Rob AndersonLead Coach/ Principle Owner, Stand Sure Coaching · Spending time in collaborative conversations with clients

From Panic to Peace: My Reading Journey

26 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief personal monologue, the speaker recounts how, as a child, they experienced intense anxiety during school read‑aloud sessions, meticulously counting paragraphs and rehearsing silently to avoid embarrassment. Over time, that fear transformed into a calming, solitary reading habit. Now they start each day with a Kindle loaded with hundreds of books, coffee, and quiet mornings, describing reading as a source of peace rather than panic. The narrative highlights the shift from performance‑based anxiety to self‑directed enjoyment of literature.

Chapters

I used to panic every time we had a read aloud in school. I'd count ahead, figure out which paragraph was going to be mine, and rehearse it over and over in my head. And I never heard a word anyone else said. Now, here I am with my Kindle before my day begins and a few hundred books loaded up on it. I read for me. Quiet mornings, Coffee in hand, getting lost in the story. It's not anxiety anymore. It's peace. Funny how something that once felt terrifying now feels like it's home.