114 - How to speak for longer in English without rambling

So what are you waiting for? So today then, we're talking all about how to give longer answers, right? Now, a lot of people, they don't have the problem where they speak too much.

Maybe in your native language, you speak a lot.

I know I do.

But in English, lots of people don't do that.

They do the opposite, right? They give really, really short answers.

And I understand why people do this, right? You give short answers because they feel safe, basically.

You know, if you give a short answer, there's way, way less chance that you're going to make a mistake.

You know, we all hate making mistakes.

It's scary.

It makes us look stupid.

So we want to avoid that.

That makes sense.

The shorter the answer, the less chance of making a mistake.

It makes sense, right? Also, if your answer is very short, there's way less stress on your communication skills and your brain is way less overwhelmed because there's less going on, right? So you're kind of protecting yourself in a way.

And that also leads to you being able to escape from conversations as quickly as possible, right? You give a short answer, you can end that interaction as quickly as possible.

The stress is finished, back to normal.

Okay, cool.

Another reason this might be happening though is that you struggle to process longer answers in real time.

Maybe you've got lots of stuff that you want to say, but you feel like you don't have the ability to actually say that kind of thing.

So you make a really short condensed version that you know you can say that, you can express that idea.

But deep down, you want to be able to say the longer version, but you just don't feel capable.

So rather than try, which is very vulnerable and quite stressful, yeah, I'll just say the easy version and then that's fine.

It's not what I want to do.

It's not really who I am or, you know, it's not the full value I can provide.

But, you know, it's better than nothing.