The Life-Changing Act of Decluttering Your Communication: Part 1
Five ways to tidy up your speech
Out with the old and unhelpful — in with new and beneficial. We’re a month into the new year and spring is on its way. While it’s a great time to clear out our living spaces and workplaces, decluttering extends well beyond our kitchen drawers. In the coaching space, we are encouraged to declutter our minds of old limiting beliefs, distractions and unhelpful thoughts. We do this to free up brain space, time and energy for new empowering beliefs and helpful thought patterns that will assist us in meeting our goals. And here’s another area ripe for decluttering — our communication.
Everything Is Communication
Communication is something that permeates everything we do. Our thoughts are conversations with ourselves. We usually have several direct conversations with other people on any given day — listening and responding. Then there are the countless indirect ones, as we absorb and give out messages on social media, or simply inhabit the same physical spaces as others. The way we dress is a form of communication. Our routines are a form of communication. They all send messages about us. So, there are plenty of opportunities for decluttering. However, today we’ll focus on speech.
Why Declutter Your Speech?
The Cambridge Dictionary definition of declutter is “to remove things you do not need from a place, in order to make it more pleasant and useful”.
Declutter your speech
- to be clean and clear in your message.
- to be taken more seriously.
- to do your ideas justice and give credit to your expressive abilities.
- to make it more pleasant and useful (as per the dictionary definition).
- not to hide behind useless phrases or habits that don’t contribute anything to your value.
What Can You Remove from Your Speech?
Let’s start with the obvious.
Remove Superflous Speech
There is a good reason why teachers and coaches are trained to speak 20–30% and listen 70–80% of the time. Listening is such an undervalued communication skill. Steven R. Covey famously observed, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Active listening over internal listening results in better understanding of what is being said, and a much more valuable experience for the speaker, who gets your undivided attention.
Q: Where can you say less and allow someone else to say more?
We don’t even have to be interacting with someone else — mindfulness and meditation teach us to quiet the relentless chatter in our heads and tune into the silence.
Q: When can you make a space in your day to clear out the internal chatter and give your brain a moment of peace?
Remove Fillers: like, so, kind of like, sort of, d’ya know what I mean?
Fillers water down your message, make you sound less sure of what you’re saying, less articulate, and add unnecessary words and time to your speech. Spare a thought for those listening to you. Fillers generally don’t add pleasure to, nor are they useful for our communication — think about why we don’t use them in writing. Essentially a (bad) communication habit, you have everything to gain when you lose fillers. Awareness is the first step to taking action. Consider the following questions:
Q: Which fillers do you use frequently? What are you trying to fill?
Remove Apologetic and Minimising Language: sorry, just, a little …
Similar to fillers, this kind of language disempowers us. When we make a request, ask for someone’s time, etc., we aren’t doing something wrong. There is no need to apologise. Life is an ongoing series of transactions that require request and fulfillment, questions and answers, giving and receiving. Over-explanation and unnecessary justification have become habits and misdirected politeness techniques. Think about when someone asks you for a genuine favour — do you have an expectation that they are apologetic about it? If you do, you might ask yourself why.
Respect is not the same as tip-toeing around others. It is perfectly normal to interact with people, ask for their time, attention or a favour within reasonable parameters. It is up to them to accept or decline and set additional boundaries if they need to. We diminish our own presence and needs when we litter our speech with apologetic language. Clear, assertive language is efficient, effective and in the best interest of all involved.
Q: With whom and in what situations do you minimise your requests and apologise for your communication?
Remove Unnecessary Exaggeration: amazing, hilarious, the best ever
Really? Are you sure it was the best ever?
Declutter your speech from the habit of describing everything with exaggeration. While impactful storytelling is of course enriched by some embellishment and poetic licence, we have fallen into the habit of describing even the most standard of events in extreme terms. The problem here is that we don’t leave any room for increased effect when describing something that really is extreme. Was it actually hilarious, or was it funny, amusing, comical, humorous, or entertaining? We can more accurately and interestingly describe things by using the whole spectrum of vocabulary available to us, instead of limiting ourselves to the same extreme term for every occasion. Declutter your speech from misused extreme adjectives, and repopulate it with an imaginative variety of more precise vocabulary.
Q: What extreme terms do you use habitually, and how can you replace them?
Remove Made-Up Trendy Words: amazeballs, awesome sauce, coola boola
Rather like seasonal fashion trends, these words clutter our ears and our screens for a while and then die out. Looking back, they leave our speech sounding outdated once they pass their expiry date. They will likely be misunderstood completely by anyone outside their limited cultural sphere. If trendy terms are your thing, then more power to you. Have fun and embrace them like Lady Gaga and her latest look — that’s why we love her. However, if you’re simply being influenced by the most recent buzz, then you won’t lose anything by not jumping on the latest bandwagon. Clear out the passing trends and stock up your ‘wordrobe’ with some quality alternatives that will stand the test of time.
Q: Are you just jumping on the buzzword bandwagons or are you a committed Lady Gaga of language? How can you vary your vocabulary in a more original way?
Personal leadership is about making the most of what you have in your life, and getting rid of what is not serving you, in order to advance easily towards your goals and highest-potential self — and that includes communication. Look out for part two in this series.
