A reader suggested an answer that made sense for why people like my fast articles—“Why do readers like the posts I write the fastest so much?“—that they may result from my Voice Your Self-Talk exercise.

I love that exercise, though it’s one of my harder social skill exercises. Clients who try it take a long time to get it and I don’t think you can if you don’t do the “Most effective self-awareness exercise I know,” but it’s incredibly effective when you get it working. As the reader put it, “to see people’s response to it; it was like, they were instantly and enthusiastically connecting and responding to what I was saying to them“.

Read about the exercise here, with examples:

• Communications skills exercises, part 10: voicing your self-talk
• Communications skills exercises, part 10a: examples of voicing your self-talk
• Communications skills exercises, part 10b: another example of voicing your self-talk

I recommend it. Anyway, here is the reader’s suggestion:

This makes me think of the ‘voicing your self talk’ exercise. When I had only read about it, I had assumed it would not only be weird to do but not something that’d really make any difference in my life or my interactions with others. I had to do it only it a couple of times to see that I it actually was way easier and way more valuable than what I had expected it to be. Also, unlike what I had feared – that I would say something stupid or incoherent or boring, I found myself actually talking about things that were important to me. And by that very nature it was something I had already given a lot of thought to but unfortunately would go more into analyzing my thoughts rather than using them to express myself and/or to connect with people. The most surprising thing was to see people’s response to it; it was like, they were instantly and enthusiastically connecting and responding to what I was saying to them. Very much unlike what usually happens when I give them the entire proof and argument and analysis and reference points for something.

In a way I feel the same about ‘writing your self talk exercise’ too. There too, things that were important (but only to me) were coming to my mind, they could be very trivial things in the general scheme of things but for me they were important and things demanding attention and resolution, like,”Do something about it!”.

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