Comment by zoogeny

When I was a young man I was taking a language course while I was temporarily living in a foreign country. There was an older man in the course (not elderly, more like mid-fifties) who was very bad at the new language we were both learning. Yet I noticed he had, what seemed to me, a magic power: he could always make people laugh. He would often whisper something to one of our classmates and they would always get a giant smile on their face or even laugh out loud.

I was intensely curious and I spent some time wondering how he did it. One day, out of the blue, he invited me out to lunch after class. We just chatted for most of the lunch, exchanging backgrounds and stories. Then his face took on a serious expression and he slowly and carefully began to explain something to me as if he was passing on some wisdom.

He said that he never spoke a single sentence without fully saying the sentence in his mind. He said he would often think of the words several times in his mind, revising the phrase until he was happy. He would imagine saying the words to the person in front of him and he would imagine their reaction. And he would continue to revise until he felt confident the person who heard the words he would say would react in the way he wanted them to react. If he could not imagine the person reacting how he wanted them to react, he would not say anything at all.

It was clear to me that he was passing along this advice but also that he was calling me out a bit. He was letting me know that I spoke without thinking. I say what pops into my head. It was like he read my mind honestly, he knew exactly what I was curious about and he answered the question I had for him that I never asked.

I wish I could say that I learned the lesson. When I have tried the technique it has rewarded the effort. But I haven't formed it into a habit and I still tend to let my mouth race ahead of my mind.