Happy Tuesday!
I thought it would be great to share the following quote: ' The most precious thing in speech is pausing', yet so many of us are so afraid to pause when we are speaking before an audience.....why is that?
Are we so afraid of dead air, and feel that if we pause, our listeners will think that we don't know what we are talking about? Will our nerves catch up to us, if we let ourselves pause?
Pauses are actually wonderful! They allow us to add emphasis to what we are saying. They also let the audience catch up to us mentally with what they have been hearing. Pauses also allow the speaker to breathe, swallow and get their thoughts back on track.
Not pausing is when we let filler words take over and then our audience (like us) don't know where are speech will end - and can lose track of the important points we are trying to convey.
Here are a couple of more reasons to pause:
Pausing controls the pace of your delivery. If you are a fast speaker, building in pauses to your speech helps you to mentally and physically slow down.
Pausing can help in conveying emotion to your audience. They in turn will know that where you pause means that what your are saying carries more emotional weight then when you don't stop.
Pausing can help focus your audiences attention, particularly when you are beginning a speech.
Next time try pausing when your are a delivering a speech and see what happens! I think you will be surprised.
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