How 10 Minutes Can Change Your Entire Day

The fourth blog about the new communication skills mini course, Speaking Persuasively.

How 10 Minutes Can Change Your Entire Day

If you have ever said, I don’t have time to work on how I communicate (especially concerning my spoken English), this is for you.

Even just spending 10 mins can matter, it can assist you to shift your perspective and reset. Quick fixes in communication skills can be life-enhancing. Tiny habit, big impact!

The activities that I have been introducing in this series of Speaking Persuasively blogs all work towards transforming how you communicate and can be applied to lots of situations in life when you need to speak well and influence other people in some way.

Real people and real lives

One of my Functional Skills learners recently asked me to help him with the talk/presentation element of the qualification. He was not a native speaker of English, so English was his second language. He was worried as he knew that his pronunciation sometimes made his spoken English difficult to understand. He lacked confidence in using the English that he knew. He realised that he also spoke too quickly when he was nervous and mumbled. His tone was quite monotone and his friends had told him that his voice was not helping him put across what he wanted to say. But what he had to say (the content) was great - it was the way he was saying it that was causing the trouble. This made him anxious and uptight when he had to give a talk. Especially if it was in front of a class of students and if he had to answer questions at the end. He also realised that his spoken English might hinder him in other situations, such as when he went for job interviews. He wanted to learn to relax before he had to present so that he was in the right frame of mind and could perform at his best. He also wanted to ensure that everyone in the audience could engage easily with what he was saying so that his voice was interesting and pleasant to listen to (especially if they had to listen to it for some time) and that they could understand what he was saying.

We did some work together, using some of the elements of the Speaking Persuasively course and the tips in this series of blogs. The activities and exercises were perfect for him. They helped him to relax and target specific areas of the body that often get particularly tense. They helped him to become more aware of how he was communicating - not just through his voice, but also as he was ‘speaking’ through his body language. And therefore the way he stood or sat, his facial expressions, his gestures and his movement were all part of communication, not just his voice. I gave him practical exercises that could be used as a way of warming up before talking in challenging situations, but that could also be used on an ongoing basis (to practise everyday or several times a week) to transform how he spoke so that his voice became a powerful, positive tool.

Success!

He followed my advice and he progressed very quickly so that he passed the talk/presentation part of the Functional Skills with no problems. And he really enjoyed the activities and exercises. Learning is so much easier and rewarding when you are enjoying the experience (even though at times it may take you out of your comfort zone!). The wonderful thing about learning is that you are experiencing new things in a safe environment. And it does not matter if you get things wrong. Making mistakes is a valuable aspect of the learning journey.

In this blog, I will give you a quick exercise that you can do while reading it! - another quick fix!

The following activity is something that will help get your mouth working so that it can be an expressive tool.

You simply have to imagine that you have a very large piece of chewing gum in your mouth and chew it. You should chew in an exaggerated fashion, so that all the muscles in and near your mouth will ‘wake up’ and function how you want them to.
Keep chewing for as long as it takes you to read to the end of this blog, and if you feel you need to do more to really ‘wake up’ your mouth, then repeat the whole thing again.

The NTSs Speaking Persuasively course is the easiest way for you to turn your 10 mins practice into something really powerful and which can have lasting effects. It is a mini course, so it will not take long to complete. Like all the NTSs courses, there is also access to the NTSs (official) community included as well for free so that you can further enhance your learning by joining discussions and collaborating with others who are also wanting to develop and learn.

Next Up: Your Next Cup Of Tea Could Be the Start Of A Calmer, More Productive And More Successful Life

In the final post of this series, I will explore the importance of tone in the voice and how cultivating a pleasant tone that people like to listen to is essential to speaking persuasively. As always, I will include an exercise that is easy to do.

🔕 Click here to read the final post → Your Next Cup Of Tea Could Be the Start Of A Calmer, More Productive And More Successful Life

Categories: : Speaking Persuasively