Thinking on your feet is “streaming speech.” Just like video streams over the internet, streaming speech is flowing your words, thoughts and feelings unimpeded by mind control.
People who are in a position to have to think on their feet usually have a deep well of knowledge and experience. Yet they often don’t trust themselves to say what they know, and they think they have to control the message with their minds in order to be effective.
To think on your feet well, you have to “be out of your mind.” That is, you have to get beyond your mental control of your thoughts so your expression can flow freely. When you are out of your mental focus, it really does feel like you are not controlling what you are saying. You don’t know mentally what is coming next. This is because you are speaking from your soul, not your personality. Scary, but very exciting to experience!
In the past few years, I have started noticing that my best speaking in classes is when I am streaming my speech. I also create videos this way. It comes through much more authentically when streaming my speech!
Nine keys to help you learn to think on your feet, stream your speech and let what you have to say flow freely.
- Focus inwardly as deeply as you can to start.
- Grab ahold of the first thought that surfaces, open your mouth and say it outloud. Don’t worry where it will take you.
- When one thought stream ends, wait for the next though to emerge, then say that one.
- Allow yourself to feel like you don’t know what will come next. Stay in the moment.
- Talk from your deep well. Say what you know and don’t worry about what you don’t know.
- Take your time. Allow for fast speech and slow, deep pauses.
- Trust yourself to let your thoughts organize organically. Know that your mind will organize it for you intuitively.
- Be like an instrument through which spirit speaks. Just be the vehicle, not the controller. Let higher mind control. It will feel like you are “out of your mind.”
- Accept that thinking on your feet is not a prepared speech. It is a different game with different rules that writing a prepared speech which requires more mental organization.
Three Exercises to practice streaming speech.
- Object Exercise. Start with an object, say your glasses or a pencil. Look at the object and let a thought about it emerge. Say that thought outloud. When you have finished saying that thought, wait silently. Allow another thought to emerge and say that one. Keep going until you run out of thoughts to say.
- Concept exercise. Start with an idea or concept you want to explain. Take a deep breath and look inwardly for a first thought about that concept. Say it outloud until you are out of words. Wait. Take another deep breath and look inwardly for another thought about that concept. Say that one outloud. Keep going until there is nothing left to say.
- Talk in the moment exercise. Take a deep breath. Turn inwardly to see what though is there at this moment. Say that though and then follow the flow of thoughts as they emerge for one minute, 60 seconds.
