A small habit that changed my life

I started my first job out of college not too long ago (office job) and for the first couple of months I felt completely out of my depth socially. (Had a really rough past so it's hard to socialize and talk to people.)

You had some people who were quiet (like me), most would be chatty, but some were so socially powerful it was like they were like revered, everyone wanted to talk to them and when they did they felt happier having come out of it (me included).

These people were like Olympic gold medallist speakers. I assumed they were like this from birth, but when I spoke to one of them (guy called James) his answer shocked me.

He actually got sent to a special neurodivergent school when he was younger because he was so quiet and shy.

He told me that when he was 18, he decided to start speaking out loud everyday by himself for 30 mins to try deepen his voice. It didn’t work but instead he found out a strange side effect, he could actually talk to people better and more fluently, and talking to people better => side effect of more confidence

He said he talks out loud for an hour every single day, if he doesn’t then after some time, he’ll find his confidence and conversational ability goes down.

I started trying this, and have seen some early success, has anyone else done this?

If you’ve tried something similar or noticed something like this, I’d be really interested to hear what you’ve seen, feel free to DM me, would be cool to dig into it with a few people instead of just doing it alone.