Posture is also important for good speech. If you don’t sit up straight or stand straight, your vocal equipment will be pinched, and it will sound that way even if you don’t notice it yourself. When you’re trying to convey a fake sense of confidence—which is often handy—you need to tell yourself you’re acting. Simply speak the way you imagine a confident person would speak and you’ll nail it on the first try. You want to get rid of the hemming and hawing, the “ums” and “uhs,” and anything that disrupts your flow. That takes practice. The quickest fix is simply to substitute silence where you
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