How do I stop myself from talking so fast?

Nov 2

One of the concerns I hear a lot from podcasters is that they feel like they’re talking at a hundred million words per minute. They want to slow down the pace of their speech, but they’re not sure how to make that actually happen.

It can be extremely nerve-wracking to sit down in front of a microphone and prepare to share your voice with the world.

As you’re sitting there, you’re wondering whether you’re going to sound silly.

You may have headphones on and your voice is all of a sudden right up in your ears to a level that you can hear every little thing.

You can hear your saliva and it’s weirding you out.

I’ve heard it all from thousands of different voices at this point in my podcast production career.

So today, I’ve got a few tips for you that will drastically reduce the speed at which you speak and help you feel a lot comfier in front of a microphone.

Step 1: Slow down your breathing

This might feel pretty basic, but a lot of people don’t actually breathe properly. Through decades of singing lessons and stage performances, this is something I’ve learned to do really well and when I coach our clients in proper technique it makes a huge difference.

Before you begin to speak, I want you to take 3 big breaths in through your nose and hold for 3 seconds. Then release nice and slowly.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

Do it right now.

Have you noticed that you’re immediately a lot calmer?

As a performer and public speaker, this was always the first aspect I knew to take care of. If you feel like you have enough breath, you subconsciously know you’re going to be okay and many of those nerves that contribute to speaking fast, will settle down.

Step 2. Have a content plan

There is nothing like a good prompt to keep you on task and slow down your speech.

A lot of podcasters like to freestyle their content, which is great, but it also can lead to a lot of fast-talking rambles. No one likes that.

There are some creators that like to fully script their podcast episodes (especially if they’re repurposing blog posts or articles they’ve already written), and I love to see people repurposing content, but it can tend to make you speak in a weird way.

My recommendation is to take that blog post or script and turn it into a really solid amount of dot points. Ideally within a storyboard, which I talk about on a recent episode of Pump Up Your Pod.

If you have created a bit of a storyboard, and you have solid dot points that you can refer to, you’ll be able to speak at your normal pace knowing that you have your notes to refer to.

Step 3. Don’t fill the silence. It’s okay to be awkward

With nerves comes this need to fill the silence. You don’t want to seem awkward and like you don’t know what you’re talking about. So instead of just taking a pause, you fill the silence with a bunch of “umms, ahs, likes, you know”, and you speak fast to ensure there are no gaps.

You probably don’t do it consciously either.

But please know that it’s totally okay to take a pause. It’s okay to leave that “awkward” silence there for a few seconds. In fact, the more you pause the more intelligent you’ll actually sound.

If you listen to some of the great speakers of our time you’ll notice that pausing is key to hold the attention of the audience.

Let’s take Barack Obama as an example. If you look back at some of his most powerful speeches, he pauses so much it’s almost ridiculous. I recommend checking out this video for a bit of a giggle on this subject.

It’s possible you’re probably not trying to run for President of the United States. Your podcast episodes probably don’t need to hit as hard as that, but the point is that pausing is very effective.

Step 4. Exercise: Talk way too slowly

One of the best ways to get used to speaking slower is to actually over-exaggerate the speed at which you speak. Here is what I recommend you do:

Open up a book, article or magazine and look for a run of text that is a decent paragraph in length.

Read that text aloud in a super slow way, like you’re moving in slow motion. Exaggerate the movement of the mouth. Make your mouth really wide as you speak and focus on stretching out the muscles of your mouth while you’re reading.

You will feel and look absolutely ridiculous doing this exercise, and I give you an example in this video, around the 6min mark so you can see how silly it is.

By moving your mouth around in an exaggerated fashion, and focusing on overdoing your speech, you’ll actually relax the muscles of your mouth and cause your speech to slow down. It’s a pretty neat trick!

Step 5. Get those lips moving

My final tip is something that is hard to describe in writing, so I’d suggest checking out the above video to get a feel for it properly.

I want you to take a big breathe in through the nose and then as you’re breathing out, relax your lips and breathe through them as they wiggle around.

You’re kind of trying to imitate a horse. I want you to try and keep those lips moving all the way through the breath.

This is a fantastic technique for loosening up the mouth and relaxing. It immediately gets you out of your head and into the silly exercise that you’re doing.

See how long you can keep your lips going. You’ll probably suck at it to begin with, but over time you’ll build it up and this increases your breath control.

Learning to talk at a slower pace is going to benefit everyone involved. As the host, you’ll feel more calm and present when recording, your listener will feel more engaged and your podcast editor will thank you for it!

Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod. I am back in your ears to discuss how do I stop myself from talking so fast? Maybe you don't talk as slow as I just did. But I certainly have people come to me and they listen to their self and they go, Oh my god, Brianna, I sound like I'm on cocaine. I'm speaking so fast. I promise I'm not taking drugs, how do I slow myself down?
00:42
And I made a few little tips that I'm going to run through with you today. Nothing is difficult, you will feel like an idiot. And maybe you should engage with this content on YouTube so that you can see what I'm doing and also make fun of me. Totally cool with that. How do you stop yourself from talking so fast?
01:02
The number one thing you need to do is breathe. That seems like a ridiculous thing to have to tell someone to do. But it's very common. So I used to be a performer, I used to be a musician, I used to be a singer. And nerves were a thing that, you know, would happen, it never really bothered me too much. I kind of was just like, whatever, I'll just see how I go. So I didn't get as freaked out as other people. But one of the main reasons why it didn't feel like so nerve wracking is because I'd learned these techniques about breathing from when I was 10 years old when I started doing singing lessons, and I've really taken them with me all the way through my life. Breathing is such a massive part of being able to slow yourself down and regulate the speed at which you're talking.
02:00
So before you sit down to record an episode, I want you to do a few simple breathing exercises. First things first, I want you to sit up straight, because you're probably going to be sitting - back needs to be really tall, and put yourself at the front of your chair so that you're not sitting right back into it. Because as soon as you're sitting back into your chair, it makes you kind of roll yourself over and it actually makes your diaphragm not be able to work properly. So if you sit yourself at the front of your chair, and this is a technique I learned from being in choirs all the way through my life, the most fun thing I've ever done, I love choirs so much, but we always sat at the very front of our chairs, and it forced our backs to be straight. So that's the first thing sit at the front of your chair, so that your diaphragm which is like this large bit of extra lung muscle, it's not really a lung, but it's a muscle that helps you breathe more. I don't want to kind of get too technical with you. So if you can have that sit there and be not crunched up, then you're going to be able to breathe a lot easier. So then once you're sitting in a space where you feel like okay, cool, I'm sitting really tall here, I know what I'm doing, I feel strong, then you start actually breathing. So what you do is breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Okay, so I'm going to do it.
03:30
Now, when you breathe in, I want you to keep your shoulders down. It's really hard, you might have to do it in front of a mirror so that you see what you're doing. But I want you to keep your shoulders down and try and expand your diaphragm which is sitting kind of under your lungs. And when you breathe in through your nose, you should feel this kind of bit, like this extra bit of belly bit, kind of come out. That's your diaphragm actually doing its job and it helps you be able to take in more breath and actually control the breath better too. So, again, shoulders down, look at yourself in the mirror if you need to. And then breathe in through the nose. See how my shoulders if you're watching this on YouTube, my shoulders didn't really move. It's all happening in this air baby. I used to like to call it I'd have this air baby that looked like I was pregnant. And then you breathe out. Okay, so if you do that a few times these big deep breaths then you'll start to feel like meditating, you'll start to feel calmer. And when you feel calmer, you don't speak so fast. You don't feel like you've got anywhere to be. So you can actually slow the pace down just from your breath.
03:43
The next thing that I want you to do to actually slow your pace down is have more of an idea about what you're going to say. So if you're the kind of person that likes to kind of not plan and just go, hey, I'm going to talk about this today, that's cool. But you need to have a few dot points, so that you don't feel like you have to fill silence, because you're trying to think of the next thing by saying more stuff. And if you have a few kind of key points on a computer, or on a piece of paper, or whatever, then you'll be able to glance at it, and recenter yourself.
05:34
The other thing is people kind of feel like, if there is silence, they have to fill it. That happens a lot. They fill it with ums, they feel it with ahhs, they fill it with a bunch of words that don't need to be there. Instead of doing that, allow yourself the time to just take a pause, that's fine. If the pause is long, you can edit it out, or your audio editor can edit it out. But if you talk too fast, it's so hard to edit. Because your words start to run together. And if you say um, and weird things in there, we can't catch all of that because all your words are running together. So the key here is to actually breathe before you start. Do three of those. Have a prompt, some things you're going to talk about, and allow yourself the space to be awkward to pause. Because it's going to benefit you in the long run, your editing is going to be easier. And you actually just seem more like you know what you're doing if you're pausing more, like you know what you're talking about, you're creating that space for someone to engage with what you've just said. They are the key things.
06:55
Now the other thing that really helps you slow down is kind of a ridiculous thing to think. It's actually making your mouth really massive when you're talking. Get in the habit of talking really big like this, not in your actual podcast episodes. But let's say you're reading a kid a book or something. Just read out loud, but read it in a way where it's like, Hello, my name is Brianna. I'm talking very weirdly, with a massive mouth. It actually gets your mouth moving enough that it feels like everything starts to relax. And when your mouth is relaxed, when your face is relaxed, then it's easier to take breaths, take pauses, and feel more connected to what you're saying then everything feeling really tight and like you have to just get it out. So that's the other thing I would say if you feel like you are talking too fast.
08:02
The very last thing I will say on this is a little thing that I learned when I was singing, you take a breath. And then you do this weird thing with your mouth. And again, I would say it would be better for you to engage with this content on YouTube. But what you do is you breathe in and then you go brrrr like this. And that actually loosens up those lips of yours so that it feels like they can move easier as well.
08:29
So you breathe in and then you go brrrr. You look ridiculous. I look ridiculous, but it's okay. And that's another way to relax it. So they the key points if you're feeling like you're like, ahh, I'm talking so fast. I'm on some sort of drug, I swear it's ridiculous. Take those little key points. Take a breath, sit at the front of your chair. Think about what you're actually going to talk about and allow yourself those awkward pauses in order to feel like you can actually get your words out in a calmer and more present manner.