If you are like me, then you have probably found yourself asking this same question to yourself many times over i.e. ‘Why did I say that?’. It doesn’t depend on whether the conversation was formal or informal, nor does it rely on any particular context or subject. This is more about you not being able to control your own words than any other external factor forcing you to complicate the situation for yourself. Words are often referred to as ‘arrows that have been fired from their bows’ and contrary to what the TV shows want you to believe, there is no way to catch such arrows mid-air just as it is not possible to take back your words. Once they are said, the damage is already done. You can try to say more words to compensate for a mistake afterwards but that doesn’t erase your previously expressed opinion from the minds of other people. Every time such a time arises where I have to ask this question to myself, I think about what was the exact cause of this and what could have prevented me from digging this hole for myself. The most common yet improbable solution is to stop speaking altogether or to cut back on speaking as much as we can just to mitigate the chances of having such a situation arise again. This makes us unable to communicate our meaning to others effectively and as time goes by and we slowly forget about this initial frustration, we let go of this self-imposed restriction in return for at least having our messages properly conveyed to others.
But now that we realize the importance of our spoken words and we also know what does not work, what does prove effective in helping us avoid this common pitfall? Is it even possible for us to control this aspect without seriously impacting our ability to have a meaningful conversation? or should we just learn to live with these occasional slip-ups? The answer is that it is not only possible to avoid these mistakes but if done properly, it can also improve the quality of our overall conversations as well. The four things to consider or steps to follow(in no particular order) are briefly summarized as follows,
Do not Focus on Speaking Less, Focus on speaking effectively
The first thing that you should do is to make sure that you are not confusing speaking effectively with not speaking at all. The latter is not a sustainable option and we do not want to limit our words in any way whatsoever. What we want to do is to focus on the quality alone and let quantity change as it requires because of it. And I do not mean that you should use difficult and complicated words when I say that you should improve the quality. What I would recommend is that instead of trying to not speak(limiting quantity of words), try to only speak the words that are going to convey your thoughts relevant to the current conversation(good quality words) and nothing else. Every sentence you speak or question you ask should serve a particular purpose and it should not be uttered just for the sake of having to keep speaking. A very simple rule of thumb is to always ask yourself whether the other person would actually be interested to hear your current thought or not.
This is also a good practice for you to not only actively be on the lookout for unnecessary words but also for you to recall any such scenarios where something you said got you into trouble and retrace the things you said to figure out where you should have stopped yourself and why was it that you said something additional. Sometimes we want to provide evidence for everything that we say and think that whatever is going through our head can be used for that. However, that is not the case and we need to always be evaluating that whatever phrase we are about to deliver is indeed needed. If it appears to be too daunting of a task, I assure you that it is not. We cannot do it perfectly right from the start but we can at least start somewhere and work our from there.
Maintain Control of yout thoughts at all times
To put it simply, you need to develop coherence in your thoughts. We often store information in our minds drastically different from others and different things trigger different thoughts in our mind. So whenever we are speaking about a certain topic, multiple other things can come to our mind that may or may not be relevant to our original subject. If you are not careful about your own thoughts, you will find yourself speaking things or asking questions that are going along completely different tangents until you finally realize that you have forgotten how you got there. This is not only limited to what you speak but it can also happen when you are thinking about something on multiple levels.
The way to maintain coherence is by always keeping in mind the main subject of your current conversation and whenever you are moving to a different level of conversation or an analogy, you should try to use connecting words to keep it linked with your main subject at all times. For example, if you are speaking about a topic A and you have to give examples in the form of topic B and C, you should remember the main subject as topic A and while you are moving to another topic, remember that topic B is relevant to my main subject because of reason XYZ and keep the chain going forward this way. Our sort term memory is only a few seconds so I do not expect you to remember the whole sentence whilst thinking about what to say next as well. That is actually not needed as well because so long as you atleast get comfortable in remembering the main subject, you will almost always be able to not only keep your thoughts relevant to it but also work your way down to whatever you are currently thinking about and link it back up.
Share Your Opinion based on facts and not feelings
A lot of us have an opinion on almost everything and we are eager to share it with people whenever we get the chance. However, if you really want to master your tongue than you should always voice out your opinion based on a solid fact to support it. In fact, you should try to formulate your opinions based on things based on what the facts represent rather than how it first made you feel. For example, you can be asked about your thoughts on any relevant topic from current affairs and even if you do not have much knowledge about it, you will have an opinion that you will feel obliged to share with the person asking. Having a general opinion due to your feelings is okay but not all opinions need to see the light of the day i.e. they do not need to be spoken to others as well. You should only speak if you have actually formulated a particular opinion and that formulation can only take place on the basis of a solid fact rather than how it made you feel without any prior knowledge whatsoever.
take your time while answering any question
Lastly, you should learn to take your time in any conversation. Whenever you are asked a question, do not feel the urge to reply with the first thing that comes to your mind so as to not have the other person waste his time. Yes, it is very good that you are considerate of others time but being correct is better than being incorrect even if the latter is much more faster than the former. This is especially true when you are speaking to someone superior than you as you deem their time more valuable than yours like in an interview setting. If you really want to prevent coming out from such a situation thinking that you could have said this or that or did something differently, I would adjure you to get rid of this inherent urgency and take your time. If you think that silence would be too awkward in a formal interview setting, just ask them that whether it is okay if you take a moment to think about it and collect your thoughts and then proceed to analyze your response to make sure it is correct and not just fast.
If you think about it from the other side’s perspective, whenever you are having a genuine conversation with someone, you would want their response to be something that they actually believe in rather than something they blurted out by self-imposing a time restriction on themselves as the latter case might even be talking to a different person altogether for all you care as it doesn’t give you any insight as to what the other person actually thinks.
