Have you ever watched yourself on video and thought, Was I speaking that fast? You're not alone. When nerves kick in, our internal speedometer breaks. What feels like a measured pace to us sounds like an auctioneer on espresso to everyone else.

Here's the counterintuitive truth: slowing down doesn't just help your audience understand you better—it actually makes you feel more confident while you're speaking. It's one of those rare techniques that solves multiple problems at once. Let's explore why pace matters so much, and how to use it strategically without putting everyone to sleep.

When you're anxious, your body prepares to escape danger. Your heart races, your breathing shallows, and—here's the sneaky part—your perception of time distorts. Pauses that last two seconds feel like twenty. Silence becomes unbearable. So you rush to fill it, cramming more words into less space.

This creates a vicious cycle. Speaking faster means shorter breaths, which triggers more anxiety signals in your body. Your audience picks up on the tension. They start feeling rushed and overwhelmed, which you interpret as them losing interest, which makes you speak even faster. Before you know it, you've delivered a ten-minute presentation in six minutes and nobody absorbed a thing.

The cruel irony? Your audience actually needs more time to process information than you need to deliver it. You've rehearsed this material. You know what's coming next. They're hearing it for the first time, building mental models on the fly. When you race through your points, you're essentially asking them to run a marathon they didn't train for.

Takeaway

Your internal clock lies when you're nervous. A pause that feels awkwardly long to you probably feels perfectly natural—or even welcomely brief—to your audience.

Think about the speakers who've impressed you most. Chances are, they weren't the fastest talkers in the room. There's a reason we associate measured speech with wisdom and rapid speech with nervousness or inexperience. Right or wrong, pace shapes perception.

When you speak slowly, you signal that your words matter enough to be given space. You're not begging for attention or racing against an invisible timer. You're granting your audience access to your ideas. This shift in posture—from performer seeking approval to expert sharing knowledge—transforms how people receive your message.

The practical magic here is that slowing down actually gives your brain time to work. Those pauses you're creating aren't just for your audience—they're processing time for you. You can find better words, remember your next point, and gauge reactions. Speakers who rush have no margin for recovery. Speakers who pace themselves can adapt in real time. The confidence you project isn't an act; it emerges naturally from having space to think.

Takeaway

Pace communicates status. Speaking slower doesn't just make you seem more authoritative—it gives you the mental breathing room to actually be more thoughtful.

Here's where it gets interesting: speaking slower doesn't mean speaking at one monotonous tempo. The real skill is variation—knowing when to ease off the gas and when to accelerate. Think of it like music. A song played entirely at the same tempo puts you to sleep. It's the changes that create emotional movement.

Slow down when you're making your most important points, introducing complex ideas, or delivering a punchline (yes, even for serious punchlines). The deceleration signals pay attention, this matters. Speed up slightly when you're covering familiar ground, building excitement, or moving through supporting details. This variation keeps listeners engaged while ensuring your key messages land with full impact.

A practical technique: identify the one sentence in each section that you most want people to remember. Practice delivering that sentence at half your normal speed, with a pause before and after. It will feel theatrical at first—almost comically slow. But to your audience, it will feel like a spotlight suddenly illuminating exactly what matters. That's your superpower as a speaker: you control the emphasis through pace.

Takeaway

Uniform pace is forgettable. Strategic variation—slowing for emphasis, speeding for energy—creates the rhythm that makes messages memorable.

Speaking slower is one of those rare skills that feels wrong while you're learning it and obvious once you've mastered it. The discomfort you feel in those pauses is a sign you're growing, not a signal to retreat. Your audience is grateful for the breathing room, even if they never consciously notice it.

Start small. In your next conversation—not presentation, just conversation—practice leaving one extra beat of silence before you respond. Notice how it changes the quality of your thinking and speaking. The stage can wait. The habit starts now.