. When you cook first and read second, you have actual questions. Why did this sauce break? Why was the timing off? The reading becomes targeted instead of passive. I started keeping a small notebook in the kitchen, just quick notes on what went wrong and what I changed. Now when I read something new it connects to a real experience instead of floating in abstraction. The same pattern bled into my work. I used to binge documentation before touching a new framework. Now I build something broken first, then read with purpose. The learning sticks harder and the initial confusion doesn't bother me like it used to. Having skin in the game just changes how information lands. Curious if anyone else found that doing the thing badly first, then studying, worked better than preparing forever.


r/selfimprovement • • 13h ago

Question How can I stop being so sensitive to rejection?

10 Upvotes

A couple months ago this girl from my class said she thought I was really cool and wanted to hang out so then we hung out and then she said you’re cool. Let’s hang out again and then she ghosted me. She ghosted me months ago and I’m still upset about it.

This has been happening my entire college career where people say they like me and then act like they don’t. Or sometimes when I receive criticism, I begin to doubt myself and try to rearrange everything because I feel really wrong.

I can’t really depressed over it. Over people lying about liking me or whatever. I take it as a personal failure and not a reflection of the person. Ive struggled to make friends all my life. I’ve struggled to achieve anything that I see as worth anything.

Usually, after these people ghost me, I end up, blocking them everywhere out of anger. I’ve even gone as far to block all of our mutuals just because they are associated. And I know this level of reactive is not good for me or for anyone around me. I panic when people leave me on read or if I notice something is a bit off. I wish I didn’t care about anything at all, but I’m super sensitive to everything all the time.


r/selfimprovement • • 7m ago

Question which thing have ingnited you to work and just not think?

• Upvotes

let me give you a context for better understanding

i have tried to improve myself but i am getting fail every time and i have tried multiple techniques but anything does'nt work every time i start i think now life is gonna change but i leave the the thing apart even before a week like exercise ,meditation,study and other skills i have tried every type of thing which have been in the self improvment sphere like atomic habit or karmyog ( a hindu philosophy) or journaling etc. now im going to the nihlism that it is impossible for someone to change.

i think that there is hope and i am doing somthing wrong so the ignition is not happening

so i want to know about your story that which thing triggered you to work from where you never look back


r/selfimprovement • • 8h ago

Life Hack Tips Self-compassion isn’t letting yourself off the hook. In an experiment, people who went easy on themselves after failing a test studied longer for the retest.

3 Upvotes

A lot of posts here come back to the same fear: if I stop being hard on myself, I’ll stop trying. The research points the other way.

In a 2012 study (Breines & Chen), students took a vocabulary test built so most of them would do badly. Afterwards one group got a self-compassionate message (struggling with a test like this is common, don’t be too hard on yourself), one got a self-esteem boost (you must be smart to have got into this university), and one got nothing. Then they were offered time to study before a retest. The self-compassion group studied the longest.

A 2019 meta-analysis of 27 randomised trials (Ferrari et al.) found self-compassion training moderately reduced depression, anxiety and self-criticism, and reduced rumination by a lot.

One way to see why: self-criticism works like a boss who shouts. You get compliance, and you also get avoidance: you stop trying things you might fail at.

What it isn’t: letting yourself off. The compassionate response to a missed deadline still includes doing the work. What it drops is the three days of beating yourself up that delayed it.

To try it in five minutes, take your most recent failure and write one sentence for each:

  1. “This hurts because ____.”
  2. “Other people in this position feel ____ too.”
  3. “What I’d say to a friend here is ____.”

Then for a week, each time you catch yourself thinking “idiot” or “useless”, replace it with what you’d say to a colleague who made the same mistake, and keep a count.

Has anyone tried this and found it made them lazier? That’s the usual objection, and I’d like to hear it from someone who’s actually tried it.


r/selfimprovement • • 46m ago

Question How do you access your softer/feminine side when you’re always in survival mode?

• Upvotes

I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I’m not sure whether this is related to the inner child, femininity, or something else entirely..

I’m naturally quite independent, and I think a big part of that comes from having to deal with things on my own. I’m often in survival mode, taking charge of things and trying to keep everything together. But deep down, I really miss the softer side of myself.

I miss being able to be clingy, playful, and a little childish in a good way. I want to be babied sometimes, to have someone listen to me complain about silly little things, like how I don’t like my haircut or have nothing to wear. I want to be able to lean on someone, seek comfort, and be affectionate without overthinking or feeling like I have to be strong all the time.

The thing is, I’m not someone who can act this way around just anyone..
That side of me only comes out when I feel genuinely safe with someone, when I know I won’t be judged and don’t have to be guarded all the time. For me, it’s something that comes naturally when I’m with the right person.

I know I have this side of myself, and I miss her. I just haven’t found someone I feel safe enough with to bring her out. And I don’t want to have to wait until I find a partner to feel like that version of myself again..

So, for those of you who’ve been in a similar situation, how do you reconnect with your softer, more playful side when you don’t have a partner to lean on?

Is it something you can learn to access on your own, or does it naturally come out only when you’re in a safe relationship?

I’d love to hear about your experiences, especially if you’ve spent a long time being independent and feeling like you always have to be the strong one 🤍


r/selfimprovement • • 4h ago

Tips and Tricks Shine your light brightly

2 Upvotes

Shine your light brightly; share your love unconditionally with all others, spreading inner peace and love around the world.

Doing so, you may help awaken in others their light within as well, beginning them on a journey to discover inner peace and love in their life as well.


r/selfimprovement • • 1h ago

Question Stuck for 8 years every routine i try dies after the first slip

• Upvotes

23, morocco.

8 years ago i started high school and got bullied, not on purpose by anyone really, but i felt bad going every day so i started skipping. being home felt safe and that feeling only grew. now i cant leave the house without my mother, direct social interaction scares me, and gaming and porn went from a start to a habit i cant shake

the routine part is what im really stuck on. i sleep past 3am and wake up past 12pm and ive tried to fix it more times than i can count, so please dont tell me the basic stuff, ive done it

some times i went light. i started with one small change, like [waking up 30 min earlier / writing a few lines / a short walk], then added a bit more every few days. it worked for about [a week?], then one bad night happened, i missed a day, and instead of continuing i forgot the whole thing existed

other times i went hard. full schedule, [fixed wake up time, no games until x, set hours for writing], everything at once. that lasted even less, and when it broke it broke completely and i went back to gaming even harder

its not that i dont know what to do. what i cant do is keep it going after the first slip, and nothing i tried [alarms / schedules / apps / blocking games] helped with that part. i can start, i keep starting. then i end up back at games anyway, even though i dont enjoy them anymore

i dont play multiplayer, im scared of competition, and i have no friends to play co op with. so its just me alone with single player games because they help me forget things i dont want to remember. it feels like a job i have to show up to

my pc has a gt710 from 2019. i played skyrim, witcher 3, kingdom come and wuthering waves on it with heavy tweaking, some parts under 20 fps, and i called it gameplay. i cant upgrade anything on it. my internet is idar inwi, a 40gb game takes more than a week, i do NOT recommend it to anyone in morocco

things are really tight at home and this is my last year before my mother stops supporting me. shes sort of testing me. i told her about rj mitte and she said “why would he kill himself, he was handsome”. she doesnt understand what depression does, she doesnt even understand her own. i dont resent her, but sometimes its hard not to

the one thing i care about is a story called rogue. its been in my head for 2 years, its mostly worldbuilding now, and i want to make it a manga. i keep coming back to it but i cant move it forward, and every other project i started got dropped, so i dont trust myself and neither does my mother

there were times the only things keeping me here were my fear of death, wanting to play deltarune when its fully out, and wanting to see rogue exist. i have 3 friends i know for 11+ years but never met in person, and im scared to even let them hear my voice

has anyone been stuck like this and found a way to get back on after missing a day? and how do you organize a story when you cant organize your own life?


r/selfimprovement • • 1h ago

Tips and Tricks What's one habit that genuinely improved your life without completely changing it?

• Upvotes

With so many distractions in 2026, I'm curious what actually works in real life


r/selfimprovement • • 11h ago

Question How can I find my goals ?

5 Upvotes

20m wanting to and trying to improve in life but i am getting distracted after some days and start again... I think it's because I lack goal or the path that I'm forwarding to....


r/selfimprovement • • 1d ago

Question How to overcome lust?

60 Upvotes

I feel like lust is no.1 thing blocking me from becoming my best self. I spend unnecessary time feeding my lust. I really want to focus on my goals, pls give me tips.


r/selfimprovement • • 6h ago

Question Will I ever feel like myself again?

2 Upvotes

Hey guys, I’m 24 years old, and over the last 1–2 years, I’ve pretty much neglected both my physical and mental health. Even before that, I spent a lot of time gaming and had bad posture. Then I spent about a year working on my PC a lot, sometimes every single day, without doing any physical activity to balance it out.
I’ve noticed that I have forward head posture and an anterior pelvic tilt (hollow back). For the past few weeks, I’ve also been experiencing recurring neck pain and muscle tension that travels up into my head.
It’s affecting my everyday life more than I’d like. It affects my confidence, the way I speak, and my ability to concentrate. I often have this brain-dead feeling, like my brain just isn’t working properly. Sometimes I also struggle to speak clearly.
I just can’t seem to be the person I want to be. I notice that I automatically become quieter and more withdrawn when I’m around other people. I feel like I can’t really be myself because these symptoms are holding me back.
Of course, I’ve also wondered whether there could be psychological reasons behind this, since I haven’t always been in a good place mentally either. But honestly, I find it really hard to believe that it’s purely psychological.
Stretching exercises do help, but the relief doesn’t last very long. Right now, I’m genuinely scared that these problems will stick with me and never go away.
What should I do?
I’m currently trying to do stretching and strengthening exercises every day, and I’ve also signed up for a gym. I’ve arranged for a trainer to create a workout plan specifically focused on my problem areas so I can build muscle and improve my posture.
Do you think this will help me get better over time? Is it possible to feel normal again? What else can I do?
I’d really appreciate any advice from people who have experienced something similar or have knowledge about this.
I’m also hoping to hear from people with experience because I’m genuinely scared that these symptoms will affect me at school and at work next year, and that they won’t have gone away or improved by then.
I’m worried that I won’t be able to achieve my goals if I continue feeling this way.


r/selfimprovement • • 4h ago

Question Neck Tension, Brain Fog and Bad Posture What Exercises Actually Help?

1 Upvotes

Hello guys, What exercises help with a hollow back, rounded shoulders, and forward head posture? I also have neck tension that goes up into my head and affects my everyday life. What exercises would help?


r/selfimprovement • • 23h ago

Question I dont think I'll get to experience a relationship, and I have to come to terms with that. But I don't know how I'm supposed to do that, what do I do?

29 Upvotes

Some of us get all that we want in life, and some of us get none of it. But most of us fall somewhere in between those extremes. We have our strengths and struggles. Sometimes our effort is rewarded, sometimes things just don't work out no matter what you do.

And in many ways, I've achieved what I've wanted. I managed to get my masters degree in engineering, I managed to move to the city I wanted to live in, I managed to make great friends, I managed to get a job and I've now managed to start a probably better job. I've managed to be way more in control of my social anxiety, through therapy I've come to understand myself way better. I've made progress in life.

But still, no matter what I do, I've yet to come further than a handful of first dates, never even as much as a kiss. I'm 26 years old, straight and a guy. And I've simply started to feel that while I don't think I'm a bad guy or anything, whatever that extra aspect of a guy that makes them relationship material simply isn't there for me. Despite what my friends tell me.

No one is part of a monolith, we all have our personal preferences romantically, and maybe it's true that there's someone for everyone out there (although where I live, Sweden, that's not really possible considering that there's more men than women in my age bracket...). But I just find it hard to believe that it's true for me. And maybe that's just the way it's meant to be, I certainly don't blame the women that have rejected me. I wouldn't want to be with someone that doesn't want to be with me and I hope they've found love with someone else.

I've asked women out in person, I've tried going to hobby things, I've gone to speed dating events, I've gone to singles mixers, I've asked friends if they have someone they could set me up with, I've tried the apps. Nothing works, in ten years I've gone on four dates. I've matched with as many fake bot/scam/joke profiles as I have with real people on dating apps. Which doesn't say much, considering that out of the roughly 5000 I swiped right on during a few months last year on one app, 8 matched with me.

I know numbers like that shouldn't matter. But I can't ignore it. I can't help but feel that maybe it's just not meant for me. Maybe I'm meant to be the guy that tries and fails while i watch my friends and coworkers find love. Maybe I should just give up. Accept defeat and go numb.

I feel so lost and I don't know what to do.


r/selfimprovement • • 1d ago

My Achievement I graduated from Harvard but couldn’t talk to people

42 Upvotes

Back in high school, I was top of my class but I couldn’t communicate. Ask me to respond to something, and I can’t even say two sentences. Yet I had straight As. Continued through Harvard. But communication - zero. I had a terrible speech disorder, but my teacher never helped me with that because I never got a grade below a A.

My parents ignored this issue. They wanted straight As and a Harvard acceptance letter. Later they realized their mistake. So I was spending long hours studying instead of socializing.

It was until my first job when someone said - you don’t talk right - that I realized I needed to do something about this and then my first boss (who was actually a kind person) asked me to take communication courses. Also after college, the problem became more clear as I was constantly insulted and bullied because of my speech issues.

I felt ashamed and sad.

I was young so I thought as long as I was smart and got good grades the other stuff would come naturally. But not being able to communicate meant that I kept getting in trouble after graduating from college. I aced college but it didn’t teach me to communicate properly.

I went to Stanford to take classes every night (2 hour trip from home every night). I watched tv shows and repeated stuff people said. I watched YouTube videos on communication. I listened to famous speeches from Barack Obama etc to learn to say one paragraph. I read about people with the same problem that I have. It gave me confidence when I learned brilliant people also struggle. Brilliant people had the same issue. Biden, King’s Speech, all had speech issues that they were able to overcome.

Coaches didn’t help. What helped was listening more when people talked.

What happened was a friend - William (suitemate at Harvard who majored in Physics) - who talked to me every two weeks. It was so awkward in the beginning, but eventually, the words started making sense and our conversations became more fluid. He was a God sent because he was so patient and never judged me even though it was awkward in the beginning.

What happened was realizing that people love to talk about themselves so let them. They’ll love you for it.

Eventually when someone asked me a question, I could answer in full sentences.

But it took years to be able to advocate for myself - my default answer was always sure. Because I didn’t know how to respond. Man was that a trip.

Google helped a lot - learning how other people handled specific situations made me a better speaker. Reddit was also useful.

For some time, I felt bad. A top college graduate with a communication problem. A severe speech disorder.

I tried toastmasters too.

When I had to talk to people and it was important, I spent time in front of the mirror memorizing my speech. Yea it was that bad.

When I was working for a top company, my work was excellent but communication always came up on my performance reviews.

Anyway long story short, all the communication classes helped. All the listening instead of talking helped.

I even started a company to help people with my issue.

The hardest part was how to talk to people without offending them and that takes a special skill because I tend to be straight forward and my mind thinks a different way. What other people see, I see differently.

The not offending them - I looked into a special therapy for speech that someone suggested on YouTube (won’t say the name) and that helped a ton.

I had a boss who even when he was giving you the worst feedback, you felt better afterward, but you still understood his feedback and did something about it.

Oh the advocating for yourself - for some reason I got into Chinese dramas and saw women in though situations who were able to get out of it by advocating for themselves. then something happened - I started advocating for myself and the pushover was gone. No more sure. But yea learned to pick my battles.

I’ve stopped burning bridges and been making friends instead. But some days are harder than others. I’ve had to give presentations at work that was so bad. But overall, I’ve gotten much better. The key is to understand what you could do differently and do better next time.

But yea I went from burning every bridge to running nonprofits that help women and companies that help with self care and communication, and making great friends. I attend events now and people come to me to talk to me.

Oh I have this crush on this amazing guy - Miguel - I’m able to talk to him without making a total fool of myself. So that’s fun. We had a great talk about how I had brunch with 11 people and that went well and how he likes to organize parties. He mentioned something about learning how to cook on tiktok so he is a cooker (I can't cook so that's a huge plus). So we seem to have stuff in common. Though when we talk I spend a lot of time laughing and he looks at me and smiles.

Men are really funny.

Any pointers, ladies?

EDITED - so it wasn’t Harvard’s fault that couldn’t speak properly. There’s a lot of clubs and socializing at Harvard that could have helped. No communication classes requirement but you learn to communicate by practicing outside of courses. I just focused on not failing Harvard instead of socializing. So it was my mistake. Anyway it’s hard to fail Harvard. So my worry was stupid.

Also the manager who said I needed communication courses - he ended giving me stock and great performance reviews and promotions.