Are you somebody who always seems to be under stress? Do you worry most of the time and feel that you have the weight of the world on your shoulders? For the first twenty-two years of my life, I was constantly down and depressed and used to feel very sorry for myself. This article describes how I managed to break free of this depression to have a fairly stress-free life.

Growing up I felt rather hard done by, that life had not dealt me a good hand of cards. These were the reasons I felt sorry for myself:

I had a speech impediment, known as a stutter

I have a bald patch on my head the size of a ten pence piece

Due to comfort eating, I was overweight

I am quite short for a male at five foot four

Some of the above you may think are quite trivial issues, however for me especially as a teenager they caused me a lot of stress.

Stuttering was the major thorn in my side causing me many problems and traumas. I suffered with this speech impediment for eighteen years before finally managing to beat the problem. I now help other people to achieve fluency.

At the age of twenty-two I started to read a lot of books about positive thinking and also started to take more of an interest in world affairs. This gave me a huge wake up call as it made me realise that I was actually dealt a very good set of cards. There are not many countries I would rather have been born in, the things above that I felt were so terrible are in fact very trivial compared to people who live in parts of Africa, as an example.

I had stressed so much that by the age of twenty-one my hair had already started to turn grey. A colleague at work was also to have a huge affect on my life without him even knowing it. He was a man (I will call him Peter) who had many of his own issues. Peter had learning difficulties, had what I call the shakes, did not have many friends and did not have a girlfriend in the six years that I knew him. I would meet Peter for lunch on most days and he would always have a beaming smile on his face. One day I thought to myself, what have you got to smile about? I then decided that if he could smile then so could I.

I now am very happy with who I am, and if people do not like me, I don't care. Life is so much easier now!