have you ever thought that you don't make sense when you speak that you get your thoughts muddled or that you can't express yourself clearly if that sounds like you then you are not alone and this video is absolutely perfect for you we're going to talk about a three-step sequence to help you articulate your thoughts so you can communicate them clearly now if you follow this three-step sequence and you do it on a regular basis it's going to help you organize your thoughts better so you can articulate them well and communicate them verbally in a clearer
way because at the end of the day our speech is a reflection of our thinking if your thinking is muddled if it is confused then your speech is going to come out confused as well whereas if your thinking is clear if it is organized then your speech will come out clear and organized and articulate as well so in order to communicate and articulate clearly we need to start with our thoughts we need to organize our thoughts in a clear way in a very structured way so when we communicate those thoughts come out in a very
clear and easy to understand manner if you like what you're going to learn in this video there are two things you can do to help out my channel you can hit the like button below this video which tells the algorithm that people like you like this video so it's shown to more people on youtube the second thing is you can subscribe to my channel every week i release videos on leadership to help people like you in their leadership journey and i would be honored to share this content with you as well now let's move on
to how to articulate your thoughts clearly so the first thing you need to do is to read reading is the first step in this three-step structure reading is a fantastic way to fill your mind with new ideas to learn new vocabulary rich vocabulary good structure good sentence structure and structure of ideas as well and it's essential if you want to learn how to organize your thoughts better because you can learn how other people organize their ideas and organize their thoughts so every time you read a book whether it's fiction or non-fiction you expose yourself to
all of these things there is no way that you could come up with all of this rich vocabulary or good structure on your own and why would you it's not necessary when you can learn from other people who have gone through this process to write those fantastic books the way i see it is books are really a gateway into the world of organized thoughts and good structure i mean think of how long it takes somebody to write a book how many revisions do they do how many other people are involved in the process to improve
on their ideas or improve on their structure there is a lot of time money and effort put into writing books you can leverage this and use this final product to enrich your mind with rich vocabulary with good structure and with organized thoughts you can basically learn from these high-level authors or from the higher level work that other people have created now what kinds of books should you read well you've probably guessed i'm not talking about comic books i'm not talking about children's books the kinds of books i recommend you to read are non-fiction or also
fiction books biographies classical literature books about historical events business books or literary fiction all of these are the types of books that have had a lot of work put into them that are using a level of vocabulary and structure that you probably want to aim for since you are working to become a leader you probably want to sound more intelligent and sound more structured and organized as you speak these are the kinds of books that you can use to draw those ideas from and to get the vocabulary from as well i do encourage you to
read books that you don't normally read this will help to expose you to new ideas new ways of thinking new ways of structuring your ideas as well so if you normally read biographies then maybe opt for books about historical events or maybe if you read business books a lot you can learn a lot by reading classical literature how often should you read this is a question i get asked quite a lot i recommend you read five to ten pages every day the way i do it is over breakfast generally as i am eating my breakfast
i have a book beside me instead of my phone instead of instagram i have a book beside me and i am reading the book going through the pages of the book as i eat my breakfast as to when you read it's really up to you how you like to fit it into your daily schedule but i recommend you read five to ten pages every day this way you are filling your mind with new vocabulary with good sentence structure and new ideas as well you're probably wondering if i have any recommendations for you as to what
books you should read this is definitely a question i'm going to be getting once you are at this point in the youtube video so i wanted to share with you this one book which is one of my favorite books to read it's called profiles in courage by john f kennedy i will put some information about it in the description below it's an old book it was written in 1965 in a very classical style of english like people used to write back then i absolutely love the way people used to write books during that time or
even prior to the 1960s i find it so intelligent the vocabulary used is so rich the phrases that are used one of the phrases in this book that i came across and i absolutely love and i thought was so intelligent was independent courage the phrase independent courage so there's many more phrases like that in this book there's many more things you can learn in this book it's an extremely this particular one i got is extremely old i picked it up in a secondhand store if i were to flick through the pages you can probably see
that all of the pages have actually started to dislodge from the spine they're coming out so i have to be really careful with this book but profiles encouraged by john f kennedy is a really good book that i would recommend you to read if you wanted to start getting into reading books with a higher level of vocabulary definitely opt for the ones that were published a long time ago so even in the early 1900s the way they used to write back then the way they used to organize their thoughts back then the vocabulary they used
back then was at another level you hardly even see that nowadays in the books that are published so i highly recommend this one or any other topic that was written around that time or before that time to help yourself enrich yourself with the vocabulary the sentence structure to really organize your thoughts better so reading is definitely the first step that you need to fill your mind to fill your subconscious with the tools with the vocabulary with the ideas and the structure that you need to move on to the second step which we're going to talk
about right now writing is the second step in this three-step sequence and this is a fantastic way to help you organize your thoughts better get it on paper so you can actually see whether the thoughts you have in your mind are truly organized or not it also helps you to identify your thoughts so sometimes when you have those thoughts in your mind they're all muddled it's hard to identify clearly what those thoughts are writing is one of the best ways you can get clear on those thoughts and identify them too as i mentioned at the
beginning of this video our speech is a reflection of our thinking so we first need to get our thoughts organized and we do this by writing before we actually jump into speaking which is the next step we'll talk about in a couple of moments when you don't do this this is what leads to muddled communication when you have those muddled thoughts in your mind and then you go from those muddled thoughts straight to speaking that's what leads to muddled speaking and not being able to articulate your thoughts clearly or communicate them well basically what writing
does is it allows you to take the time to organize your thoughts well it allows you to draw them from your mind to put them on paper and to see whether they are organized or not and whether they're good thoughts or not you can put those thoughts in order you can organize them and you can eliminate thoughts that aren't important or that don't add anything to the discussion if you feel that you don't make sense when you speak well it's probably because you haven't spent the time organizing your thoughts like you do through this writing
process you've just jumped straight into speaking without organizing them first and that is what has led to muddled communication and you not making sense i want you to get into the habit of writing your thoughts now how do you do this well it should be something that you do every day just like reading part of your everyday routine and it's something that can directly follow your reading schedule you can do journal writing you can do formal writing whatever type of writing suits you better i recommend you write one page every day so reading is five
to ten pages every day but writing because it takes more time you are allowed to pause you're allowed to organize your thoughts a lot more write one page per day i usually do my writing in a book much like this it is just a plain notebook i'll open it up the pages are playing there is no lines whatsoever in this book and i find that this works much better for me to not have lines drawn on the page i find that when i am working or writing with lines it limits my thinking in a way
it prevents me from thinking freely from writing freely so i like to have the the space and the opportunity on a blank page like this to just scribble down my thoughts and write them in a more coherent way what can you write about so that's no doubt your next question you have this book what do you actually write about well you can reflect on the past so think of things that have happened yesterday last week last month perhaps there were fears you faced conversations you had with people challenges you faced achievements you made your desires
goals that you're working towards goals that you have achieved disagreements you had with someone or agreements you had with someone there are a number of things you can use as inspiration for your writing as well as reflecting on the past you can also look to the future you can write about your future goals your future dreams your desires conversations you want to have with people and this is a fantastic point for people who are looking to communicate more assertively if you have a conversation you need to have with someone that's an assertive conversation you're a
bit nervous about that assertive conversation you can write the conversation down using your journaling your morning journaling that you do if you're going for a job interview you can use it for exactly the same thing as well so there are a number of things that you can write about it's really just about you deciding on what the subject is what the topic is that you want to write about and this is where you can start to get creative but this process when it's done on a daily basis it will definitely help you to organize your
thoughts to structure them better and help you communicate them more clearly as well how long will this whole process take how long will it take you to start seeing an improvement in the way that you communicate well i would recommend you wait for a couple of weeks at least i think it takes most people two weeks to start to see improvement in their communication so remember it's a whole process that you have to go through and you're basically retraining your brain you're retraining the way that you think about things the way you have your thoughts
in your mind the way you structure them and the way that they come out as well when you communicate and the way you notice whether you are improving with your thoughts and articulating them better is if you start to feel less and less that you are communicating in a muddled way if you start to feel more and more that you are clearer with your communication and you're also noticing through the reactions of other people that they're really understanding what you're saying so look out for these signs the way you feel the way the other person
reacts to detect and understand whether you're starting to see an improvement with your own communication and the third step in this sequence is to speak so we have filled your mind with rich vocabulary with good structure with new ideas through step one where you read then we have transferred all of that knowledge and all of that intelligence onto paper through the process of writing and through the process of writing you have started to organize your thoughts better identify good ideas reject bad ideas as well this has led to clearer thoughts in your mind leading to
clearer communication so the next step in this process is to actually speak and this is where you move your thoughts from your mind from paper out into the world in conversations with people you are you interact with this is your ultimate goal this is the whole purpose of this three-step process to speak clearly to articulate your thoughts well and to communicate clearly to the other person one of the things i've noticed about people who speak very well who can articulate their thoughts very clearly is that they've been trained to do it now sometimes this training
happens formally they might go to a school where they learn how to do it but most of the time it happens informally it happens through their upbringing through their family background through the education that they get a lot of those people are exposed to debates to people who have fantastic communication skills they get involved in those conversations with those people and through the way they communicate they can learn from those people they learn the vocabulary they learn how to communicate their thoughts they learn how to argue points there are many families in this world every
night over dinner they regularly have rich conversations they have deep conversations whether it's about politics about music about history they debate a lot their ideas and through this process if you do it every night it's normal that they would naturally develop really good communication skills over time they're being exposed to people who are good communicators they themselves are picking up all of these skills all of these tools and they are bringing them to their conversations in the world as well they learn how to have intelligent debates with people they know how to argue their point
they know how to speak in a persuasive way they know how to influence people or influence their ideas they know how to explain complicated concepts because they've had experience and training in doing this through practicing speaking these people can gain invaluable skills in communication in all types of communication and communicating with all types of people as well but not everyone has this same upbringing not everybody is exposed every night at the dinner table to intelligent debates where they're listening to people argue their point and where they have a chance to argue their point as well
not everyone is exposed to this growing up i certainly wasn't i will admit that to you i was not in a family where we had these kinds of conversations at the dinner table so i didn't learn how to do this through my family upbringing as well the strategy i used is reading it's writing and it's finally speaking just like i'm teaching you in this video so we've been through the process of what to do for the reading what to do for writing now how do you practice speaking if you don't have access to this type
of family environment that i just described to you how do you actually practice speaking well i'm going to share with you an activity on exactly how you can do that i want you to choose someone you feel comfortable with it could be a work colleague it could be a friend in your personal life or your partner somebody you feel comfortable with and i want you to speak to that person for five minutes straight it's an impromptu style speaking for five minutes straight about a topic that is important to you so it could be the same
topic that you wrote about in your journaling stage you could have that morning written about a certain topic and you would like to tell the person your conversation partner about that topic so you could choose that it could be about a conversation you recently had with somebody it could be an experience you recently had a challenge you recently faced the topic you choose is really up to you but if you find it hard to choose a topic to talk about then i recommend you choose the same topic you wrote about that morning in your journal
you can write out your thoughts in your journal how you are going to discuss them how you are going to present them to your conversation partner you can do all of that organization and all of that planning in the second step when you write remember we need organized thoughts to have clear communication and to articulate well so you can organize your thoughts when you write then when you speak you can follow the structure the exact structure that you wrote about that morning when you do this on a regular basis it will help you to organize
your thoughts it will help you to master how to communicate them clearly and how to articulate them well i do have another video on my channel about how to be more articulate i'll put a card on the screen above so you can check it out once you finish watching this video in that video i share nine tips on how to be more articulate and communicate clearly as well we have gone through a lot of content in this video i would love to know how all of these ideas and this three-step process works for you once
you've tried out this three-step process please let me know in the comments jump back to the channel and let me know in the comments how it has worked for you have you seen an improvement in your communication have you noticed other people are reacting differently or maybe they're even commenting that you sound a lot more articulate and a lot clearer when you speak let me know in the comments the benefits that you see thank you so much for watching and i'll be back next week with another video
