How to Stop Rambling (It’s a THINKING Problem)

Contrary to what many people believe, Rambling does not begin in the conversation. And it's because Rambling is not the direct result of being nervous or not being prepared enough. And that's because Rambling is not a talking problem. It's a thinking problem. Because if your internal world is cluttered, then your external communication will be chaotic. So in today's video, let's talk about what you can do if you want to be able to stop rambling, especially in important conversations. You're listening to career revisionist. The podcast where ambitious professionals pursue mastery, break through invisible ceilings, and accelerate into leadership. And now to guide you on the journey. Dr. Grace Lee, neuroscientist, executive mentor, and your trusted voice and career leadership. If you find yourself struggling with rambling, especially during important conversations, let the obvious signal for you to prepare differently. You see, most people prepare for their conversations or their presentations in exactly the way that produces and guarantees even more rambling. Here's what they do. Number one, the first thing I hear help people prepare is that they try to memorize what to say. They're spending hours writing down a script and maybe using AI, chat GBT, to make it sound perfect. And then they're editing and they're deleting because they have the privilege to do that in their own time before the actual conversation. And then they try to memorize it word for word because what they wrote in their editing was perfect. It sounded so fluent and that's exactly the way that they feel that they should talk that way. And so they memorize it. And then when the important conversation comes, it creates a sense of panic that, oh my gosh, I forgot what I had written. Was that what I meant to say next or was it something different? And in that panic, your mind produces anxiety because you may not have memorized it correctly and as a result of that panic, you rambling. So it creates the exact internal, cognitive environment for rambling. The second way people prepare is to cram. They study the facts. They gather all the facts in the details. They gather the evidence and they try to study. And what that happens is it produces more noise than you're able to break through. And that noise, the mental noise, is the exact, another exact microenvironment for rambling. And let's talk about another way people prepare. A third way people prepare is that they try to predict or prevent certain reactions from their audience. They want all the positive reactions, the positive feedback, the praise, the smiles, the nods, the head nods, they want all those positive reactions and they want to prevent all the negative reactions. Well, you know what they are, the negative ones that don't make you feel very good or kind of cause and create self-doubt. So they're trying to predict how people might react and then try to avoid those. You see, if you're caught in that cycle, trying to avoid and predict other people's reactions, you're focusing on the exact thing and you have zero control over, zero. And what happens when you're focusing on things you have no control over? Panic, anxiety, yes. And what did I create? The microenvironment for rambling. This leads me to another way, the fourth way that I see people prepare for conversations and presentations is that they try to sound confident. This is kind of similar to that whole phrase of fake it till you make it. We've ever heard that one before. Now, that's not advice that I would give is not wisdom that I would say I would not categorize that as wisdom. I mean, it's common that people say it. But that whole phrase, fake it till you make it, try to sound confident. That those are what I call platitudes. And platitudes are things that sound like they are wisdom, sound like they could be helpful. But in the grand scheme of things, they're not helpful. Sometimes they're harmful and you just have no idea what to do about it. What do you do? So those are platitudes. And that's exactly what it is. Fake it till you make it as a platitude. Try to sound confident as a platitude. How do you try to sound confident? You either are confident or you're not confident. You either feel confident or you don't feel confident. How do you try to feel confident? If I told you, try. You don't feel confident. If you weren't feeling confident right now and I said, just try. Are you able to do it? Not likely. So this is a common way that people prepare is that they try to do things in their voice or in the way they dress or in the way they make eye contact or they try to do so in the way they train their body language. And they focus on all these external things because they've heard from the internet or they heard from other people that that's what makes confidence teach. And exactly it produces panic, anxiety, because you really aren't confident and you know you're not confident. And then that produces, again, the microenvironment for rambling. Once you have committed to prepare differently, then it is time to prepare your congruency. So congruency means the same as is inside and out. So what are the things that are important that require congruency? There are four things. The first thing is to have congruency thought. If what you've been thinking is against the outcomes that you want to create, then it's impossible to have the right preparation to stop rambling. If your thoughts about yourself, your situation, your circumstances, your audience members, about your own work, about the whole economy at large, hold these thoughts you can have. And you have so many in every given moment. If your thoughts are not congruent with the impact you want to have, they're not congruent with the goals you want to have or they're not congruent with the impact the effect you want to have in your speech, then can you see how that is conducive to rambling, more rambling? So that's one area of congruency. Another area of congruency is your emotions. Now, I hear a lot of people feel that their emotions, they just can't help it, but to feel that way. Well, I challenge you with that thought. Emotions is one thing that's inside of you. And everything that's inside of you, you have 100% control of it outside of physiological functions. Well, you can argue all my heart's beating inside of me. I can control when my heart beats or when it stops. Yes, that's true. Outside of physiological, biological processes and reactions, everything that you can decide, everything that is a psychology, everything that is your own that comes from thoughts and world views, you have 100% control over it, even though it doesn't feel that way. If you are listening to this and you feel like your emotions are running you, then it's time to have a different relationship with your emotions. It's time to develop that governance of emotions. It's possible. Because if your emotions are holding you back and sometimes they can sabotage the result you want to have, then can you see that in that moment you have a battle from within and that's again, a microenvironment conducive to more rambling, especially in important conversations. So you've got to make sure your emotions are congruent, congruent inside and bus outside. The third thing that is important to have congruency with are your intentions. And it's important because intentions lead to actions. If you intend to do something or not to do something, that's exactly going to shape what actions you do next and then what action you do or don't do after that. So this is why intentions are wise if they are congruent with the outcome you want and the effect you want to have. And the final thing for congruency is your expectations. Now most people overlook this one. But expectations are very powerful. Because have you ever had that experience where you want to have an outcome and in your mind you've envisioned it exactly how you wanted to turn out? But you know, you kind of felt like running through all the worst case scenarios and you would just do the calculations inside your head and therefore you expect the worst out of it. If your expectations are pulling in the opposite direction of the meaningful goal you want to create can you see how, therefore internal, your internal environment you lack in congruency in your expectations. So that's why it's important to educate your expectations. Sometimes our expectations are more as a result of our uncontrolled emotions rather than what really is. What really is reality through our perspectives. So this is why it's important to have congruency in expectations because your expectations can therefore shape your perspectives. Well even in biology your body must break down raw materials before it can be extrapolated into energy. Waste must be removed as well because anything that is waste that is unprocessed creates toxicity and you see your mind works in exactly the same way. If you have thoughts in your mind it's important to break down old assumptions or on our one side of assumptions important to be able to reprocess toxic thoughts to be able to break down raw materials, raw materials meaning those complex of those tangled ideas to break those down. Because if you don't practice that type of catabolism in your mind then you have all this toxicity that's going in your mind and that creates more rambling. Anytime and anywhere you skip this internal catabolism your mind will remain congested and congestion always leads to rambling. So when taken together in this step any time that you want, any time you want in a conversation to start rambling it's important to have an internal alignment in your internal state. And that will help you to do three things. Number one it's going to help you decide what matters. Then it's going to help you identify what is the truth. And the third one it's going to help you to know what outcomes you want to stand behind. So far you have committed to prepare differently and the first step you took was to prepare your congruency and after that now is a time to prepare your epistemology. So what do I mean by that? The word epistemology. It's a really big word but any word that ends in all the G means it's the study of a thing. So what's the study of? It's a study of epistomy which means knowledge. So you are studying knowledge. What does that mean? And how does this help in preparing in conversation so you don't ramble? Well, if you are preparing your epistemology, in the end you are studying effectively and diligently studying what you know. So when you're studying what you know, it's the knowledge you've accumulated in school and college and university, it's the knowledge you've accumulated in your personal life through your experiences, it's the knowledge that you have accumulated in all of your work experience, and the feedback you've got from other people in all of your own personal readings and your resources and the seminars you attended. It's all of that knowledge, the body of knowledge that's in your head that's important to you, that you want to mobilize and create a result and outcomes for. That is important to practice epistemology. Study what you know. Do you really understand what you know? I'll tell you a story. When I finished my PhD, I got my first job after my PhD and I was Dr. Grace Lee. This time, I was so happy about it. I got a job, passed the interview, I got hired, and my job at that time was to lead a nationwide project for the research that will help individuals, patients with traumatic brain injury, with brain trauma. And I was the national lead on this project. It was scary for me. So my supervisor, she called the committee to get there for the research project and she was introducing me for the first time and she introduced me this way. As Dr. Grace Lee, she will be leading this project and I don't want to say the name of the project for protection of copyright. So she said, Dr. Grace Lee will be leading this project. And in that room was all the stakeholders of that project. Think about this. It was neurologists, professors with a championship. They were healthcare ethics experts. All of these people who have been around a long time and they've been educated in schools like Stanford and Harvard and all of these universities that I admired back then. So when she introduced me as the lead on this project, I had a deer and headlights moment. I stood in that front of the room and deer and headlights, eyes were wide and I just had no idea what to do next, what to say next on how to lead this project. And that was really when I really realized in that moment. Yeah, I graduated with a degree in neuroscience, brain trauma, if it's under that umbrella of neuroscience. But I didn't really understand what I know in order to apply it in this real life scenario. I understood it enough to pass my exams and get married for it, right, and get degrees and pass my dissertation and defend my dissertation effectively. But I didn't understand it to apply it in a different context. And that's what epistemology would do for you, how deep is your understanding? How certain are you, are you, about what you know, how certain are you? What's the conditionality of it? To which your knowledge is true, to which your assumptions are true, what are the conditions around it? Do you know that? Or what makes it true versus another knowledge that someone else might possess? What conditions will your knowledge that you have right now expire and no longer be applicable? These are important questions. There's so many more questions that are important in understanding when it comes to your own knowledge. Knowledge is not always evergreen. And knowledge is not always power if you don't know how to apply it in a completely different context, the one that's being called of you right now. So this is important to prepare. If you're not prepared in this regard, then it produces rambling because in the moment where the conversation is happening and it's an important conversation and you weren't prepared for it because you didn't really study what you know. It creates rambling because in that moment it forces you to think and you don't want to be thinking in that moment because now when you're rambling, people are watching you think and they're thinking to themselves, why isn't this person prepared? Have you not thought about it in advance? They don't want to watch you think. They want to watch the outcome of having prepared in private through your thinking. That's what they want to see. So this is important. Prepare your epistemology. The next one is to prepare your resilience. Resilience. And why is resilience important because the journey can be difficult and sometimes this journey of growth can be long. I mean, it's never ending. And it's difficult because when you're in conversation, you are in conversations with people who necessarily will have different values than you, different opinions about the circumstances and situation, different solutions that they would provide and they're just different people altogether. So this is why this is what makes us so difficult. But if you're someone who really truly desires positive feedback, who desires for other people to like you, who desires for people to approve and agree with you, if that is really important to you, the more important those things are, the more the opposite is true. So let me illustrate my point. What's the opposite of praise? It's criticism. What's the opposite of agreeing with you? It's disagreeing with you. So what does this mean? It means that the more you desire to be praised, the more you will fear criticism. The more you desire for people to agree with you, the more you will want to avoid disagreements and maybe even avoid conflict. You see how this works? It's psychology. So this is why if you have that pattern, right, the addiction to praise, the addiction to agreement, if you want to be liked, if you want to be the hero, if you want people to praise you and to give you credit, the more you will fear that the credit will go to someone else, the more you will feel you will be fearful of being blamed for something. So the more you have that tension between the opposites, fear, criticism, appraise, criticism, agreement, disagreement, the more polarized, the more the tension is there, the less resilient you are. You have less resilience when you have that tension. So this is an important personal growth journey is to prepare your own resilience. When you are resilient, you don't have that tension. You don't have the addictions and the avoidances. You don't have those fears and those attractions. You don't have that, but you are neutral. And that neutrality, that objectivity creates a very strong presence, which leaves very nicely to the final point I wanted to make and that is to prepare your presence. I would argue that very little things are more important than how you show up and that's really the understanding of what presence is. And I can go into a very long lesson teaching presence and executive presence, but that's not the purpose of this video. Preparing for your presence is really preparing for exactly how you're going to show up because rambling has very little to do with how you talk and how fluent you sound is very little to do with the words coming out of your mouth and it has a lot more to do with your internal stability. So that's why if you want to be able to stop rambling, especially in important conversations, don't focus on all those surface level stuff that people talk about. People say, well, if you want to stop rambling, you got to be able to talk slower, work on getting rid of those filler words, those ums and us. They tell you work on your body language. They tell you, well, watch your tonality. Maybe you got to get a vocal coaching lesson and work on your projecting from your diaphragm. They tell you all these things which are surface level tactics and you're going to notice that when it comes to round that it has very little to do with these surface level tactics of speech. Rambling is not a talking problem. It is a thinking problem. So start working on the mechanics of speech and start focusing your energy and your intellect more on how you think. (upbeat music)