How to Slow Down when Speaking with Pro90d Online Speech Training

Believe it or not. One of the most common speaking challenges that I've run across over the past decade or more is: what do you think it is? It's when people speak too fast. People who find themselves in speaking situations when they're feeling anxious, nervous, or losing their train of thought speed up their speech. This results in mixing up their messages.

All kinds of people suffer from fast speech in certain speaking situations, or it could be someone who stutters or stammers severely, the way that I used to do growing up, believe it or not. Some people speak too fast to make a point and get rushed, and it is just their habits, their pattern of speaking. So let's talk about some of the reasons why some people speak fast.

One is cultural. Depending on your native language, speaking fast is a pattern that is innate. Another reason is simply out of habit. Lastly, and we touched on this in the last series, is anxiety. Fast speakers feel anxiety and rush their speech.

All of these are related, but in terms of culture, where everyone around them speaks the same language, the phonetics of their particular language, and the cultural tendency to speak a language quickly, when trying to speak clearly and slowly, there are challenges that must be unlearned.

I have experience working with many clients from different cultures and languages that favor fast speech. Here are a few cultural examples. Latin American Spanish, Hindi, and many dialects and languages in Africa favor fast speech, When transitioning to English, those who come from backgrounds of fast speech get mixed messages. If you have a problem or if you're challenged with your speech, if you stutter or stammer, then this transition is even harder, and speaking fast can be your worst enemy.

Some situations are worse than others for fast speech. In a professional environment where you need to communicate something and you have an accent, fast speech can interfere. It can be a negative filter, and it can interfere with their understanding and receiving the content and information that you're trying to communicate. So this really isn't about getting rid of your accent. What it's about is being able to enunciate, pronounce, and articulate thoughts.

Another factor is the habit of fast speech, which can follow you in any or every speaking situation. meaning there could be some speaking situations in which you tend to speed up and speak faster and other ones where you don't. If you are feeling a bit anxious and rushed in a meeting, a presentation, or an interview, you may have a tendency to speak faster, to hurry up, and to get through it. However, what happens is that you're speaking fast, you end up using a lot of filler words, and you end up not clearly articulating your thoughts. Complicating the scenario is when you end up losing your train of thought. So that's a pattern, especially when there are other situations where you may speak slower because you're more relaxed.

Whether you default to fast speech out of anxiety, culture, or habit, it can be debilitating to your daily life and your career. So let's talk about some solutions. Here are only a couple solutions; the rest are, of course, available on the Pro90d Smooth Speech System. But one of the things that you can begin to do to help yourself is to tell yourself, "I don't have to rush."

Solutions to Fast Speech

Affirmations: I can take my time and say what I want to say. Affirmations work in advance and in speech; it's not just what you do in the moment; it's what you do in private and mostly in your mind! And all the moments leading up to that moment really count.

Because if you want to change your pattern or your habit, it's going to depend on everything that you do, or the things that you do moment by moment, day by day, week by week, that actually begin to change your patterns in your habits. By practicing affirmations, you are taking control; you're becoming more conscious of how you speak, and you're taking control of your speech in those moments.

The other thing that you can do now is another mental trick, which is just a way of thinking about the way that you speak. Remind yourself that you're not going to let other people determine your pace. You're not going to let outside forces like the people around you, the people on the phone, the people behind the counter, the people in the meeting, or your own thoughts, intimidate you or speed your speech. Most of the time, these are just projections of what they're thinking.

(Deep breath.) I can take my time and say what I want to say. I determine my own pace and my own speed. I'm not going to let other people determine how quickly or slowly I speak.

Keep those things in mind. If you want more and you want a systematic approach to transforming the way that you speak, your mindset, the way that you think, your identity, how you see yourself, how you perceive yourself to be, and how you believe yourself to be, then you're going to want to take action.