Overcoming feeling Rushed during Speech with Pro90d Online Speech Training

Have you ever felt rushed and anxious when speaking, like you just wanted to hurry up and get this over with? It could be an important phone call or a meeting; you just start feeling kind of nervous and anxious, and you know exactly why. What usually happens is that you speak really fast, which we're going to talk about because that has its own effects, but generally you don't say all the things that you want to say because you want to hurry up and get out as quickly as possible.

As a result, people don't understand or follow everything that you're saying, even though you're smart, competent, and know what you want to say. Because you're feeling anxious, you rush and speak fast, then do not articulate well. You do not fully communicate your true knowledge and your true skill. This is the second in a series of seven common speaking challenges that we address in Pro90d. The first was Negative Anticipation and in this second, we dive deep into the underlying issues of anxiety.

In this second speech challenge, we are going to talk about something closely related to negative anticipation, which is feeling anxious and rushed. When we refer to feeling anxious and rushed, what are we talking about? Well, you know, if you have something important coming up, and this can happen to any of us, right, something important coming up that may be out of your comfort zone, are there some important people there? The stakes are high, and even without speech difficulties, you can feel a little nervous about performing well. So let's talk about some of the top reasons that people feel this way.

Top reasons that people feel anxious and rushed.

So let's dig into these just a little bit here. One of the reasons that people often feel anxious and rush through things is because they have a fear of what the other person may say about them or may think about how they are speaking. The more authority and influence this person has over them, the more anxious this person feels. If you are in a meeting, virtual or in person, and you are presenting to someone who has a lot of influence over your future, whether promotions or important colleagues whose opinion you respect, then it can often cause much greater pressure, right? Because in the back of your mind, if you start to worry about or think about what this person is going to think of me, And it's important that they see me in a good light, that they have a good perspective or good perception of me; it's important that I make a good impression and that I perform well.

What is actually happening is that you are putting unnecessary extra pressure on yourself, which causes you to experience the opposite of what you want. You won't perform as well when you have that kind of pressure bearing down on you. This is coupled with another related fear. It's not just the fear of messing up; it's the feeling of embarrassment and the projection that people are going to see me as incompetent. What are people going to think about me if I stutter or rush my speech? This impacts our self-esteem and self-image, and we revert back to prior experiences of poor performance for reference. Your brain is now stuck, and the only things that your brain has to go back and look at in order to predict your future performance are bad performances.

You feel anxious about your past and bring it into your current situation or your future speaking experience. How do you stop projecting and working yourself up? What can you do about the thoughts? Well, one of the things that you have to begin to do is to reframe the speaking situation. So when you think about something like an interview or an important meeting coming up, instead of thinking about it as a big meeting that's coming up and hoping I don't mess up, you look at it and speak about it as an opportunity to demonstrate how sharp you are and look forward to demonstrating your knowledge.

There are some very specific things that you can shift your focus over to positive future performance over past poor performance. These are performed in the moment, which helps you keep your focus off of the negative dialogue in your mind. As soon as you get distracted by the dialogue, you want to shift your focus to some very specific things. We go over an entire playbook of how to reframe in our coursework, but one common way is that instead of saying, Oh, my God, this is coming up, and I hope this doesn't happen, you reframe and say, Wow, I'm excited about this. I'm excited to use this opportunity to demonstrate what I know. That is reframing.

Here is another reframing strategy to relieve stress and anxiety through speaking. Change your dialogue to: I don't really care who's there; I'm still going to say what I want to say the way that I want to say it. So it's kind of a way of reframing, but you're telling yourself, I don't care if the president is there; I don't care if the managers are there; I don't care if there are 100 people, 1000 people, or two people; I'm still going to just say what I want to say in the way that I want to say it. Keep reminding yourself that it doesn't matter who they are. I'm going to have other opportunities. You take the pressure off yourself.

Through negative anticipation and reframing, you put unnecessary pressure on yourself. By reframing and setting yourself up to succeed, you're actually giving yourself a fighting chance and setting yourself up to perform well. So when you feel anxious and rushed, generally speaking, it's because of these three reasons. These are three of the most common reasons we rush through speaking and perform poorly, and there are just two ways we can perform better.

In our coaching, we give you very specific mental tools, practice exercises, and things that you can watch and listen to on a daily basis that help you shift your focus and keep your focus where it needs to be. not just in the moment, but leading up to the moment. Just keep this in mind: It's not just what you do in the moment that's important; it's what you do in all the moments leading up to that moment.

So everything that you do every moment of every single day is helping to prepare you for those higher-pressure speaking situations. This is why it's very important to have a scientifically based, tested process that gives you the information that you need to change the way that you think from moment to moment, which leads to changing your speaking style. If you're not communicating well, you're missing opportunities. When you communicate well, you can take advantage of opportunities. The longer you wait, the harder it gets, so why not get started doing something now and invest in yourself?

Pro90d offers self-study, a 7-Day Challenge, and private 1:1 coaching with founder Michael Williams.