I talk for a living - and what no one really knows is that it hasn't always been easy for me to communicate. As a child I had a debilitating speech impediment. I can still hear the dinner lady laughing in my face when the five-year-old me asked for fish fingers, but couldn't get the words out. I still feel sad for the five-year-old Josh who was too shy to say almost anything at all.
Seeing the effect this had on me, my parents took me to a speech therapist. After months of working on my “th”, “f” and “ph” sounds they became passable – if you listen carefully I still can’t say them perfectly. I got my confidence back, but then as a teenage boy I faced a new challenge – my voice didn’t sound like other boys. Everyone else’s voice dropped, mine didn’t, and I became a target for homophobic bullies who teased me mercilessly just as I was still trying to figure out who I was. I shrank inside myself all over again. “If they say I am disgusting, unattractive and unlikeable, then maybe I should hate myself too.”
So, no one is more surprised than me that, now, 10 or so years on from those darkest days, I have found my voice quite literally.
My job is interviewing celebrities, and I have talked to hundreds from every walk of life and mood – from Victoria Beckham to Oprah.
I host my podcast, Reign with Josh Smith, and I can now walk into a room full of strangers and flex my small talk as easily as I can take to the stage and present to hundreds of people. Five-year-old me would never have believed any of that was possible.
If there is one thing my life and work have taught me it’s this: we all have the power to be able to speak to anyone once we commit to mastering the art of conversation in an intentional way. And as rates of social anxiety soar in an era where loneliness is a very modern epidemic, it is the one thing which can help.
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