have you ever been in a situation let's say a meeting where you start to share an idea but you struggle to articulate your thoughts clearly you might stutter because you're trying to find the right words to use you might start a sentence and then stop in the middle or you might try to link your thoughts together only to realize that nobody understands what you're saying no matter what you do you can't seem to communicate your thoughts in a way that other people can easily understand this inability to articulate your thoughts clearly is extremely common and
the first reason why this happens is you jump in too fast meaning you haven't spent enough time thinking about what you want to say before you start speaking you just start speaking and then hope that you're going to work out what you're going to say as you go along I'm not saying this doesn't happen if you're practiced in putting your thoughts together and you know your content well then it's likely you'll be able to put your thoughts in order and sound articulate but for most people speaking of the cuff in a spontaneous kind of way
can be really challenging and it often leads to people stumbling on their words mixing their thoughts up and not linking their thoughts together well without giving yourself enough time to think about what you're going to say it increases the likelihood that you won't be able to organize your thoughts or articulate them clearly to carve out the time you need here are some ideas you can try during meetings plan out what you want to say before the meeting give people a chance to speak first so then you have an opportunity to put your thoughts together and
work out what you want to say or establish expectations with everyone say I have an idea I'd like to share with everyone but it's an idea in progress so please bear with me as I try to flesh it out the second reason you can't articulate your thoughts clearly is because you try to communicate too much information at the one time you're overloading your mind and your audience with too much information everything think is all jumbled together you don't have a clear idea on how your ideas are separated or linked together and because you don't have
a clear idea on that your audience doesn't either this can happen because you might have a lot to talk about or you might be excited or really nervous whatever the reason what you need to remember is that less is more when it comes to good communication simplifying your communication and reducing the number of points that you want to talk about will help give you a manageable amount of information to communicate and when it's manageable for you you will be a lot calmer and you will be better able to put your mental energy into articulating those
thoughts well what I recommend you to do is to pick out two to three main points that you want to talk about in your conversation piece flesh each idea out one by one adding in additional details as you feel necessary and try not to stray from these main points this will give you structure it will stop you from jumbling all of your ideas together and it will make it easier for your audience to understand as well the third reason you don't articulate your thoughts clearly is because you don't understand the problem or the question if
you're asked a question that you don't understand you might try to answer that question anyway you might try to articulate some kind of answer that you think answers the question but what you say doesn't make sense or it doesn't adequately answer the question that was asked of you simply because you don't want to admit that you didn't understand or you don't know this kind of response doesn't make you look good it does not make you look articulate in fact it can potentially make you look incompetent instead what you need to do if somebody asks you
a question or poses a problem and you do not understand what they've said to you you need to spend time clarifying the question clarifying what they have just said clarifying isn't something that you should be embarrassed about in fact it makes you look like you are interested in the conversation it makes you look curious and it makes you look diligent in providing a good answer plus it gives you all the information that you need to know so that you can answer the question in an articulate way could you please repeat the question I don't understand
what you mean could you please rephrase that these two phrases will help you when you need to clarify the question the fourth reason you can't articulate your thoughts clearly is because you try to sound too intelligent in high pressure situations like with senior Executives you might want to appear credible and intelligent to them this can prompt you to use words that are complicated to to use technical jargon that you don't understand or to use sentences that are way too long and complex your focus in this kind of conversation is on looking intelligent rather than articulating
your main message your desire to look intelligent will often cause you to over complicate things when you over complicate things you become confused when you're confused you cannot articulate your thoughts clearly like I said before simple communication is good communication don't focus on finding the most complex complicated words to use use Simple vocabulary don't use long drawn out complex sentences use short Punchy sentences the fifth reason you can't articulate your thoughts clearly is because you use the same vocabulary and sentence structures this leads to communication that is monotonous and doesn't engage your audience and it
doesn't allow your main message to stand out because Blended in with everything else that you're saying making it appear jumbled to your audience to help you separate your thoughts and sound more articulate try to use different vocabulary and different sentence structures but without making it too over complicated like I talked about in the previous point one of the best ways to expand your vocabulary and to learn new sentence structures is to read it is so easy to do but most people read the wrong way what I mean by that is they read the same material
all of the time they don't add variety or read from different news sources or online publication sources to enrich their mind with different vocabulary with different ways of expressing themselves or different sentence structures my challenge for you is to read something new read something you have never read before a topic you have never read before or a type of publication that you have never read before when you read that publication or article highlight or write down the words that you pick up words that you are not normally exposed to highlight or write down the sentence
structures or the Expressions that are used that you are not that familiar with and try to use this vocabulary the expressions and the sentence structures the next time you communicate the sixth reason you cannot clearly articulate your thoughts is because you are anxious anxiety stress and nerves this can all impede our thought process how this happens is when you are stressed it triggers the fight or flight response in you when the fight or flight response is triggered in your body all of your bodily functions go to the parts of the body that matter the most
at that time for fighting or for running so your heart rate increases your blood pressure increases your muscles get ready for action and this process takes away all of the resources from your brain which is where you need them for cognitive function and things like communication or articulating your thoughts clearly so if you are somebody who gets anxious who gets stressed who often feels the fight or flight response in your body then that is probably why you are finding it difficult to articulate your thoughts clearly and in particular difficult to articulate your thoughts clearly on
the spot there are some things you can do to try to combat this breathing is a really helpful exercise that I personally find helpful when I'm feeling nervous or stressed what's important when you breathe is you need to breathe deep take a deep breath in and a trick that I like to use here is to remember to breathe down don't have shallow breathing where your breathing stops roughly around here you need to breathe down and deep so that your breathing expands your stomach if you're in a meeting it's also important to remember why you are
in the room why were you invited why do people want you there what are you adding what contribution are you making to the meeting and believe me you will be able to come up with something of value you will be adding something of value and there is a reason you were in the room you just need to remember what that reason is and if you're put on the spot someone asks you a question you are nervous your thoughts are completely muddled you need to give yourself time to respond say to that person that's a really
good question give me a minute to think about that and take a couple of seconds take a deep breath and try to organize your thoughts the main key points you want to talk about and then communicate them to your audience the seventh reason you cannot articulate your thoughts clearly is because you don't follow the read write speak formula this three-step formula is extremely helpful it will over time help you to reprogram your mind so you can organize your thoughts think clearly and articulate them well it's based on the concept that your speech is a reflection
of your thinking and in order to speak clearly in order to articulate your thoughts clearly you need to get them clear and organized in your mind first I go into this three-step formula in much much more detail in this video right here which you should watch now or save it to your watch later list thank you so much for watching this video I hope you got a lot of value from it if you liked it please hit the like button below subscribe to my channel before you leave and I will see you next week in
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