Avi Arya talks about overcoming stammering and obesity, driven by his mother's belief in him. He argues that making others feel special unlocks their potential, and credits this mindset with becoming one of India's highest paid social media speakers.
Foreign. Hi, good evening everyone. This is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet moguls. I hope you're all having a fantastic Sunday. And I just finished a workout. And you know, after workout, the body, physiology, psychology, everything goes through a shift and I don't know what happens inside the body, but it feels really good. You feel fresh, you feel good and you want to talk to people. You want to share your message even louder with everybody in this world. So all of you who have been following me for a while understand that I'm on this journey to let people know that I was 120 kilos odd. 118, 122 between that range. And I used to stammer as a child. My mom used to take me to class, special classes. Used to call them special classes where I used to feel special because the speech therapist used to make me feel really good. My mom used to be with me, I have two other siblings. And as a kid I used to always love the attention that I got. Undivided attention because my mom is there, the speech therapist is there. I was made special. So I believed I was in a special class. And because I've felt special, I became better and I don't stammer anymore. It's been years that I've, you know, I don't even remember it. Thanks to God, you know, and my parents and all of that. The point I'm trying to make are multifold in this video. If you believe that the situation that you are in and that whatever is happening in your life is because you are special and you are loved by even one person, you'll either do it for yourself or you do it for that one special person. I wanted to improve. I wanted to do it for my mom. Later in life when there were debate opportunities in school, I was an overweight child who had just about gotten over his stammering. To be able to go and make speak in front of couple of hundred people on stage. Impossible. That's not happening. But I'm so close to my mom and she made me promise. She said, you're going to do it. You are going to do it, abhi, there's no question. And she said, I'll write your speech. I like to write now and I think I'll write pretty okay. It all came from my mom. So she wrote a speech. During those days, the Ramayan fever was very prevalent and everybody was watching Ramayan and you know, streets were empty and you know, the whole of the whole country from 9 to 10 or 9:30 to 10:30 in the morning was doing nothing but watching Ramayan. So she wrote a speech and I think she got a little carried away. She wrote 10 pages. And later I realized they were not 10 pages, they were 10 pages back to back. So they're about 20 pages. And because a story has to have a beginning, middle and end, it has to have a theme. And you respect the writer and all of that, you do not compromise on the writing, on the script. So I'm not allowed to miss anything. And the first thing that is coming to my mind is, oh my God, I have to reach these 20 pages. I'm going to be sweating bricks. I'll be dying, people will be laughing. All of those things will be happening to me. And I'm praying that something changes in my life so that I don't have to go through that. I'm almost wanting to bring on a fever. I don't know if I was in standard seven or eight or something. I was almost, you know, wanting to praying to bring on a major fever or something that I have to miss school and this doesn't happen. Guess what happened. The day came, the morning came. I was sweating bricks. Nothing happened. I went to school, I got on stage. The first row was my closest friends. And you know, what your closest friends do to you in school, you know, they can be ruthless. So they laughed. And when they laughed, there was a ripple effect. It went throughout the school, the auditorium, and almost everybody was laughing. And then it was so long that then people from laughing, they started yawning. And then from yawns they were, they were booing. So in those excruciating 20 minutes or 25 minutes, I went through pain, agony, you know, shame, you know, wanting to die on stage, get lost, whatever, everything. And something at the end happened when I got off stage and everything happened and all of that. I think after that a lot of things died inside me. My fear of being on stage died, my fear of being ridiculed died. My fear of shame died. And what sprouted was that if I am made to feel special, I can do anything. And so I'm 43. My mom is 25 years or 20 years older to me, so she's 63. And she still continues to make me feel special. Every time I get on stage, I touch my parents feet and I leave the house and she sends me a message, you do well. And I'm, you know, and you're amazing. And you're my guru. And whatever she says or everything she says to make me feel special again. And I do feel special. Instant thing, ritual. I feel special and I go on stage and I start owning it, regardless of the performance of the day. I feel special and I feel great, and I feel loved. And that flows through me. And when people listen to me speak, they say, avi, I felt loved, I felt cared. I felt that there's an elder brother speaking to me. I felt that. You know about anxiety, you know about depression, you know about speech therapy, you know about stammering, you know about being ridiculed if you're overweight and all of that, you. You feel connected. Because then I'm not hiding anything. And I have no shame in hiding and talking about my story of the past or what I'm going through or like every human being goes through, because I'm allowed to feel special by one person. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you're a parent, make that child feel special. If you're a spouse, make your spouse feel special. If you're, if you're a student, if you're a teacher, make your students feel special. If you're a student, make your teacher feel special. Make that one person who's going through something in life feel special. And the boundaries that they can cross, the limits that they can sort of achieve, are boundless just because a human being is allowed to feel special. So on a Sunday afternoon, actually evening, I just finished my workout, feeling really good. And my message to you, all of you people watching this video is allow one person in your life to feel special. Send them this video. Send them a message from your heart. Send them one thing that will allow them to feel special. And you don't know what all they can achieve just by one video share or one message. Thank you very much for watching. This is ABHI Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a street car racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer, founder of Internet moguls, signing off. Take care of.
