48 Proven Methods To Talk More Clearly, Confidently And Slowly [+ Sound More Masculine]

How we say something matters twice as much compared to what we say - Jayne Latz. 

The ability to talk persuasively is practically a superpower. People who never spend the time to study this crucial material, end up losing out in every area of their life. 

But not you! 

Because in the next 10 minutes we’re gonna cover a shit ton of information and you’re going to learn all 48 techniques to talk more clearly, confidently and slowly while sounding more masculine.

Read on - you owe it to yourself!

1. Remove the awkward laugh

The awkward laugh is exactly what it sounds like: you laugh awkwardly due to feeling unsure about what you’re saying or due to plain old social anxiety (lack confidence talking to girls). 

“Haven’t seen you in a while, how are you doing?”

“I’m doing fine, hehe, nice to see you too!”

I’ll admit, maybe that wasn’t my best example, but chances are you have your own version of the awkward laugh and do it more often than you imagine. [1, 2]

Get rid of it, it only ruins your masculine look.

2. Never repeat words

Examples first!

Example 1

“How are you doing?”

“I’m OK-OK.”

Example 2

“Did you clean the office like I asked?”

“Yes, of course, yes”

Example 3

“I got some extra cake, like some?”

“Yes, of course, thank you, thank you!!” 

Explanation

In our 3rd example it’s not the thanking part - per say - that’s the problem, it’s the neediness that’s projected with repeatedly saying ‘thank you’.

Going back to the 1st and 2nd examples, having to repeat “OK” or “YES” multiple times shows social anxiety as you aren’t even sure about your ability to respond to basic requests. 

3. Avoid exaggerating

When you feel confident about the way you communicate, you’ll find that the need to lie or stretch the truth with exaggeration will fall away by itself. 

And consequently, if you become the man whose words others’ can rely on, your confidence will improve. 

Lesson: stand in your truth.

4. Add tonality to your voice

Think of using tonality as a verbal highlighter. It adds emotion and energy to each word and makes each conversation engaging.

When you speak in a monotone voice, people can’t tell when to focus and subsequently zone out.

Interestingly enough, as women are naturally more emotional, they have an easier time with this. 

5. Don’t end each sentence like it’s a question

I’ve only heard of people ending each sentence like it’s a question online, never seen it in person. 

But apparently there are people that end each sentence as if it is a question? And people can’t follow what you’re saying? They also get very easily distracted?

LOL, you get the point. [3, 4]

6. Don’t pitch up

Pitching up commonly happens in tense conversations. 

I see this often with guys who are just starting to approach girls at the bar for the first time and it can be quite emasculating.

7. Use strategic pausing 

Mark Twain said, “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

Pausing allows people to anticipate an important message, think about what you just said and help them visualize your ideas.

So when are the best times to add in a strategic pause?

Isn’t it ironic how silence can be the key to mastering your words? [5, 6]

8. Pause after each sentence

Pausing after each sentence isn’t another version of the strategic pause, it’s about giving yourself a momentary break.

You may ask, why is a momentary break so important? Important question! Here’s the answer:

1. It allows you to talk more clearly as you won’t be smushing 5 sentences together
2. It reduces the amount of filler words your using because you’ll replace “Um” with a moment of silence
3. It gives you a moment to catch your breath and think about what you’re saying

I think the reason why most people - including me - have a difficult time adding normal pauses in our day-to-day conversations is that we are scared that others will take advantage of our silence. 

9. Use the volume of your voice strategically

I grew up with the idea that if I just talked louder, people would pay attention and listen to me. Because of this, my default belief was to talk loudly to everyone.

Did they pay attention to me? Sure! 

Did they care to listen to a word I said? Nope! 

As I grew older and started to study material like this, I learnt that we can use the volume of our voice strategically to gain what we want out of the conversation.

How?

1. Talk more quietly to get people to pay closer attention (or in the case of dating, to get your partner closer to you)
2. Talk more loudly to quickly pull attention towards you (but then follow up with a normal volume and something interesting to say)

So whether your natural inclination is to talk loudly or quietly (from shyness), overcome it and learn to strategically use the volume of your voice. 

10. Expand your vocabulary

Using advanced words correctly may be the fastest way to seem more confident in any conversation.

But before we continue, you must understand that my website, DatingArmory, is not an English teaching site, it’s a place to learn dating! So obviously I won’t give you vocabulary lessons here.

That being said, I want to give you one exercise to try right now so that you can see for yourself the power of expanding your vocabulary: 

Avoid using the work “very” wherever possible. 

For example: 

1. Very bad - awful
2. Very smart - intelligent 
3. Very exciting - exhilarating 
4. Very old - ancient 
5. Very eager - keen
6. Very fierce - ferocious 

Now that you see the power of expanding your vocabulary, what are the best ways to improve it?

1. Avoid using the word “very” 
2. Read, read, read 
3. You can try to go through a dictionary, but you may walk out sounding like an idiot
4. Focus on learning multisyllabic words
5. If you find yourself using the same word repeatedly, find synonyms for it

Hope you enjoyed my little English lesson!

11. Go to improv classes

To me there are 4 main benefits of going to improv classes on a consistent basis:

1. Start to talk with more confidence
2. Meet people just like you (new friends!)
3. Learn to come up with creative responses 
4. Learn to talk more clearly
5. Start to take yourself less seriously 
6. Feel more comfortable talking slowly

If you’re feeling extra risky, you could also try Toastmasters or perform on stage at an open mic. 

12. Know your desired outcome before each talk

Joseph Rodrigues, from his course How to Transform Yourself Into an Effective Communicator for Influence, couldn’t have said it better: 

If you have clarity on what you are looking for, it will be easier to communicate and get the response you are looking for or find the person who is interested in doing the win-win deal. 

In other words, a clear conversation comes from a clear purpose. 

When you know your desired outcome for the conversation, your words are automatically organized for you, you’ll flow through each conversation and you’ll know how to apply each of your strategies.

Bottom line:

Whether you are about to approach a cute girl at the library, call up an old friend or close a business deal, know exactly what you want & do not want from the conversation.

13. Do not start talking right away

Remember how we spoke about strategic pausing? Well, this “strategic pause” happens even before you start talking. 

Let me ask you, what sounds more masculine… 

1. Approaching a girl and immediately start talking without giving her a chance to properly register you
2. Approaching a girl, giving her a couple moments to notice you, and only then starting with your opener

Obviously, option B is much better. 

Those moments of silence show the girl that you’re in no rush and aren’t scared if she moves on i.e. you’re not a needy guy. 

Powerful! 

14. Do not get caught up planning your next response

Arguably the next most important step in talking clearly is not to get caught up planning your responses. 

Here’s what I mean:

You’re having a conversation, right? And while your friend is talking, you’re already thinking about how you’ll react and what you’ll tell him.

Big mistake!

What that does is force each of your ideas together, everyone feels like they never got a chance to express themselves clearly, and you don’t know why he doesn’t like hanging around with you anymore.

Luckily, we’ve already talked about the solution: know your desired outcome before each conversation!

By knowing what you want out of the conversation, your responses will flow automatically and you won’t feel the need to think about your response while your friend is talking.

15. Let yourself be interrupted

To be clear, I don’t mean “let anyone interrupt you” as if I want to encourage people to interrupt each other!

What I mean is this: If you’re having a conversation with an individual or together as a group and as you’re telling your story, someone cuts you off and the conversation goes in another direction, don’t be so fragile that you need to force everyone to hear the rest of your story. 

Be confident in your masculinity and let your story go (because honestly, how important is your story anyways?).

And yes, yes, you don’t have to tell me in the comments… you should not interrupt anyone else either! It just shows a lack of confidence. 

16. Don’t jump topics 

I only know about this one from personal experience and I’d be curious to know if any of my readers can relate. 

When I was younger, people would mention how I’d jump topics in the middle of conversations. 

At first it surprised me, but when I looked deeper I realized that every time I forced a subject change it was because I felt uncomfortable talking about that subject, lacking general confidence and masculinity.

Ask your friends, or better yet, record your conversations, do you find yourself jumping topics? 

17. Bring positive energy

Isn’t it always the negative people that lack confidence, while the confident men and women always seem more positive and happier?

And the reasoning behind this is quite simple: 

People who lack confidence are constantly worrying about their imaginary monsters and things they can’t control, while confident people have a realistic view of the world and don’t have compulsive negative thinking.

So with some reverse engineering, talking with lively, positive energy makes you seem more confident. 

Now I’m not going to pretend like you there’s some magical pill you can take to become positive or confident is the next 5 minutes, but what I will do is give you a couple ideas to guide you in the right direction:

1. Avoid complaining
2. Avoid making up excuses 
3. Stay away from negative people (that includes family too)
4. Keep your mind open to enjoy the “little things” in life and casually mention your gratitude for them throughout your conversations
5. Never use politics to start conversations (I have relatives that do this and I can’t tell you how emotionally draining it is! I mean, when was the last time you heard happy news related to politics?)
6. Express your gratitude to whomever deserves it - and make sure they feel your sincerity 
7. Have a positive lifestyle (eat healthy, workout daily, etc.)
8. Find your negative triggers and heal them

I do not expect you to transform your life with my little list. However, I do hope that you gain inspiration from these ideas to look deep inside yourself and commit to long term improvement.

18. Breathe while talking

I’m not talking about any diaphragm breathing for the sake of gaining a deeper, masculine voice - we’ll discuss that later - I’m simply pointing out that many people get so tied up in a conversation that they forget to breathe!

The cool part is that once you train yourself to breathe while talking, you’ll  notice that you also begin to talk at a slower, more understandable pace. Kill 2 birds with one stone!

19. Don’t skip words

Another very important piece to having clear conversations is… skipping words.

But Colt, why do you need to waste my time with this, these tips are so obvious!

Have you ever tried recording your conversations and seeing if/ how much you do actually skip words? My bet is that you do it more often than you imagine.

In my experience, I skip words when I have a big idea in my head that I need to spell out before I forget it and (unsurprisingly) it only gets worse if I’m in the middle of a tense conversation. 

All I’m saying is, be on the lookout. This is not about looking for who to blame, this is about finding the problem and solving it.

20. Use your hands 

Vanessa Van Edwards, in her book Captivate (pg. 42-43), talks about TED Talkers to demonstrate how hand gestures can transform your words:

“The least popular TED Talkers used an average of 272 hand gestures… the most popular TED Talkers used an average of 465 hand gestures -- that’s almost double! Temple Grandin, Simon Snek and Jane McGonigal (these talks received 10+ million views) topped the hand gesture charts with over 600 gestures in just 18 minutes.”

The lesson: use hand gestures to communicate more clearly. 

21. Avoid using filler words

Here’s a list of filler words you should cut out in order to seem more confident (and masculine in the case of men):

1. You know
2. So
3. Like 
4. Um
5. Very
6. You know what I mean
7. Kind of
8. Just

Overusing these filler words not only makes you seem less confident, but also makes what you’re saying so much harder for everyone to understand.

Bottom line:

Use these filler words when necessary, but avoid overusing them to keep your sentences cleaner and more understandable. 

22. Don’t use emphasis words

“Honestly, I don’t know what happened, I literally spoke to my boss last night and today he actually gave me a promotion! I feel extremely happy!”

The issue in the previous sentence is that our man is using to many emphasis words, such as:

Similar and opposite words

1. extremely
2. exceedingly
3. exceptionally
4. especially
5. tremendously
6. immensely
7. vastly
8. hugely
9. extraordinarily
10. extra
11. excessively
12. overly

But what makes overusing these words bad?

It shows that you feel the need to force your ideas, feelings and thoughts into the world, because otherwise, people won’t listen to you. 

23. Bring water to each conversation

Here’s a good one whether you’re approaching cute girls on the street or giving an important presentation at your company: bring water to every conversation.

Why?

I’ll add that instead of using an old Desani plastic water bottle, it’s well worth your time to invest 10 bucks into a respectable bottle that’ll make you seem put-together and professional. 

24. Enunciate each word clearly

We’ve gone through quick tips, tonality, and rules to master any conversation, now it’s time to become the lord of enunciating (try saying “enunciating” 10 times fast!)...

First thing: you can’t overdue enunciating. Anytime you think you’re enunciating too much, you’re probably just talking clearly. 

Secondly, if you are not used to enunciating words clearly this will not feel natural at first and that is fine. Practice makes perfect. 

Thirdly, you’ll find that some words you naturally articulate clearly while others you straight out mumble. Take note of the ones you have a hard time with and make sure you practice with those more.

25. Open your mouth wider while talking

What I want you to realize here is that it’s always the obvious stuff that we forget to implement which is why we’re going over it all now:

When you open your mouth wider while talking, you’ll automatically stop mumbling and pronounce each word clearly.

Think about it this way: have you ever tried mumbling with your mouth wide open? That’s right, it’s near impossible which is the exact effect we want.

You can practice this alone using The Pencil Technique: simply place a pen in your teeth and practice talking. 

It feels incredible stupid to do, but it trains your mind to talk clearly. 

26. Focus on the last part of each word

Enunciating the last letters of each words become especially important when you use homophones (2 different words that sounds similar - no homo), for example:

1. Bad - Bat
2. Rinse - Rice
3. Sad - Sat
4. Fifteen - Fifty

Following this one tip can make the difference between “what did you say? Can you repeat it” and “Got it, thanks!”.

27. Read books out loud

Reading a book out loud to practice enunciating - preferably in a voice recorder - is a great 30 day exercise (longer than 30 days can become exhausting) to improve your enunciation. 

28. Don’t chop out syllables. 

If you’re using bigger words (which I hope you are as we spoke about earlier), you gotta be more careful about pronouncing all the syllables. 

Let’s go through a couple examples: 

1. Ele-c-tri-ci-ty
2. Re-frig-er-a-tor
3. Un-a-ccep-t-a-ble
4. Dis-a-gree
5. Tell-e-phone
6. Gov-or-nor

Practice these wherever you go, coffee shop, park, work, etc. the more articulate you sound, the more confident and masculine you’ll appear. 

29. Practice with tongue twisters

Another great way to practice clear, confident talking is by saying tongue twisters on a daily basis:

1. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
2. Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he?
3. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Make it a routine: wake up, brush your teeth, mouthwash, say these tongue twisters, get dressed, etc. Obviously, you’ll get better at these examples, but what you really gain is training your brain to pronounce each word clearly. And that is well worth your 2 minutes every morning.

30. Talk slowly to people and even slower on the phone

Here’s a general rule for every conversation:

Speak just slow enough that you think you’re speaking too slow.

And while you’re on the phone, speak even slower because people lose the ability to understand you via your body language as they can’t see you. 

31. Slow down other activities besides for talking

A great way to train your mind to slow down while talking is to slow down in other activities:

1. Eating
2. Exercising
3. Showering
4. Thinking (do you notice that you rush thinking through challenges in your life?)
5. Rushed body language
6. Going to the bathroom 
7. Walking (casual walk)

What does eating quickly have to do with talking quickly? And how the hell is eating slower supposed to help you make your speech clearer?

Most of the time, rushing is a flight/fight response from fear. And what I’ve noticed is that people who rush things (talking, eating, etc.) tend to have a neurotic personality, that is, they over-worry about everything and so “rushing” is a way to escape their fears. 

What I’m proposing with these exercises is that by slowing down activities in other areas of your life, you’ll end up removing the root fears that are causing you to rush your speech in the first place. 

32. Have constant reminders

There are a couple ways to remind yourself to follow these rules:

1. Have a trusted, reliable friend remind you 
2. Use the Random reminders app (my recommended app, should be a version for iOS too)
3. Carry a small paper in your pocket that says something like “slow down” or “confidence is talking clearly:
4. Make a rule with yourself that every time you walk into your house you’ll review your top 5 rules to talking slowly

Improving your speech is a slow process, just like anything worthwhile, so if at any point you feel like you’re pushing yourself too hard, take a step back and slow down for the sake of consistency. 

33. See yourself as a natural conversationalist 

Till now we’ve been talking about external changes you can make in order to sound more masculine and speak with more confidence.

Now it’s time to make those crucial internal transformations so that your “gains” stay with you for the rest of your life starting with… your self-image. 

Your old self-image was probably something like this: 

I am pretty awkward to be around. I don’t know how or what makes people tick and everytime I talk people just want me to shut up.

New self-image: 

I am a natural, effective communicator worth being listened to. My friends enjoy my company and at work my talks only make me seem more professional. 

Sounds great Colt, but how can I improve my self-image?

To answer this excellent question, we’re gonna bring back Joseph Rodrigues, this time from a second course of his; How To Program Your Subconscious Mind For Success:

Process for programming your subconscious mind

1. Figure out what your goal or vision is based on the Dilts Model (the Dilts Model is explained in detail throughout the course)
2. Create a detailed list of disempowering beliefs, meanings, values, behaviours towards your vision (Journal and notes from exercises)  
3. Rewrite each disempowering beliefs, meanings, values or behaviour into a positive affirming statement in the present tense.
4. Perform affirmations and/or record self-programming audio in the following manner… (He goes into the 7 steps on how to do this properly)

Follow what Joseph Rodrigues teaches (big fan of his courses as you can already tell + got you guys a bundle deal - get all 5 of his courses for $97, instead of $47 each!) and achieve subconscious success so that everything else automatically opens up for you in life. 

Side note:

The topic of building a new self-image and working with your subconscious mind is beyond massive. However, this is not the time or place to discuss this further. Nevertheless, if this brief conversation did peak your interest, I cannot tell how important it is to at least watch part of the following video by Joseph Rodrigues:

34. Be fully present while talking

Here’s a book you should definitely get around to read: The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane. 

Reading her book should be a required reading in school, but for the time being, here’s the 1 minute summary in her words:

“Charismatic behavior can be broken down into three core elements: presence, power, and warmth. These elements depend both on our conscious behaviors and on factors we don’t consciously control.”

Let’s break down each of these 3 core elements of charisma starting with “presence”: 

Being present means simply having a moment-to moment awareness of what's happening. It means paying attention to what’s going on rather than being caught up in your own thoughts.

Here are some example of not being present while talking:

1. Your eyes glaze over
2. Your facial expressions are a split second delayed 
3. Your thinking about other things while your date/partner is talking

When you give someone your full presence, you seem more confident as you’re not worrying about 100 other problems you need to take care of, plus people feel respected as you’re giving them your full attention. 

35. Project warmth

The second core element to charisma is warmth. What does that mean? Here’s how Olivia explains it: 

“Warmth, simply put, is goodwill toward others. Warmth tells us whether or not people will want to use whatever power they have in our favor. Being seen as warm means being perceived as any of the following: benevolent, altruistic, caring, or willing to impact our world in a positive way. Warmth is assessed almost entirely through body language and behavior; it's evaluated more directly than power.”

So know that we know what warmth is, what are some ways to project it in your words?

1. Smile fully
2. Assume that you already like people that you’re about to meet
3. Make them feel like they can relate to you
4. Focus on the small, even insignificant details about them that you know they’ll appreciate
5. Avoid any judgmental energy

And about smiling, let’s talk about it a bit more with a quote from my article 43 Exclusive Methods To Flirt With a Guy In Any Situation [& Countless Examples] | datingarmory.com: 

Have you ever read Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl? Was definitely my favorite book as a child, anyways here’s a quote from the book that always stuck with me:

“I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it’s impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren’t feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.”

Try it right now. Try smiling without your lips, just your eyes. 

How does it make you feel? Chances are that it makes you feel better because your brain actually recognizes this as a real smile. 

Same goes with people, when you show them a genuine smile and for our purposes, it’s a great way to flirt with your man.

Say it with me: SMILE, SMILE, SMILE!

36. Project power in each of your words

The last core element according to The Charisma Myth is power and here’s what it means in Olivia’s own words: 

"Being seen as powerful means being perceived as able to affect the world around us, whether through influence on or authority over others, large amounts of money, expertise, intelligence, sheer physical strength, or high social status. We Look for clues of power in someone's appearance, in others’ reaction to this person, and, most of all, in the person’s body language."

It goes without saying that the more powerful you talk, the more masculine you sound. So if that interests you, don’t miss the following steps:

37. Talk in a masculine voice

Talking in a powerful voice is not about sounding like a dictator giving a speech over the radio to the millions of his peasants. 

Talking in a masculine voice is about sounding authoritative, powerful and confident. 

38. Talk from the diaphragm

Step 2 to projecting charismatic power is to project your voice from the diaphragm, i.e. your power source.

Talking from your diaphragm allows you to project your voice without screaming. 

Additionally, talking from your diaphragm automatically removes all nasal and falsetto tones from your voice. 

Actually… Why don’t we practice it now? 

1. Stand up
2. Take a deep breath - make sure you belly fills up too, not just your upper lungs
3. Talk from the oxygen deep inside your lungs
4. Notice how much more powerful your voice seems

Ask yourself: would people respect me more if I spoke with a powerful, clear voice or reverted back to my nasal voice? Glad we’re on the same page! [7, 8]

39. Hold a powerful frame throughout the conversation

The concept of “holding frame” is huge, in fact, it’s too huge for this article. 

However, it’s just too crucial for you to miss out as it’s one of the best ways to project confidence/ power so I’ve gathered some pieces from other articles and Joseph Rodrigues’s course to simplify what holding frame means and what makes it so important (especially to guys that need to appear masculine):

First off, what is frame (in the context of communication)?

A frame is a set of beliefs, values, and perspectives with which people interpret reality, a specific topic, or the social interaction they are engaging in (thepowermoves.com)

So:

Let me grab some examples (in a dating context) from my article 16 Things Women Look For In Men And Find Attractive so that you get a better understanding of what holding frame means, but also understand the importance of holding frame in order to sound more masculine:

Let’s say a girl challenges your frame with one of the following lines:

1. Wow, you’re so short!
2. Why do you drive a 2000 dollar car?
3. You work at a pretty stupid job

You can lose frame and react with:

1. Yeah I know I’m short, but I work out everyday
2. I drive this piece of junk because I don’t have enough money saved up yet, but I’m working hard
3. I know it’s a boring job, but it pays well

Or take back the frame and respond with:

1. Well I made a deal with God that reallocated those inches…
2. Why are you in such a rush to get back to my place? My car is plenty fast!
3. I know I’ll get back late from work, but you can always hide under my desk

What sounds more masculine - the guy who reacted with “Yeah I know I’m short, but I work out everyday” or the second guy who responded with “Well I made a deal with God that reallocated those inches…”? The answer is clear: the second guy.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of holding frame and why it’s so important let’s finish this off by quoting Joseph Rodrigues’ course, How to Transform Yourself Into an Effective Communicator for Influence, where he gives the 3 signs that you are/ or not holding frame in any conversation and another 4 methods to continually develop a stronger frame:

How to become more sensitive to frame awareness

1. If you tense up in communication, ask yourself "why"
2. Study and observe what causes people to react to each other and identify who has the frame in interactions
3. Place yourself in sales/public speaking and challenging communication scenarios

How to develop a stronger frame

1. Practice looking for approval and validation from within
2. Study yourself to see if you respond to emotional or mental force based frames
3. Understand the meaning you are giving to external aspects (talk about this a lot throughout the course)
4. Practice mindful responding vs emotional reaction (think reacting vs responding)

Again, we’ve barely scratched the surface of this topic, so if you’d like to get a little deeper, I definitely recommend you go and check out my other article on this topic: 16 steps to start a conversation with a girl with examples | datingarmory.com. 

40. Create a confident, masculine alter ego for yourself 

The concept of creating an alter ego for yourself goes well beyond what I can teach you here, so I’ll start by recommending that you watch the following video by London Real... 

...And then get in The Alter Ego Effect: Defeat the Enemy, Unlock Your Heroic Self, and Start Kicking Ass by Todd Herman - if going deeper in this subject interests you. 

However, if you’re in the rush or just want the DL;DR version, here you go:

Remember how we spoke about improving your self-image and how important it was? 

Well, The Alter Ego Effect says “fuck who you are now, fuck your current self-image, start over and create a new identity for yourself that already embodies each and every personality trait that you desire so that your ‘new’ behaviours come naturally!”

Let’s put that into practice:

1. Decide on why you want to create an alter ego → because you hate being misheard and want to appear confident while talking
2. Decide what the alter ego must be capable of doing → talk more clearly, confidently and slowly while sounding more masculine (isn’t that the title of this article?)
3. Find a role model or come up with your own character who embodies those desired traits
4. Trigger your alter ego into existence by doing the specific behaviours that your alter ego would do - breathing in a specific manner, posture, inner talk, etc. 
5. After you are done the specific work that required your alter ego, go back to your regular self in order to keep your personalities as split as possible (it’s kinda like split personality disorder, but consciously)

It’s a very radical way to improve your speech, but when you put the time and effort in, you’ll be blown away with the results.

41. Break your behaviour pattern of talking quickly 

What are behaviour patterns (context of psychology, not engineering) and how do you “break” them?

Without going too deep, a behaviour pattern (or ‘habit’) is a 3 step process:

1. The trigger: you feel scared
2. The routine/ action: you talk quickly and mumble 
3. The reward: you feel that by talking quickly you escaped the situation faster

And what you want to do is break that pattern, how?

1. Make it clear to yourself why there’s nothing to fear in the first place by understanding that rejection isn’t another form of death, it’s just optimization data to tell you what works and what doesn’t!
2. Feel massive pain of talking quickly: no one understands you, no one feels comfortable around you and you seem like a little wimp every time you open your mouth
3. Right as you’re about to jump into your old routine/action (i.e. talking quickly), do something out of the ordinary (e.g. jumping) to rip yourself out of the pattern
4. Whenever you do talk slowly, give yourself immediate, massive pleasure so that you’re mind feels rewarded and cements this new behavioural pattern down

By doing this, you aren’t creating some temporary change. Instead, you are creating powerful, new habits that’ll stay with you for the rest of your life. [9, 10, 11]

42. Calibrate yourself to the individual you are building rapport with

Let’s take a step back. 

This entire time we’ve been focusing on 4 principles:

1. Clarity
2. Confidence
3. Talking slowly
4. Exuding masculinity

The hidden problem here is that we begin to solely focus on what we are releasing to the world and not on what the world is looking to receive. 

Let me put it to you this way: let’s imagine that the individual you’re closing a business deal with, Bob, is introverted and likes to deal with people who aren’t overly confident. In that case, would you want to be Mr. Confident O’masculine? I hope not!My hope is that you would want to embody Bob’s characteristics in order to make him feel at home and follow through with the business deal. 

And that is what I mean by “Calibrate yourself to the individual you are building rapport with”.

Ironically, when you learn to calibrate your overpowering confidence for the sake of building rapport with Bob, he will perceive you as having more confidence!

43. Warm up to the fear

As you may have already guessed, the main reason people talk quickly is due to fear.

But what if you first warmed up to the fear? Would that mitigate your negative response?

Luckly, yes. 

Think about it from the point of view of an avid gym goer. 

Does he start by lifting his max rep? Of course not! He starts by warming up with some light weights and maybe even some cardio. Only then does he move onto his main workout.

Same with you.

If you know you’re gonna give an important presentation at 3pm, why not warm up by doing some fear facing challenges beforehand or maybe even try some rejection therapy? Here are some examples:

1. Go out and cold approach potential business partners (this article help some of my readers)
2. Go out and cold approach a cute girl at the bar or coffee shop (How? Read this)
3. Asking people for time while wearing a watch
4. Asking for free drinks at your bar because it’s your birthday or you just got a promotion at work
5. Asking people directions to a store that you’re (nearly) standing right in front of
6. Asking someone in the gym to show you how to do a specific exercise 
7. Take the bus (even if you don’t have to) and strike up a conversation with a fellow passenger 
8. Ask to buy half a donut 
9. Ask random people for compliments 
10. Ask for the manager at any small business and ask if you can work there

As you do a fear facing exercise, your mind begins to build a tolerance for fear that you otherwise couldn’t handle. 

Do a couple of them, then walk into your job interview, you’ll seem as cool as a cucumber and talking at a confident pace won’t even be on your mind. 

On a side note: 

This is the reason why guys who approach women for hours throughout the day, get the hottest girls - that they otherwise could never imagine getting - only at the end of the day. Their mind gets warmed up, their confidence quadruples and women can’t get enough of them.

44. Warm up your voice

You gotta warm up everything in order to walk out with a sexy masculine (or feminine) voice, right? So here’s how you do it:

1. Relax your jaw muscles by using your palms to massage your jaws
2. Pull your arms up, deep breathe in from your diaphragm and ‘sigh out’ all the air
3. Say “BAW BAW BAW” in a loud voice - voice warm up
4. Place the tip of your tongue behind your bottom front teeth and “hum” up and down the major scale while keeping your mouth closed. Each note should sound like “hmmm” — including the “h” sound is less taxing on your voice. 
5. Loosen your jaw by dropping past where you normally talk
6. Make “BBVBVBVBV” sound purely with your lips, mouth staying closed (horse sound) - lip warm up 
7. “LALALALAL” - tongue warm up
8. Roll the “R” - tongue warm up
9. “Weeeee” going up in pitch and down with “Yoooo” - voice warm up [12]

Watch the following video to see this in practice:

45. Accept your natural style & flaws

By accepting your natural style, flaws, accent, etc. you save yourself so much self-hatred and learn to use your signature voice to your advantage. 

We all have flaws in our voices, so expecting to talk perfectly is like expecting to be perfectly beautiful. 

46. It will not feel natural to talk clearly at the beginning 

I head this one frequently whenever I coach any one of my students into slowing down the pace at which they talk:

“But that’s not who I am, it just feels so weird to talk like that!”

I understand and that’s how we all feel when making any sort of meaningful change in our lives. The trick is to push past this resistance until your self-image (or alter ego) adapts. 

47. 9 reasons why people talk quickly

There are several reasons why people talk quickly, most of them revolve around social anxiety, but some surprisingly don’t:

1. When you’re scared, time seems to slow down for you (AKA Tachypsychia), so talking quickly seems to you like you’re talking at normal speeds [13] 
2. You feel like you aren’t worthy of being listened to
3. You run through words you don’t quite know how to pronounce to hide your ignorance 
4. You have 1000 things lined up for the day and you’re simply in a rush
5. You’re running out of air and you want to eke out your last words to finish your idea (that’s why it’s always important to breathe deeply throughout each conversations) [14] 
6. You are a visual thinker in ‘NLP’ terms (as opposed to auditory or kinesthetic), which means you “see” large amounts of information quickly (i.e. “see” the “big picture”) which naturally makes you want to blurt it all out at once. 
7. You are feeling super energetic or you are excited for a future event 
8. You feel like you need rush out your idea because otherwise your idea will be forgotten 
9. You are super passionate about the topic you are talking about (related to #7 Feeling super excited)

As I wrote up this list, the only thought that was going through my head was: man, why couldn’t I get a list like this 10 years ago!

48. 7 reasons why we want to talk clearly, confidently and slowly

Lastly, review why we care about any of this stuff? Why is the juice worth the squeeze? After all, we’re talking about a lot of work that needs to be done!

Here are some reasons that resonate with me:

1. Talking clearly shows a lot of respect for the individual you are speaking with
2. Talking quickly doesn’t even help you transfer information any faster as this study proves: Fast talkers tend to convey less information with each word and syntactic structure than slower-paced speakers, meaning that no matter our pace, we all say just about as much in a given time.
3. It shows a degree of self-respect as you’re talking in a way that says “my words are important and worth being listened to”
4. It makes people less frustrated with you because they don’t have to ask you to repeat what you said (especially annoying to do this over the phone)
5. It greatly reduces the amount of misunderstandings
6. It makes people listen and pay attention to you because you sound worth listening to
7. You sounds masculine which is a basic requirement for guys if they want to succeed with women

And that wraps it up for this article. 

As always, if you enjoyed this, make sure to like and subscribe - oh whoops, this is not YouTube - I mean, share this with your friends and add your comments below:

Much love,

Colt Smith