I was born into a large family, the eldest of 7 boys. We were an immigrant family so we never had the benefit of associating with a lot of aunts, uncles and grandparents. This is important because you get a better understanding of life if you associate with successful people in your immediate family.

I grew up with a lot of fears. I stuttered. Until Grade 4, when I spoke with adults all that would come out was a loud whisper. In Grade 2, I found out I was different. My looks became the subject of kids teasing. Then when they found out I stuttered, they teased me about that. I also found out in Grade 2 that I wasn’t as smart as the other kids in my class. All the other kids had gotten perfect spelling tests and had stars placed next to their names on the bulletin board. I could never get a perfect test, thus no star next to my name.

In Grade 3, the principal called my parents to her office for a meeting. She let me sit outside her office. She told my parents, “Mr. & Mrs. Beyer, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your son Vincent will never amount to anything.”
(She was, no doubt, looking at my inability to speak well and learn well, and didn’t see much promise in me.)

Two weeks before I started high school, our family moved into the country, thus I left behind a best friend and all the kids I had grown up with. I had to restart my life, on my own. Not an easy task for someone who was very shy and couldn’t speak well.

My parents wanted me to continue my schooling in a religious based school, thus I had to take an hour and 15 minute bus ride to school and back every day. Bus rides were spent mostly with me staring out the window, thinking. I mostly thought about my hobby, fixing and riding dirt bikes. We had lots of room to ride in the farm country where we lived.

In Grade 10, I dropped down to Phase 2 English because I didn’t want to have to give a presentation before the class. That same grade, a Phys Ed teacher called me into his office and asked me, “I see you don’t speak with the other boys in the class. Why is that?” I replied, “The way I look at it, sir. If I don’t bother them, they won’t bother me.” One day I tried to call a neighbor girl I liked on the telephone one day only to realize I couldn’t say her name! So when she answered I just hung up the phone. I never did tell her my feelings for her all during high school.

The fall before college, I went on my first date. As soon as we got to the theatre, I froze. It took everything I could to pay for our tickets and walk to our seats. I couldn’t talk the whole night. I was frozen with fear that others could see me with a beautiful girl. A potentially long term relationship ended that night.

I tried to give a presentation in my second year of college and got through my first line, then froze. I had to sit down.

Even though I was deathly shy of people, I landed a great job after completing my college course. Around that time, a friend set me up on a date with a girl he knew in a nearby city. I had recently converted to Christianity, and found out this girl and her family were avid fans of Jesus and the Bible. She was really nice and her family was awesome. Over the months we both fell deeply in love. But after 5 months, our conversations turned toward marriage. That flared up my already active social anxiety. At the 6 month point I couldn’t take any more, and I broke off our relationship.

With my life now spiraling out of control due to social anxiety, I quit my job and my church. My psychiatrist suggested I move out of the house. So I did. I landed a job as a motorcycle mechanic. Speaking with customers was the hardest. Six months later that job ended, and I moved back home. After 3 months of seeing my psychiatrist every 2 weeks, I quit seeing him. It wasn’t helping me.

After a year of floundering, I came to the conclusion there must be a lot of negatives in me. So I thought to myself, I wonder what would happen if I force-fed myself with positives. So, I decided to take my girlfriends advice of memorizing scripture. So I found all the “do” verses in the Epistles, and any other verses that seemed important, and I began memorizing them and speaking them all day long. It worked so well that after 3 days I began looking for work in my line of work. Within 3 weeks I was back working. Social situations were still awkward but I muscled through them with the power I was getting from memorizing the verses.

Shortly after starting the new job, a girl in my church and I began dating. And within a year, we were married.

Because of my lack of inner peace, I could never settle into a job. I would get business ideas and launch out on my own. Now in my early 40’s, and 4 years into decent job, I reached a point where I could no longer work. The medication was not allowing me to get a good night sleep, and I was plagued with the sight of an unfinished 2 storey addition that I had undertaken on our house. This led to me becoming suicidal. I made 5 attempts on my life in a 3 month time span. This was extremely difficult since we had 2 teenage daughters in the house at the time. During my final hospital stay, I figured I couldn’t go back to work, but maybe I could learn how to create a website and post encouraging stories on it. So, with a new mission in life, it was safe for me to be discharged from hospital.

I proceeded to take the next 12 months to work on my recovery, and to learn about making websites. The hospital had set me up to see a counselor every 2 weeks. And I met with my pastor every week. In addition, I went to a weekly 12 step recovery group, and I attended day-programs at the hospital.

Around that time I picked up a large box full of Bible teaching tapes, and whenever I was working on my house or working on my vehicles, I would listen to the tapes.

All of these activities led me to creating a very insightful website, which I launched in February of 2005.

I immediately found out about pay-per-click advertising and used Google and Yahoo to find people who were struggling with suicidal ideations. Every morning I would come down to a new list of emails from people interested in learning how God could help them.

I started offering email support, but shortly after stepped out in faith and tried telephone support. By then, I had found a job far from home which required and 90 minute commute one way. Thus, I began speaking with hurting people during my commutes, 3 to 4 hours per day.

After a couple years, I wanted to develop myself and felt that public speaking would be a good skill to learn. This led me to being involved in Toastmasters. Toastmasters teaches Leadership and Public Speaking skills. A new employer had a lunch time group every 2 weeks at another office in the city. So every 2 weeks I would attend the meetings and learn. I was so impressed with Toastmasters that when elections took place that spring, the club voted me to be President of the club. My first goal was to start a new Toastmasters club in the office which I worked out of. This was a daunting task since there were 600 people who worked there. Management found out about my goal to start another Toastmasters club and they wanted to learn more about Toastmasters and asked me to give a presentation before the top management about the benefits of having Toastmasters clubs. I did, and they fell in love with Toastmasters. And they asked me to start a club in the other 2 offices in the area as well. The first club took me 25 weeks to charter (sign up 20 members). The second club took me 16 weeks to charter, and the 3^rd club took me just 8 weeks to charter.

The great recession of 2009 hit then and many of us lost our jobs including me. This caused me to pause my professional career and start a community peer support agency in the city where I lived. We eventually opened a drop in center in which we were open from 9 till 9, seven days a week. However, funding problems caused us to shut down after 6 months.

Following the shutdown of the drop-in centre, I began writing a faith-based recovery group program for people recovering from anxiety and depression. I completed the initial version and found a church who would rent us their basement every Wednesday for only $25 a month. We got up to 18 attendees at one point. Ten months later I was forced to focus on getting a job again and decided to go out west. I found a job, and flew home every 2 months for a few days. When I wasn’t at work, I would spend my off hours providing peer support to struggling people. And, I would invite people to my recovery group that I held at a church in the city. As well, I offered meetings at the farm house I managed on Saturday nights.

After 4 ½ years out West, with the oil industry dwindled I lost my job and came home. A year later I was encouraged by my group members to publish the program, and after 2 years, the first copies of the program rolled off the presses. It’s called The Victory Tips Program, and can be downloaded for free at www.kobo.com. A print version is also available on Amazon.

Today, we use Zoom and offer 4 conference calls a day. The times are 9 am, 2 pm, 7 pm & 9 pm Eastern Time. Use Meeting ID 4578104950.

We also have a podcast site where you can listen to my story and other people’s victory stories. Go to www.anchor.fm/victorytipsprogram. We also have a radio station that broadcasts these stories. You can go to it here: https://station.voscast.com/5fe270283b912/

If you are reading this story and you could use some help, I encourage you to contact us. We will do our best to offer you daily telephone support to help you learn tips to help you conquer whatever challenges you are currently facing. Then after you are well, we encourage you to join us in helping others get well. You were made to win. Let us help you learn how.