HOW TO TALK TO ANYONE

The Only Practical Guide to Establish

Effective Communication and Acquire
Valuable Social Skills that will Improve
Self-Confidence to Become the King of
Your Emotions

Dale King
© Copyright 2020 by Dale King - All rights reserved.
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 Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: How the Human Mind Works
Chapter 2: Communication Levels
Chapter 3: The Art of Persuasion
Chapter 4: Controlling A Conversation
Chapter 5: The Importance of Empathy
Chapter 6: Verbal Dexterity
Chapter 7: Tell Stories Without Losing Listeners
Chapter 8: Relationship Communication
Chapter 9: Eloquence
Chapter 10: Choice of Words
Chapter 11: Anxiety: The Worry about Other People’s Thoughts about
Us
Chapter 12: The Magical Power of Words
Chapter 13: Power of Words in Strengthening, Encouraging and
Boosting Confidence
Chapter 14: Words Shape the Beliefs, Values, and Destiny of a Person
Chapter 15: Conversation: Developing Empathy by Improving
Conversational Skills
Chapter 16: Be Interesting: Develop the Skills Of Great Successful
People
Chapter 17: The Power of Metaphor
Chapter 18: Learn To Manage Your Inner Dialogue
Chapter 19: Love Relationship
Chapter 20: Develop Humor and Make New Friends
Chapter 21: Knowing How to Tell Stories
Chapter 22: Mindset
Conclusion
 Introduction
First off, I would like to thank you for purchasing “How to Talk to
Anyone”. You have made the best first step that you could to reach amazing
communication skills.
It seems that everybody finds communicating hard to do, especially
effective communication. I’m not going to lie; it can be depending on the
situation that you find yourself in. This book is here to help get rid of all of
those communication problems.
First off, we are all social creatures, so it’s important to understand how
communication works on a mental level. You wouldn’t think that there were
a bunch of little things at play while you are talking to somebody, but there
is. That’s the first thing we are going to go over, which I’m certain you will
find interesting.
Then we will go over the five levels of communication. Just to give you a
quick preview, the five levels are verbal, physical, auditory, emotional, and
energetic. We’ll look at how that plays out in effective communication.
Then we will dive into the art of persuasion. There are many different
things that play into being a persuasive communicator, such as body
language, and we will go over these things to help you become more
persuasive.
Next, we will look at how to manage a conversation. This doesn’t mean that
you will constantly talk and be in control of the conversation at all times.
This simply means that you know the right time to talk and the right time to
listen. Listening tends to be the hardest part of communication.
Then we will look at where empathy comes into play. Empathy is a very
important skill that a lot of people lack when it comes to being an effective
communicator. Empathy plays a big part in understanding your audience,
but the great news is, you can learn it.
Then we will look at verbal dexterity. Being able to speak eloquently is just
another muscle that you have to work, so you can change even if you
stumble when you talk.
Next, we’ll go through the best way to share your ideas and stories so that
you don’t end up losing your audience interest. This may be the biggest
reason why people just don’t even try when communicating. They are afraid
that they are going to come off as boring, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Next, we will look at the best tips for effective communication in
relationships. Communication is often the number one problem between
couples, but with a little foresight, you can prevent those problems.
Lastly, we will look at eloquence. This is what we are aiming for after all,
isn’t it? We want to be an eloquent speaker, and that’s exactly what you are
going to learn.
Now, enough with the introductions, let’s get into what you are really here
for.
 Chapter 1: How the Human Mind Works

Picture this. There is a device that could record every memory, idea, and
dream in your brain and then send the entire contents to another person.
This sounds game-changing, right? The truth is, we already have this type
of technology; it is known as effective storytelling. The life of the human
revolves around the ability to share experiences and information.
Being able to communicate well is all a matter of getting “in sync” with
other people. You may have even noticed this. Maybe you have seen where
people start matching steps as they walk, or how they imitate the gestures of
others as they talk, or use grammar or phrases that the other person uses.
But this syncing up doesn’t just happen in people’s mannerism or speech. It
also happens in parts of the brain. This is what is known as “neural
coupling,” and scientists believe it is an extremely important part of
communication.
In one study on the functions of the brain, while communicating, scientists
had a person tell a 15-minute story while also having the brain scanned with
an MRI to record all of the activity in the different regions. They took this
recorded and played it for 11 volunteers while they were having an MRI.
As they listened to the recorded, their brain activity matched up with the
storytellers.
This is a great way of looking at the brain during communication, especially
considering there are quite a few studies that look at “the brain.” This
doesn’t give us a good idea of what the brain does during communication
because it takes more than one person to have a conversation. It also does a
good job of showing that listening and talking aren’t two separate activities.
The “neural coupling” takes place in the “production” and “comprehension”
parts of the listener’s brain.
What’s even more interesting is that the firing in the brain regions happened
first in the listener. That means the listener’s brain is acting in anticipation
of what the speaker is going to say. They were priming their self, so to
speak, as what they were expecting to hear. The more accurate these
“predictive anticipatory responses” were in the listener, the better they were
able to understand the story. This means that if what the speaker says goes
completely against what the person was expecting, the listener is going to
be less likely to understand what is happening or they could just stop
listening altogether.
In the 1930s, Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett performed some interesting
experiments. Through these experiments, we have learned that listeners will
“fill in” details about the things they are hearing. We also know that a
person’s memory of the speaker doesn’t distinguish between the things they
heard and what their brain told them.
In Bartlett’s studies, he had students read a folktale and then asked them to
retell the story. They would end up adding some details. For example, one
part of the story said, “That Indian has been hit,” and some of the students
would say that an Indian had been hit by an arrow, or that the Indian had
been killed. They would also change some of the other unfamiliar facts.
You can even test this on yourself. Pick a short story that you don’t know
and read it. Then, in a couple of days, record yourself retelling the story out
loud. See how the two compare.
The people involved in the story felt certain that their memories of the story
were correct. They weren’t able to tell the difference in their retelling.
Why? Bartlett came to the conclusion that the mind understands things
through “schemas.” These are mental maps that relate objects and actions to
one another. Once they are learned, the scheme works kind of like a mad lib
book or a fill in the blank test. Once a person knows that the story is about
Indians and canoes, their mind is going to “fill in” moccasins and arrows
even if they weren’t an original part of the story. The same can be true if
you were to throw in something about samurai swords; they are going to
leave out that part because it doesn’t belong.
In the MRI study, performed at Princeton University, they discovered two
neural mechanisms. The first is during communication, sound waves
coming from the speaker, couples the listener’s brain response with the
brain response of the speaker. Second, the brain has created a common
neural protocol that gives us the ability to use brain coupling to share
information with others.
They did a second study where they took people into an fMRI scanner and
scanned their brains as they were listening to or telling a real story. They
looked at the similarity of the neural responses for the listeners in their
auditory cortices, which is the area of the brain that process sounds. They
looked at the brain scans before the stories started to get a baseline reading.
At that point, the brains were all very different and not synced up.
However, once the stories began, they noticed something amazing. All of
the listeners’ neural responses started to match up. They started to move in
the same frequency to each other.
This is what scientists refer to as “neural entrainment,” which refers to the
process of the brain response to lock and align with the sounds of speech.
But what drives this brain activity; the ideas that the speaker is conveying,
or the sounds they are producing?
They continued on with their experiment. They took recorded stories and
played them backward for the listeners. This kept much of the same
auditory sounds, but it got rid of the meaning. They found that this created
entrainment or the neural responses of every listener but didn’t go any
further into the other areas of the brain. Based on this, they figured that the
auditory cortex would be entrained by sounds, regardless if there was an
intelligible meaning or not.
Then they tried scrambling the words. This made the words
comprehensible, but it sounded like a bunch of unconnected words. These
words created alignment in the early language parts of the brains, but
nowhere else.
They then formed the words back into sentences. While each sentence made
individual sense, they don’t go together to create a story. When this version
was played for the listener, they start the entrainment move to every
language area that processes grammatically coherent sentences. But once
they finally played the full engaging story for them, they entrainment
spread through more of the brain and created aligned responses between all
of the listeners, which included the parietal and frontal cortices.
This led them to believe that the high-order cortical areas would become
entrained to the ideas that a person shared as they placed sentences into an
understandable narrative. If this conclusion should prove to be true, then if
they shared a story to two listeners that were the same but used different
sets of words, their brain’s response would remain similar. To test this, they
took the story they had been using and translated it into Russian.
They played English version for their English listeners, and then played the
Russian version to Russian listeners and compared the neural responses.
They didn’t get similar responses, which they expected because the
different languages sounded different. However, they did find that the
responses within the higher-order areas were similar among all of them.
This was because they all had the same understanding of the story.
Now that they had this information about what happens in a listener’s brain,
they wanted to look at what happened in the speaker’s brain. The storyteller
then underwent an MRI scan and they compared what happened within his
brain to the listener’s brain. Producing and comprehending speech are two
different things. But amazingly, as mentioned earlier, the brain responses
were very similar in the two groups.
The more understood the storyteller was, the more connected their brain
waves were. This moved them onto another question. How can this
coupling help us transmit a memory from one brain to another? They tested
this by having people watch the pilot episode of Sherlock as they scanned
their brains. Then, while still being scanned, they told the episode in the
form of a story to another person.
In this episode, there is a scene where Sherlock takes a cab that is driven by
the murderer. The subjects who were watching the scene showed specific
neural patterns in the high-order brain areas. What was interesting is when
they recalled this scene and shared it in story form to a person; the same
patterns were seen in the listener’s brain. This means that these brain
patterns happen even when a person shares just a memory, not a real
experience. This shows the important role language plays in sharing
memories to other people.
The act of communication, though, is very far from perfect, and in many
cases, we tend to fail to communicate in an effective manner, or are simply
misunderstood. People can interpret the same stories in different ways.
They decided to study this problem as well. They used the story “Pretty
Mouth and Green My Eyes,” by J.D. Salinger. In the story, the husband
loses track of his wife during a party. He has to call a friend and asks, “Did
you see my wife?” They took half of their listeners and told them that the
wife was having an affair and told the other half that she was loyal.
What was interesting was that this simple sentence that they told the
listeners beforehand was enough to cause their brain responses to be
different. Both groups had similar brain responses to everybody in the
group, but were different from the other group.
This shows that there is a lot of implications in communication, considering
a single sentence was enough to affect brain responses. Good
communication greatly depends on the listener and speaker having common
ground. The problem with communication today is that most of us live a
life where we are exposed to the same perspective each day. This doesn’t
give us much room for common ground amongst people who are different.
If we lose our common ground completely, what would be able to do to
ever communicate effectively?
One way to do this is to start having real conversations with each other
were actually listen to each other’s viewpoints. This gives us a chance to
figure out a mutual understanding.

Mental Health and Communication

We are all humans, and as such, we all have our own problems. As much as
we hate to think about it, our mental health plays into how we
communicate. Stress levels, especially within families and job relationships,
can create communication problems. This, and other mental health
disorders can cause a person to misread or withdraw in social situations.
Whether you are the one struggling or a person you are talking to is, the
most common signs are:

Misinterpreting or missing simply social cues, like facial

expressions, which causes misunderstandings.
Make unreasonable demands, or they show a lack of concern
because they are preoccupied with their own anxieties or fears.
Perceive people inaccurately, which can cause paranoia or
anxiety.
Behave unpredictably, feel irritable, or have angry outbursts
because of instability.
Withdraw or remain silent when feeling depressed.
The only way around these problems, if you are the one suffering from
them, is to seek help. Now, sometimes a little time to calm down or relax
can help, especially if it has been a long and stressful day. But if you feel
this way constantly, then seeking assistance from a professional is the best
way to proceed.
Now, if you have to converse with somebody who you know is struggling
with mental health issues, or is clearly stressed, there are a few things you
can do. First, be brief and get to the point. The last thing a stressed person
wants to hear is a longwinded story. If you are sharing personal feelings
about something, use “I” statements so that you don’t come off as
confrontational.
Most importantly, you can only speak for yourself. You don’t know how a
person truly feels based solely on how they act. It is likely only going to
make them more upset or stressed if they feel like you are speaking for
them.
Alright, with all of this in mind, let’s move into the communication levels.
 Chapter 2: Communication Levels

Communicating with others happen on several different levels; each one has
its own complexities and nuances. The levels that communication happens
on are verbal, physical, emotional, auditory, and energetic.
These five levels of communication have been known for a while, but most
people aren’t even aware of them. Understanding them is can be very
helpful when a person is trying to improve their communication skills.

Level One: Verbal Communication

While this may be the most obvious level of human communication, people
will likely spend their entire life trying to master it. This is the level where
are words are kept and are based upon the understanding of meaning
between the listener and speaker. There are several different definitions for
the majority of words, and very few people have the same meanings for
every word.
There are different words that create different memories, meanings, and
images for different people. The reasoning and logic behind a statement or
argument can influence how effectively the message is received.
There are several different types of communication skills. This can be
obvious things like listening and speaking clearly, to subtle things like
clarifying and reflecting.
Listening and effective speaking are the basic forms of verbal
communication. Effective speaking requires three things: the words, how
they are said, and how they are reinforced. All of these put together affect
how the message is shared and how the listeners receive and understand the
message.
It is definitely worth your time to make sure that you choose your words
carefully. Given the situation, you may have to choose certain words. For
example, the things that you say to your coworker are going to be different
than how you present an idea to executives.
Through your verbal communication, you can also add reinforcement.
Reinforcement means that you use encouraging words as well as other
nonverbal gestures like head nods, a smile, or eye contact. This helps to
create rapport and lets the other person know that you want them to
continue talking.
In order to communicate effectively on this level, you have to make sure
that you use the correct words for the conversation and context, which also
includes religious, ethnic, and moral differences. You must make sure you
are concise and clear. Whenever you find it possible, create your thoughts
before speaking so that you don’t ramble. This can be an art in itself.

Level Two: Physical Communication

With the inception of NLP, neuro-linguistic programming added more
importance on the visual cues of our communication. Visual cues, such as
expressions, posture, breathing, stance, movement, gestures, and eye
contact, play a big part in how we communicate and feel.
When a person uses techniques like mirroring and matching others gestures
and posture, with integrity, it can increase the person’s receptivity of the
message. Physical communication works by complimenting verbal
communication and can provide you with amazing results when you
combine the two effectively. There are certain jobs and professions where
your physical communication ability is important.
For example, in most sporting events, being able to understand and use
gestures and signs is necessary. Within security agencies, it is an important
skill to understand considering the nature of the job. The military and police
use these skills in order to keep from being detected by enemies.
Investigators and detectives will use these skills in order to figure out if
somebody is lying.
In order to be a good communication on a physical level, it helps to
physically match yourself up with others. You need to connect them in
movement and form. It can also help you watch your hand movements,
expressions, and posture.

Level Three: Auditory Communication

The sound of the voice, as well as the speed, volume, range, and tone, plays
a part in how the message is received and interpreted by the listener. For
example, if you are a fast talker, you may find that helpful to slow down
your speech when speaking to somebody who is introverted and thoughtful;
otherwise, you run the risk of not being understood.
The way that you inflect, place emphasis, and enunciate certain words will
affect the way in which a person interprets what you are saying. Auditory
communication is very common in other animals, such as the rattlesnake.
When you hear the rattle of their tail, you know that you should probably
move away. Birds are another species that puts a lot of importance on
auditory communication.
In order to communicate effectively on this level, make sure that you are
aware of the different auditory cues. Try to talk to others in a way that is
similar to how they talk.

Level Four: Emotional Communication

There are very few people who appreciate how effective our emotional state
is when we communicated and how messages are interpreted by the listener.
Aristotle’s pathos shows us an appeal to the audience’s emotions.
Do you tend to be more receptive to a person who is life-affirming and
positive or a person who is more critical? Do you like listening to boring
people or enthusiastic people?
The emotions of the speaker put the listener in a certain state of mind and
influences how they interpret what has been said. If you make sure that you
are emotionally aware, then you will be able to communicate more
efficiently because you will be able to notice the emotions of your listeners.
This gives you a chance to change the conversation if need be to help make
them more receptive.
In order to communicate well on this level, it is important that you become
more aware of your emotional state, learn to pause, and get rid of negative
emotions before you try to connect with another person. Words that are
delivered with fear, pride, or anger rarely end up being received well.

Level Five: Energetic Communication

Sometimes referred to as psychic communication, this type of
communication includes a large range of unseen factors, which includes
consciousness, harmonics or frequency of the message, and other types of
more subtle energy.
There are some people who appear to have some unique presence that can
naturally provide a person with a clear message so that they understand it
easily and are receptive to it.
Every living creature, on some level, is communicating through energy and
vibrations, and we, for the most part, don’t even notice it. Think about this:
when people are placed in amongst horses, the horses will respond to a
person’s energy. If they feel that the person is afraid of horses, they are
likely going to stay away from them.
These energies that we can read from others are influenced by emotions,
much like the last level. Whether you know it or not, there have probably
been things you have backed out of or declined to do something based on
the “vibe” you got from somebody. That’s why you want to make sure you
aren’t sending out “no” vibes when you want to communicate with a
person.
In order to communicate well on this level, it is important that you hold
high intentions for your listener’s wellbeing. This is going to require a very
good level of mindfulness that is typically cultivated through the practice of
compassion. When you make sure that you are centered in a state of
mastery, it is more likely that you will be able to access this dimension that
holds a lot of insight into others, which will help you to communicate more
easily.
All five levels have to be put together to be an effective communicator. The
verbal level is the things we say. The physical, energetic, auditory, and
emotional levels are how we convey our message.
They are all interdependent because each level affects the next. For
example, how we feel emotionally is going to affect our body language and
the overall field influences our emotions. Simply noticing these things can
be helpful.
When we are able to spot the complexities within human communication,
we can become more patient in how we talk with others and, in turn,
become more compassionate towards ourselves and others.
 Chapter 3: The Art of Persuasion

Persuasion is having the ability to convince a person to change their

thoughts about something or do something that you suggest. Persuasion has
been said to be an art form, but what is the art of persuasion? Knowing
exactly what it is won’t only help you persuade people, but it can also help
you become more aware of the techniques being used on you to change
your actions or thoughts.
To fully understand why persuasion is art, it helps to understand what art is
on a broad scale. If you look at it philosophically, art is any activity that:

Is the product of trying to create art

Belongs in an established art form
Creates a performance or object that needs a lot of skill
Is original
Shows a person viewpoint
Conveys something that is complex
Creates an intellectual challenged
Expresses strong emotion
Not all of these fit into persuasion. For example, people are able to be
persuasive without showing the slightest hint of emotion, although this is a
very rare anomaly. Also, persuasion isn’t necessarily an established form of
art in a sense such as music and painting. You can also persuade a person
without trying to do anything artistic.
However, the other qualities are strongly present in persuasion. It creates an
intellectual challenge. It is complex. It can share a complex message. It
does show a person’s viewpoint. It is also original.

Purpose of Persuasion
Why should we learn how to persuade? Doesn’t that just mean you are
manipulating people? The truth of the matter is that everybody will be
placed in a position at some point where they have to persuade somebody of
something. If you never face another need for persuasion but one, then most
are going to need to be able to persuade an employer to hire them.
Salespeople use persuasion to get people to buy their things. Politicians
persuade to get votes. Con artists persuade to get people to fall for their
scam. Persuasion plays a large role in almost every human action. A kid
could persuade their teacher to let them make up a test. Somebody could
persuade a significant other to marry them. You could also persuade a
person to do something good. In fact, if I asked you to find something that
doesn’t require some persuasion, you would find it pretty hard.

Practice Persuasion
Anybody is able to practice persuasion. But not everybody will find it as
easier as some. There are some who are naturals at convincing others to do
things. If it isn’t a natural skill, it can be improved.

1. First off, you need to get a feel for how hard it is going to be to
win somebody over. Researchers have discovered many factors
that can go into influence how easy a person can be convinced of
something.
a. Groups – If a person is part of a group, then they will
be harder to convince them of something that goes
against the majority of the group. Being loyal to a
group helps to strengthen a person’s resolve to stick
with their beliefs.
b. Self-esteem – If a person has low self-esteem, then
they will be easier to convince. This may be because
they value other people’s opinions more than their
own.
c. Aggression – If a person doesn’t like to show
aggression, then they are easier to convince. They may
feel uncomfortable, but because they aren’t likely to
show any type of aggression, they aren’t going to
challenge what you have to say.
 d. Depressive Tendencies – Research has found that a
person who is often depressed tends to be easily
convinced to think like somebody else.
e. Social Inadequacy – People don’t think they are
socially adequate is often more easily persuaded. They
are likely just as socially capable as everybody else;
the fact of the matter is, their view causes them to
view their self and the burden during a conversation.
This means they are easier to be persuaded.
2. Second, you have to introduce yourself correctly. Walking up to
a stranger and trying to convince them of something is hard to
do. That’s why a lot of people hate jobs that require cold-calling.
In a situation like this, you don’t know what they find as
important, their preferences, or if they belong to a group that
doesn’t agree with you. They also don’t have a clue who you are.
If you can get a person who knows them to introduce you, you
will have a better chance of persuading them. If an introduction
can’t happen, then it would be best to do a little prep work. This
is why you also need to be a good listener.
3. The next step is to listen first. By doing so, you will gather the
information that you need to come up with a personalized pitch
that is going to help the other person see your viewpoint. Besides
what you gain from listening, you will also create a good
impression that you are a respectful person. They are going to
end up having a more favorable view of you.
4. Next, you need to be agreeable even if you don’t agree. This
shows them that you respect them. Everybody wants to feel like
they are intelligent, so if you refute the things they say, they are
going to end up ignoring you. Of course, there are times where
you can’t agree. At some point, you are going to have to show
them your side. What can be done is to have an attitude that says
agreement and acknowledges the reasons why they see things as
they do.
5. Lastly, you must be subtle. If you are able to say what you want
a person to believe, and they automatically believe you, then that
 doesn’t require a whole lot of persuasion. More often than not,
you are going to have to show them things in subtle ways why
the way you think is best. There are a lot of techniques that can
be used. The best techniques have one thing in common, and that
is that they aren’t obvious or blatant. Instead, they work by
creating comparisons, meeting people on common ground, and
storytelling.

How to Be Persuasive
Besides the steps mentioned in the last section, there are some more sure-
fire ways to make you more persuasive.

1. Take a strong stand.

You can have all of the reasoning and data in the world, but that doesn’t
always win. Interestingly enough, there has been research that found people
prefer cockiness to expertise. Humans assume that confidence means skill.
Even some of the world’s most skeptical people will be partly persuaded by
a speaker who shows confidence. In fact, people would rather receive
advice from somebody who is positive. We want a confident person so
badly that we are willing to forgive their bad track record.
So, make sure that you are bold. Don’t use words like “I believe” or “I
think.” Quit adding in qualifiers. If you believe something is going to work,
them tell them that. Stand behind every opinion that you have, even if they
are simply opinions. Allow your enthusiasm to shine through. People are
going to naturally be pulled to your side.

2. Start slow and gain small “wins.”

Research has found that gaining agreement is enduring, even if it only
happens over a short period of time. Instead of getting straight to the end of
your argument, begin by using statements or premises that you already
know the audience is likely to agree with. This will help by building a
foundation for more agreement. Keep in mind, a body in motion remains in
motion, and that even applies to a head nod.

3. Connect your rate of speech to your audience.

There are many reasons for that fast-talking salesperson. There are some
situations where talking fast is good. Then there are times when it won’t.
One study found that if you know that your audience is more likely to
disagree, you should speak fast. If they are more likely to agree, then you
should speak slower.
The reason for this is that when your audience is already inclined to
disagree with you, speaking faster will mean that they have less time to
come up with their own counter-arguments, which gives you an increased
chance of persuading them.
If they are already inclined to agree with you, then speaking slowly will
give them a chance to evaluate your arguments and factor in some of their
own thoughts. With this combo of their own bias and your reasoning, then
they are going to be more likely to be persuaded.
If your audience is apathetic or neutral, then you should speak quickly so
that you are less likely to lose their attention.

4. Don’t be afraid of being slightly unprofessional.

Let’s talk about swearing. Cussing just to cussing is bad. But if your team
really needs to get their shit together, throwing in the occasional, and
heartfelt, cuss word can help you to create a sense of urgency because it
shows them that you care.
Basically, you want to be yourself. Authenticity tends to be way more
persuasive. If you feel so strongly about something that you would naturally
use strong language, then do so.

5. Think about how your listener would prefer to process new

information.
You have to know your audience to some extent. Some people can be
pushed to give an immediate response and there are others who need a
couple of days to think about things.
You never want to push somebody who doesn’t like being pushed. The
same goes for people who like to make quick decisions; don’t ask them to
think about it.
 6. Share the positive and negative.
Daniel O’Keefe, a professor at the University of Illinois, said that if you
share an opposing viewpoint, your argument becomes more persuasive than
sticking to the argument. Why is this? There aren’t too many perfect ideas
out there. And everybody knows that. They know that there are plenty of
other perspectives and possible outcomes.
Combat this head on. Talk about the other things that they likely already
have going through their minds. Discuss some of the downsides and show
them how you can overcome these issues. The listener is going to be more
likely to be persuaded when they already know that you understand the
downsides.

7. Bring out the positive conclusions.

Alright, I’m going to give you a few statements and you are going to say
which is more persuasive.

“You will end up being more accurate,” or

“You won’t make as many mistakes.”
How about these two?

“You are going to have loads more energy,” or

“You won’t feel as tired.”
While it may be tempting to use scare tactics, using positive outcome
statements will make your argument more persuasive. If you want to create
some sort of change, then you need to focus on the positives of the change.
Bring your audience into a better place instead of telling them the things
they should avoid.

8. Pick the right format.

Let’s say that you are a man trying to convince another man something, and
you don’t know him. What should be your first step? If you get any say so,
don’t talk to them in person. Send them an email.
A general rule is men often feel competitive in person and will change a
simple conversation into a contest that they think they need to win.
For women, the opposite is true. Women do better with in-person
conversations.
Now, if you are a man and you already know the man really well, then you
can skip the email and talk to them in person. The closer your relationship
is with them, the more effective an in-person conversation will be.

9. Above everything else, make sure that you are correct.

A persuasive person understands the best way to frame and deliver their
argument, but the most important thing is that they know their message is
what is most important. So, make sure that you are clear, concise, and get to
the point. You will win the day because your information will be correct.

Patience
Being persuasive is typically going to require some patience on your part.
In order to change a person’s mind, it is going to take some time to create
your argument and to explain it rationally, consistently, and subtly. If your
message is simple, it might not take you that long to share it. But if it is
something more complex, you are going to have to be patient with them and
make sure they stick with you throughout the conversation.
When you start to bring your argument to a close, you could present the
conclusion as the most obvious one. However, people tend to be more
easily persuaded if they think that they are coming to their own conclusion.
Their hope is that it is their idea to change their viewpoint, action, or belief.
The great thing is, if you have made sure to present your argument in such a
way that it makes sense to them, they are going to believe that it was their
idea. This means that they will be more likely to continue to act upon that
opinion.

Ethical Persuasion
There are some ethical dilemmas that you need to think about if you plan on
using persuasion. There are quite a few people out there who use persuasion
maliciously to take advantage of or harm other people. Before you start
your persuasion, think about how it is going to impact them if you are
successful.
In the legal world, they have the term, undue influence. This means that you
are persuading a person to act again their own free will. This tends to be an
issue when a person is incapacitated in one way or another and can’t make
their own decisions.
This can happen when a caregiver is trying to convince an older adult to
change up their will and leave everything to them. If you want to be a
persuasive person, that fine, but it is best to avoid causing undue influence.
You can also end up falsifying evidence through persuasion if you are not
careful. This is another legal problem. You want to be a moral persuader, so
make sure that anything you share or show others is factual.
In the end, persuasion is neither good nor bad in itself. It is whatever
intention you put behind your persuasion that makes it good or bad. It’s up
to you to make sure you use it honestly and morally. Not being able to be
persuasive can be a handicap in life. You can find it hard to buy a home, get
a raise, get a job, or take the next step in your relationship. Fortunately, it is
fairly simple to learn, and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about as
long as you think logically and clearly.
 Chapter 4: Controlling A Conversation

Do you wish that you could ever have a conversation with a person that you
have never met before and they automatically like you?
Take a moment to think about people in your life who seem to always bring
the best out of you whenever you have a conversation with them. You feel
comfortable talking with them and you could continue talking with them
forever. They could be somebody that you have known your whole life or
somebody you have just met, but the conversation flows naturally and
smoothly.
If you wish you could have this natural ability, don’t worry. There are ways
to give you this ability. You can be in control of a conversation and gain the
interest of others. Now, while I may use the word control, I don’t mean that
you are the one constantly talking and “controlling” everything. I simply
mean that you know how to work a conversation so that it continues
flowing naturally. The most important factors in a good conversation are
active listening, show curiosity, and keeping the sarcasm to a minimum.
But to give you a good start, here are a few conversation tips:

1. Make the conversation about the other person.

Have you ever had the misfortune of sitting through a conversation with
somebody who went on and on about something that you didn’t have the
slightest interest in? You likely felt wiped out by the end of the conversation
and it probably felt like they were talking to their self. They are oblivious to
the idea that you might not be interested in what they like.
The best conversations tend to be the ones that show an interest in the
listener, their interest, and their world. Most people like to talk about their
self. Take the time to ask them an open-ended question about something
that you may have noticed. If you make sure that you give them positive
feedback or a sincere compliment, you will have made a great start.
Conversationalists are sincerely interested in other people, take the time to
notice things, and use that information to fuel and start their conversations.
 2. Take the conversation deeper.
Think about the people in your life that you are most willing to open
yourself up to and share things with them. What about them makes you
comfortable disclosing personal things that you wouldn’t typically tell
others?
More than likely, they always make eye contact and they make you feel as
if you are getting their full attention. Pay attention to expressions that they
make. Notice how they are completely with you not only what they say but
in their facial expressions. They look happy when you share something that
you are excited or happy about. They will look solemn when you share
something that is sad. You are able to feel that they are completely into
everything you are saying.
If trying to emulate what they do seems unnatural, continue to practice this
and push yourself until you have learned how to. You will start to notice
that other people will react differently when talking with you.

3. Ask them good questions.

You can get other people to share more by showing them that you are
interested by asking them questions. This will help the conversation to
move deeper. Some good questions are asking them how they feel or think
about something that they have been talking about. If you have had a
conversation with this person previously, bring up something from the last
conversation. More than likely, if they bring up something, it is an interest
and importance. Take a moment to think about other areas that are
connected to the interests you know they have and what they might like to
talk about.

4. Take into consideration the time and space.

Don’t bring a conversation beyond pleasantries unless you know that you
have time to listen to the person. Places that are loud with a lot of other
people aren’t the best to get into a good conversation. To have a good
conversation, you need a slow and relaxed environment without a bunch of
pressure and distractions. Coffee shops are good for conversations. Sports
bars aren’t.
Show Curiosity
Having a real conversation means that you have created a space for
understanding. Real conversations give you a place for learning, and it
helps to promote the deepening and nurturing of relationships. The most
important of all is that real conversations feed our souls in ways that many
other things can’t.
So, improving your ability to grow, maintain, and create real conversations
is a skill that needs to be practiced, whether you are coming from it as a
friend, spouse, child, colleague, or parent. One habit that can help you to
nurture a real conversation in any area of your life is curiosity.
Curiosity tends to be associated with children or highly creative adults. But
curiosity is an important and fundamental quality that is needed for
anybody interested in lifelong learning. There are four areas in
conversations that curiosity helps with.

1. When curious, we ask questions.

Alright, who are the most curious humans on Earth? Kids. What is that they
do ad nauseam? Ask questions. What is it that will keep interactions with
others from developing into a conversation? No questions.
When you have a conversation and you say something and they say
something but no questions are asked, you might experience an exchange,
but it doesn’t go much deeper than that, does it? If you really want to
stimulate the conversation, don’t just create points and opinions, instead
create questions about things that you would like to learn. If you ever start
feeling like you are talking too much, shift the conversation and ask them a
question.

2. When curious, we listen for the answers.

Asking questions may be important, but having a barrage of questions
thrown at you can feel like an inquisition. What takes us from an inquisition
to a conversation is that after you ask a question, shut up, and listen. If you
really want to learn the answer, you will listen for their response because
you want to know. The main reason why real conversations are able to
improve relationships is that they require a person to actively listen.
 3. When curious, we are interested.
Curiosity is what drives interest. Think about classes you did well in while
in school and those you didn’t. What was the difference? My guess is you
found some interesting and others, not so much. Being interested makes you
want to learn more.
This happens with conversations as well. When you are actually interested
in the conversation, asking questions, and listening for their answers get
easier.

4. When curious, we want to learn.

When you are ready to learn, you put yourself in a place to engage in
conversation for the purpose of learning, not just feeling like you have to
get through it.
With these four things; questions, listening, interest, and a desire to learn,
you can create a conversation and get all of the benefits from it.

Active Listening
Listening is one of the most important things you can do. How well you are
able to listen can impact your life in many areas. Since we listen so much,
you would think that we are amazing at it. Actually, most people aren’t, and
research suggests that most people only remember around 25 to 50 percent
of everything that we hear. This means that when you have a conversation
with your significant other for about ten minutes, they are paying attention
less than half of what is being said.
If you flip this around, it also means that when you are being given
directions, you don’t hear the full message. You hope that the most
important parts are held within that 25-50 percent, but what happens if they
weren’t?
Clearly, listening is something that everybody needs to improve. When you
become a better listener, you will also see improvement in your
productivity, your influence, and negotiation. What’s more, you will be able
to avoid conflict and other misunderstandings.
The only way to improve your listening abilities is to practice active
listening. This means that you are making a conscious effort to hear the
words that are being said as well as the complete message that they are
communicating. To do this, you have to carefully pay attention to the
speaker.
You can’t become distracted by whatever else may be happening around
you, or by thinking about what you are going to say next. You also got to
make sure you stay engaged so that you don’t end up losing focus. To
improve your listening skills, you have to let the other person know that
you are actually listening to what is being said.
To fully understand the importance, think about a time where you have had
a conversation and ever wondered if the person was listening to what you
were telling them. You wonder if they understand your message, or if it is
even worth continue to talk. You feel as if you are talking to a brick wall.
Acknowledging what a person is saying can be as easy as nodding your
head or simply saying, “uh huh.” This doesn’t mean that you are agreeing
with what they are saying; you are just letting them know that you are
hearing them. Body language and other nonverbal cues let them know that
you are listening and can help you to pay attention.
In order to become an active listener, there are five techniques that you
should try.

1. Pay Attention
Make sure that you are giving the speaker your full attention and
acknowledge what they are trying to tell you. Understand that nonverbal
language also speaks volumes. To show attention:

Make eye contact

Push aside distracting thoughts
Don’t mentally think about what you are going to say
Avoid letting the environment distract you
“Listen” to their nonverbal cues

2. Show Them You Are Listening

You can also use your own body language and gestures to let them know
that you are engaged in the conversation.

Nod occasionally
Smile and use other positive facial expressions
Keep your posture interested and open
Encourage them to continue by making small comments

3. Provide Feedback
Our beliefs, judgments, assumptions, and filters can distort the things that
we hear. Being the listener, you are there to understand what they are
saying. This can sometimes require you to reflect on what they are saying
and ask a few questions.

To reflect, begin your statement with, “What I’m hearing is…”

or “Sounds like you are saying…”
Ask them clarifying questions to make sure you understand
things
Summarize what they are saying from time to time

4. Defer Judgment
Interrupting isn’t helpful and just wastes time. It also frustrates the speaker
and it prevents you from understanding the message. Let them finish their
entire point before you ask them any questions.

5. Respond Appropriately
Active listening is made to help encourage understanding and respect. You
are learning new information. You aren’t going to get anything if you attack
the speaker or put them down in any way. Make sure that your response is
honest, open, and candid. Share your opinions in a respectful manner. Treat
them in a way that you think they want to be treated.

Sarcasm
Sarcasm, by definition, is “the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.”
There are people in everybody’s life who loves to use little sarcastic and
passive-aggressive modes of communication. They think their sarcasm is
well-meaning, but based on research, sarcasm is simply thinly veiled
meanness.
Sarcasm is basically a way to cover up hate or contempt. It is a quick way
to ruin a conversation as well. But why do people use sarcasm?

1. Insecurity
When a person uses a sarcastic tone, they are trying to hide insecurity about
something. Some use sarcasm or teasing to avoid confrontation because
they are afraid to actually ask for what they want.

2. Latent Anger
Sarcasm can simply be a passive-aggressive way to assert dominance. For a
person who is upset or angry, but is afraid of bringing it up, they will use
sarcasm to disguise their barb.

3. Social Awkwardness
When people aren’t that great at reading people around them, or they aren’t
sure how to carry on a conversation will sometimes use sarcasm to try and
sound affectionate or playful. This is simply another version of insecurity,
but this is common to hear at parties or other types of events. They will use
it to try to lighten the mood; unfortunately, it will often have the opposite
effect.
Sarcasm does not only tend to be hurtful, but it is one of the least genuine
forms of communication. It’s important that you watch the things you say.
Sarcasm isn’t funny because it normally involves hurting another person. It
isn’t going to improve a relationship or lighten the mood. There are other
fun ways to lighten the mood, but picking on a person, and that is basically
what you are doing, isn’t going to help. You will lose a lot of respect if you
constantly use sarcasm.
To be able to control and maintain a real conversation, make sure you
remember these three important things: show curiosity, actively listen, and
cut out the sarcasm.
 Chapter 5: The Importance of Empathy

Empathy seems to be a unicorn in the communication world, yet it plays a

huge part in effective communication. Empathy is simply being able to
understand and share emotions with other people. It is made up of several
different components, each of which works in its own place in the brain.
You could look at empathy in three ways.
The first one is affective empathy. This means that you have the ability to
your emotions with other people. People who have a lot of affective
empathy are people who show strong visceral reactions to scary movies or
violence on the news. They can feel the pain and fear of others within
themselves when they see people in pain or fear.
The second is cognitive empathy. This type of empathy is having the ability
to understand other people’s emotions. A good example would be a
psychologist who understands their client’s emotions in a rational way but
doesn’t necessarily feel their client’s emotions in a visceral sense.
Lastly, there is emotional regulation. This refers to how well a person is
able to regulate their own emotions. For example, surgeons must be able to
control their emotions while operating on them in order to do their job
effectively.
Let’s take another look at understanding empathy to help distinguish it from
other similar ideas. For example, empathy means the person has to be self-
aware, and they need to maintain a distinction between self and other. This
is why empathy is different than imitation or mimicry.
There are quite a lot of animals that may show signs of mimicry or
emotional contagion when they see other animals in pain. But without some
form of self-awareness, and being able to differentiate self and other, it isn’t
necessarily empathy. Empathy isn’t the same thing as sympathy, either.
Sympathy is feeling concerned for a person who is suffering and having a
desire to help them.
That being said, humans aren’t the only species to feel empathy. In lab
settings, it has been spotted in non-human primates and rats.
There are a lot of people who like to say that psychopaths lack empathy, but
this isn’t always true. In fact, psychopathy is actually more effective when
the person has good cognitive empathic abilities. Basically, the psychopath
needs to understand exactly what the victim is feeling when they are killing
or torturing them. The skill that psychopaths lack is sympathy. They are
completely fine with watching the person suffer and don’t feel the need to
help.
Research has also found that people who have psychopathic traits are great
at regulating their own emotions.

Why Is Empathy Important?

The reason empathy is important is that it gives us the chance to understand
how other people are feeling so that we are able to respond in an
appropriate manner. It is most often connected with social behavior and
there is plenty of research that shows that more empathy can lead to helpful
behavior.
This isn’t always the case, though. Empathy can also prevent social
interactions, or cause a person to act in an immoral way. For example, a
person who has witnessed a terrible car accident and becomes overwhelmed
at the sight of the victims in severe pain is something less likely to help
them.
Similarly, having strong empathetic feelings from family members or
people in your own racial or social groups can lead to aggression or hate
towards others who are seen as a threat. This is the reason why mothers will
sometimes become “mama bears” when their child is in danger, whether
real or not.
People who can easily read the emotions of others, like psychics, fortune-
tellers, or manipulators, may use their skills to benefit their self through
deceiving others.
What’s interesting, those who have higher psychopathic traits will show
more utilitarian responses in moral dilemmas, like with the footbridge
problem. In this experiment, people were faced with the decision of whether
to push another off of the bridge to stop a train that was getting ready to kill
five people who were on the track.
The psychopath would push the person off the bridge. This goes along with
the utilitarian philosophy that says saving the lives of five people by killing
one is good. It could be argued that people with psychopathic tendencies
have higher morals than normal people, who would likely not push that
person off of the bridge, because they aren’t as influenced by their emotions
when they make their decisions.

Measurement of Empathy
Empathy is typically measured through a self-reported questionnaire like
the Questionnaire for Cognitive and Affective Empathy or Interpersonal
Reactivity Index. These normally ask people to say whether or not they
agree with certain statements in order to measure empathy.
With the QCAE, it asks things like “It affects me very much when one of
my friends is upset,” which helps to give a score for affective empathy. The
QCAE figures out cognitive empathy by placing a value on statements like,
“I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a
decision.”
Through this particular questionnaire, researchers have discovered that
those who scored higher with affective empathy has more grey matter,
which is a group of nerve cells, in the part of the brain known as the
anterior insula.
This is the area of the brain that is involved in regulating negative and
positive emotions by using environmental stimulants with automatic and
visceral bodily sensations. People who had higher scores in cognitive
empathy had greater grey matter in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.
This is the area of the brain that is normally activated during cognitive
processes, like the Theory of Mind, which is having the ability to connect
mental beliefs to others and yourself. It also means that you understand that
others have perspectives, intentions, desires, and beliefs that are different
than your own.

Selective Empathy?
Research has found that people normally feel more empathy for people
within their own group, like those in a single ethnic group. There was one
study performed that scanned the brains of Caucasian and Chinese
participants as they watched a video of people of the same ethnic group in
pain. They also watched a video of people of a different ethnic group in
pain.
They discovered that the anterior cingulate cortex, which is activated when
people witness somebody in pain, wasn’t as active when they were
watching the videos of a different ethnic group in pain. There have been
other studies that had discovered that the brain areas involved with empathy
tend to be less active when they watched people pain who acted unfairly.
They have also noticed activation in brain areas that are involved in
subjective pleasure, like the ventral striatum, when people watch a rival
sports team lose.
Yet, people don’t always feel less empathy for people who are not a part of
their group. In more recent studies, students were asked to give money or
electrical shocks to other students who attended the same or a different
school. They were also undergoing a brain scan during this as well.
The areas of the brain involved in rewarding people were more active when
they gave a reward to those from their school, but the parts of the brain
involved in hurting others were equally as active.
This corresponds with observations people have made in daily life. We
typically feel happier if a person in our group wins something, but we are
unlikely to hurt a person just because they aren’t a part of our group, race,
or culture. In general, in-group bias tends to be more about love instead of
out-group hate.
There are some situations, though, where it would be helpful to feel less
empathy for a certain group. For example, during war, it could be helpful to
feel less empathy for those you are supposed to kill, especially if they are
interested in harming you.
There was a brain imaging study performed to investigate this. People were
asked to watch videos of a violent game where a person was shooting an
innocent person or an enemy soldier. As they watch the videos, people
would have to pretend that they were actually killing real people. The
lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which is normally active when a person harms
somebody, was active when an innocent person was shot. The more guilt
that the person felt about shooting somebody, the more this area responded.
However, this area of the brain wasn’t activated when a person shot the
enemy soldier. The results helped scientists to figure out how people
regulated their emotions. It also showed them how the brain worked when
harming people was seen as justified.
This may well help provide more insights into how people can end up
becoming desensitized to violence or why there are some people who feel
less or more guilty about hurting others.
The empathetic brain has evolved to become very adaptive in certain
situations. Having empathy is helpful because it helps us to understand
other people, but there are times when switching of empathy might be
beneficial when it comes to protecting your life, or another’s life.

Empathy in Communication
We’ve covered a lot of scientific information about empathy and how it
affects our daily lives, but we need to look at exactly how it helps with
communication. The biggest benefit of bringing empathy into a
conversation is being able to handle a confrontation. This is a situation that
nobody likes to find their self in, but it happens from time to time. People
get angry, and then the conversation turns into a shouting match, but with
empathy, it doesn’t have to.
Anger is a normal emotion and is meant to be used as a way to
communicate something. Anger can also push people away, but you really
want is to be heard and connect with people. The same is true for a person
who chooses a passive-aggressive behavior instead of a direct one. It’s
aggression, whether straightforward or not. This is where empathy plays an
important role. Whether or not it is anger rearing its ugly head in
conversation, you can use these six steps to take the conversation back to
neutral ground.

1. Focus on what is actually happening and allow yourself to

become more self-aware.
If you are the one that is angry or upset, give yourself some time. Trying to
communicate while in a frustrated state won’t turn out well. Words don’t
come out right and things that shouldn’t be said, get said. Extremely
emotions hijack the brain. When the emotions centers of the brain become
overactive, people have a lot harder time thinking logically. Allow yourself
to calm down or cool off, and then see if you are able to think more clearly
and communicate yourself more effectively.
If it is the other person becoming emotional, the first thing you should NOT
do is tell them to calm down. Never, in the history of the world, has this
ever helped a person calm down. If the person begins to cry, sit quietly and
let them cry, give them a moment. If they are becoming angry, give them a
moment to express their anger if need be, and fight the urge to become
defensive. Let them know that you would like to understand how they are
feeling. Let them know that it is okay that they feel this way. Ask a lot of
questions, and if need be, let them know that you can talk later once they
feel ready.

2. Understand your emotions.

Whether you are the emotional one or not, you need to figure out why you
are feeling what you are feeling. There are times where we think we feel
frustrated, but in actuality, we are experiencing sorrow, pain, or rejection.
Once you have figure out what you are feeling, then you can communicate
it better and help the other person.

3. Figure out if there is some form of misplaced blame.

It is extremely easy to blame a person or situation for how we are feeling.
People can feel overworked, hungry, unhappy in their marriage, stressed, or
tired, and then they assign all of the blame onto the first situation or person
that they encounter. It is likely somebody close to them as well. This is why,
if a person gets angry at you, don’t become defensive because it’s not likely
that you are the actual thing they are mad at.

4. Become more curious.

When you focus on your anger, frustration, or sadness keeps all of your
focus on yourself. Research has found that negative emotions cause a
person to become self-centered. This means that you have no room for
another person’s perspective because you are locked into your own view.
People don’t take the time to consider what the other person may be going
through. This is when curiosity should be brought in. Become curious about
the reason why a person is acting a certain way. Instead of being
confrontational, show genuine interest into why the person feels or acts a
certain way. The majority of people don’t go around with evil intentions,
but a lot of people do make mistakes and upset other people. Chances are,
the person didn’t act purposefully.

5. Have compassion.
When you take the time to ask “why,” you are allowing communication to
take place, and you are showing respect and consideration for the way they
act, feel, and think. This will help to create a better relationship and
understanding based upon empathy and compassion.

6. Communicate with skill.

When communicating with a person who is upset, or if you are upset, use
“I” statements. This removes confrontation. But you want to also make sure
that you give the other person a chance to share their perspective. This
should be done through simple questions, again, to make sure they don’t
feel like you are attacking them. You want to be curious and not accusatory.

Learning Empathy
What should you do if you aren’t that great at understanding what people
are feeling?
To a certain extent, everybody is designed to empathize with others. The
brain is wired to experience emotions that other people are feeling. This is
why you wince if you see somebody hit their thumb with a hammer, or why
you start to laugh when somebody else is laughing.
Unfortunately, only a handful of people have amazing natural empathy. Our
ability towards empathy lives on a continuum. There are some who have
amazing natural empathy and can understand how a person feels simply by
looking at them. There are some people who have very little natural
empathy, and they can’t notice that a person is angry until they start
shouting. The majority of people live in the middle of these two extremes
and are able to pick up on the feelings of others part-time.
Fortunately, empathy is half natural and half practice. Depending on where
you are starting at on the natural half, getting better at your empathy ability
can require more or less work than another. No matter where you have to
start, you can learn more empathy.
There are three steps to learning empathy.

1. Understanding Yourself
In order to understand the emotions of other people, you first have to learn
how to empathize with yourself. The first step in learning empathy is to
learn to accept and understand your own emotions. Having this ability is
essential for having a healthy life, and it creates a foundation for
empathizing with others.
While this may come off as touchy-feely, it is important and practical.
Learning how to empathize with yourself means that you know how to
accept and understand the things that you feel and why you feel them.
If you find that you are angry, you should recognize “I feel angry” and then
understand the reasons for that anger. You should feel fine with feeling that
emotion, and not try to stifle or ignore them.
Basically, if something horrible happens to you, you should be allowed to
feel upset about it. You have to give yourself permission to feel sad. For
some reason, people have this idea that we must all act happy at all times,
or that their problems aren’t as important as things that other people are
going through, so you end up feeling selfish when upset or sad.
This isn’t true, though. Your problems are important because you are
important. If something happens to you that makes you feel sad or hurt,
then express those feelings and allow yourself to feel as such. You should
never keep these feelings all bottled up.
Of course, it is also important to improve your situation in order to get rid
of whatever it is that is causing you to feel sad. You can feel sad if need be,
but you shouldn’t have to stay sad.
And while everybody will get mad from time to time, if it feels as if you are
angry or sad all the time, you may want to think about talking to somebody
about it. A doctor is able to heal physical ailments, so a counselor can help
you to heal emotional ailments, and you should never feel shame for having
to ask for help.
This is true for more than just understanding emotions, as well. The point is
though; you have to give yourself permission to experience all of the
feelings that you may experience. When something bad happens, feel sad.
You should also feel comfortable letting your family and friends know how
you are feeling, even if it isn’t a positive feeling, or even if you aren’t sure
why you feel the way you do. Fundamentally, you need to be able to accept
that your emotions are simply a part of who you are, and just like you have
to accept yourself, you have to accept emotions as well.
Now, I want you to take a second a reread that last paragraph. I’m serious;
I’ll be here once you have done so.
Now, take a moment to answer these questions truthfully. Do you
understand the source of your emotions whenever you feel things? Do you
allow yourself to feel different emotions? Do you accept that you have the
right to feel however you feel? Do you have healthy ways to express your
emotions?
Did you find that you answered those questions with “I’m not sure” or
“No?” If so, then you need to take some time to think about the way that
you experience your emotions. Figure out why you answered things the
way you did, and what you could do better to empathize with yourself.
Speak with a person that you trust and get some advice or support. If you
need to, make an appointment to talk to a counselor.
While it can take some time to work through these things, it is definitely
worth the time. Making sure that you have a healthy and solid
understanding of your emotions helps you to live a healthy and happy life.
Humans are emotional beings, so emotions simply make up who you are.
Emotions are also a part of every other person as well. If you understand
how it feels when you are experiencing a specific emotion, you will
understand and interact with other people who are experiencing the same
thing. So even if you aren’t interested in understanding your emotions for
yourself, do it to help other people.
To help you to get a better understanding of your own emotions, I have a
little exercise that I want you to do today.
As you do your thing, watch your emotions, and try to find times where you
are feeling something. This can be any emotion; happiness, frustrations,
boredom, sadness, anything. Then take some time to think through the
reason you are feeling that.
I don’t want you to just scratch the surface either. It’s easy to say, “I’m mad
because he cut me off.” Go deeper. You could discover that you are angry
because they disrespected you, and you aren’t feeling respected in other
relationships.
Think through all of your emotions; however, it works for you. It may be a
good idea to set aside a bit of time at the end of the day to take a walk and
think about your emotions of the day. You could journal about them as well,
or talk to a person you trust.
Whatever you choose to do, I think that you are going to have a better
understanding of who you are at the end of the day. This will also make it a
lot easier for you to understand those around you as well.

2. Understanding Others
Through commitment to thoughtfulness and practice, anybody is able to
learn how to understand the feelings and thoughts of other people. Now that
you better understand your own emotions, it is time to think about the
emotions of others. Start training yourself to ask “How does this look from
their perspective?” Take enough time to reach a reasonable answer.
This doesn’t mean you have to be a mind reader or understand what
everybody is thinking at all times, all you should do is try to imagine what
it is like to be that person for a moment, and then make a reasonable guess
about their feelings or thoughts.
Let’s say that you have to sit through an excruciatingly boring conversation
with a friend who is talking about their stamp collection. If you see it from
only your perspective, you are probably going to get frustrated and snap.
But if you take a moment to view things from their perspective, you will
understand why they are talking about their stamps. If they are your friends,
then more than likely they aren’t purposely trying to bore you. Chances are
they were so excited to tell you about a new rare stamp they got; they forgot
how boring you think stamps are.
You see it as being trapped. They see it as sharing exciting news with a
friend.
Taking a moment to think about things from their perspective, you will be
able to handle the situation better. This will make sure that you won’t snap
at them. Instead, you could gently steer the conversation in a different
direction. Or, you can take the opportunity to learn more about your friend
and create a stronger relationship.
A flaw in the human character is that we get trapped in our own
perspective. It is OUR perspective. Instead of trying to see things from
another point of view, we are always trying to convince others to see things
the way we do. People get angry at others for not seeing things the way they
do. This is why arguments tend not to be resolved between spouses or
children and their parents. One side is seeing the other as disrespectful, and
the other side thinks the other should know that they didn’t mean to be
disrespectful. Neither is willing to take the time to view things from the
other side. If they would both take a second to view things differently, they
could come to a reasonable end to the argument.
When somebody is upset with you, don’t get mad at them. Instead, ask
“Why are they upset?” When you take the time to really think about this,
you will realize that the other person misunderstood something and that it
can easily be fixed.
Building empathy is difficult. But as you continue to ask yourself how
things look from the other side, you will notice something amazing. You
won’t have to ask yourself that question as often and you will start to
intuitively notice how others are feeling.
This is going to take time, so be patient.

3. Nonverbal Empathy
When you are able to understand how a person feels or what they are
thinking, it will be easier to interact with them. There is also a nonverbal
part of interactions with others that needs a little extra attention. The
knowledge that you gain from empathy is able to help you to use the best
nonverbal communication.
Think about this, you have picked up on the fact that your friend is upset, so
you ask him, “What’s wrong?” But your tone of voice is way too cheerful.
How do you think your friend is going to view that? They won’t think you
actually care. If you change your tone, though, to sound concerned and
sympathetic, your friend will believe that you care and want to hear why
they are upset.
I know at this point, empathy seems like a lot of work, but I promise you, it
will become second nature. When you add in the need to manage your
nonverbal cues, along with everything else we have covered, empathy may
come off as overwhelming.
Not to worry, though, nonverbal empathy is the simplest part. Similar to
how body language boils down to two things, there are two parts of
nonverbal empathy: if you should be high-energy or low-energy.
When a person has high energy, they will be loud, expressive, and excited.
If a person has low energy, they will be quiet, relaxed, and reserved.
Now, high energy does not always mean that the person is happy, and low
energy does not always dictate sadness. Somebody who has won the lottery
can jump up and down and run around, or they can simply lean backward
with a satisfied smile on their face. Both of these are happy responses to
winning the lottery, but one uses high energy and the other low.
You should also remember that a person won’t always be high or low
energy. So instead of saying something like, “My friend always has high
energy,” it is more accurate to say, “My friend has high energy right now.”
So how does all of this play into empathy? If your friend is currently
displaying high energy, then you should respond with high energy. The
same goes if they are displaying low energy.
Take this, for example. You and your friend are out for dinner. Your friend
has had a long day and they aren’t as boisterous as normal. They have low
energy. But you are excited. You gush about how great the food is and you
act out in an excited and expressive way. Your friend, on the other hand,
just sits and pick at their food and wants you to settle down so that they can
talk to you.
You are high energy and they are low energy. Your friend simply wants to
have a restful evening while you are acting goofy. Since you two have a
mismatch in energy, it is harder for you to really connect with them.
If you are able to match your friend’s energy, the evening is going to go a
lot better. You should only match it and not exceed it. You aren’t trying to
outdo them. You simply want to connect with them better.
That said, it is okay to feel low energy or high energy if you need to even if
somebody else is feeling different. But once you have gotten your energy
out, it is best if you can start to match your friend’s energy.
When monitoring energy and adjusting your nonverbal communication, you
will start to find that you will connect with other people much easier. This
helps with your empathy skills and much more.
 Chapter 6: Verbal Dexterity

Verbal thinking is the most common method. Everyone has a range of

intelligence that includes kinesthetic, verbal, emotional, spatial, musical,
and numerical. It is verbal intelligence that is depended on most. Everyone
expresses and thinks with words. Mastering how to use words is the most
important skill that you could develop since trying to acquire new skills all
depends on the way we comprehend language. The biggest part of an
infant’s life is learning and developing their verbal skills, learning to speak,
understanding speech, and then reading and writing. It doesn’t matter if an
infant is raised in Moscow, Sydney, or Beijing; they will spend thousands of
hours trying to learn their native language. They will be proficient with the
sophisticated subtleties, complexity, power, and range of language. When a
specific competence has been developed, many people will stop developing
their verbal skills.
Researchers have found that a strong correlation between a person’s
abilities with a range of vocabulary, words, and how successful they are in
their field of expertise. People who are able to express themselves very
clearly are seen as more intelligent and have a higher status. They are given
more respect. Why don’t we continue enhancing our verbal skills? Why
stop what we have been doing most of our lives doing? The problem is that
we take verbal abilities for granted. When we master speaking, reading, and
writing, we move to different things. Once we acquire that one important
tool, we use it for many tasks, but we don’t take time to ever sharpen it. It
makes a lot of sense to extend, enhance, and maintain this tool.
Here are ways that you can improve your verbal dexterity:

Spend Time with Very Literate People

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Russian intelligence
agents would gather to enjoy poetry.
You might be able to close your eyes and see them drinking tea huddled
around a candle, wearing fur coats and hats while the Siberian wind blows
across the frozen land. Somebody might begin playing the balalaika while
another stood and began reciting poetry they had written.
While these words rolled off the poet’s tongue, the ones listening would be
transported through their luxurious metaphors and rich phrases. Once the
meeting broke up, they would take those images and words with them to
relish and meditate with. The way they understood the usage of words
would expand with their imaginations.

Use Extremely Vivid Language

To a writer, words are our tools and they give us the flexibility to express
thoughts, tell stories, and impress the neighbors. My father was always an
avid reader and was always reading to me as a child, and he made sure we
had a vase vocabulary. But during the time after I had children, my
vocabulary became a bit stunted. I was used to saying things like: “Do you
want cereal?”
When I found out that my parents were coming for a visit, I would speak in
multi-syllabic words to my children. I would say things like: “We have to
impress your pater familias with the extensive vocabulary you have
mastered while they’ve been gone.”
My best friend and I spent an afternoon using her daughter’s vocabulary
words in sentences while the children sat around with their mouths opened
in surprise. “This is the way you use sublime in sentences.”

Read Harder Books

I love borrowing books from my friend because they underline words they
don’t know, look them up, and will write the definitions in the margins. I
will just read over words that I don’t know and try to figure out what they
mean from clues in the sentence. I will then add it to my working
vocabulary when I can.
I can remember the day when my school teacher gave us permission to go
to the older children’s section to check out books. She told us: “I think you
are old enough to handle some larger words.” Most of us hurriedly went to
the older children’s section. I stood in awe just looking at the vast choices
before me. These books were bigger with the print smaller and longer
words were sitting on the pages. There were syllables I had to sound out,
meanings I had to decipher, and yes, my vocabulary increased considerably.
 Buy a Good Thesaurus and Dictionary
The most loyal companions on your desk need to be a thesaurus and
dictionary. You can use the dictionary to learn the derivations and meanings
of new words you come across. You can also use it to check the spelling of
words that you aren’t sure of. A thesaurus can help you when you are
writing and need a different word so you can stop using the same word or
create a different meaning.

Write and Edit

Everybody writes. It might be sending a text on your cell phone, an email,
or you might be working on the world’s next bestselling novel. One way to
improve your writing is by reading what you have already written and ask
these questions:

1. Are there ways to make it more accurate and concise?

2. Have I expressed exactly what I mean?
3. Is it comprehensible and clear to readers?

Seize New Words

There is a feature in Reader’s Digest that is entitled “It pays to expand your
Word Power.” This is very good advice. If you come across a new word,
you should turn to that dictionary sitting on your desk and take some time
to learn its derivation and meaning. It is very easy to just skip over new
words and race through the book. We have to have discipline if we don’t
want to lose these opportunities.

Playing with Your Words

Children learn language by playing with their words. They test, experiment,
make mistakes, and get corrected gently. You need to adopt a playful
attitude with words and treat them like they are good friends. Word games
can increase your intelligence rating and verbal dexterity. Most IQ tests will
use word puzzles to determine a person’s IQ. Doing rebuses, word searches,
code breakers, cryptic crosswords, anagrams, word puzzles, and other
conundrums are great mental exercises to keep your mind sharp.
 Listen to What You Say
Just like you review what you have written to sharpen your writing, you can
do the same thing with your speeches. If you can watch some video clips of
yourself speaking, it is a great way to “see” how you talk. You can use it to
help you rehearse for an important presentation.
Rudyard Kipling once wrote: “Words are the most powerful drug used by
mankind.” Words can intoxicate, inspire, and paint amazing images.
Constantly work on developing the range of your skills and words. When
you use words, you will reap amazing rewards.

Keep Emotions Under Control

If you can remember the last time you were insulted verbally, you were
probably very upset and you couldn’t think of a decent comeback. This was
because your emotions too over and your verbal dexterity hit zero.
Once you calmed down, but long after the person who insulted was gone,
you came up with many great comebacks.
Sounds familiar, right? This happens because our emotions can cause an
increase to our cognitive load and it doesn’t have as much horsepower that
is available for verbal tasks.
High-stress levels could impact word retrieval negatively and this can cause
our speech to be less fluent. Communication anxiety can also have an
adverse impact on your verbal dexterity.
Whatever you could do to help keep yourself detached and calm like heart
rate variability training or meditation. These methods are long term plans to
help your verbal dexterity.
When you are in short term situation, whatever you could do to remain
calm and lessen negative emotions will help you with your verbal dexterity
in a stressful situation. Managing, reducing, eliminating, or removing
stressors in certain situations can help in these moments.

Stop Multi-tasking
Many people love multi-tasking. Researchers have realized that
multitasking can increase cognitive load and will affect verbal dexterity.
This makes sense because it is more complex to perform multiple tasks at a
time, so there is a greater cognitive load on your brain.

Find Underlying Problems

Many psychological and medical problems can affect your cognitive
functions and verbal dexterity like ADHD/ADD, low testosterone,
depression, and many others. If you suffer from any of these medical
conditions, have them checked out and learn how to manage them. You
might find that your verbal dexterity will improve right along with the
condition.
You might also be able to work with a psychologist to have your verbal
dexterity tested if you think you might be suffering from extremely
abnormal levels of verbal dexterity.

Know Your Stuff

This one might seem obvious. When you are talking about a certain subject,
you have to know your stuff. If you aren’t knowledgeable about a subject,
you are putting more cognitive load on your brain when you try to talk
about the subject.
For instance, you have to do a presentation about turtles. You don’t know
anything about turtles, how fluent could you hope to be with this
presentation? You won’t be fluent at all.
You will be more fluent when doing the presentation if you know a lot
about the subject. Sounds very simple, but it isn’t easy at all.

“Beat Gestures”
One study has found that using “beat gestures” can help your verbal
dexterity. These are little rhythmic movements that will emphasize specific
phrases or words without giving away certain information about their
meanings.
Hand gestures give us access to the mental lexicon. These studies weren’t
the only ones done that gave the same results. Basically, using hand
gestures while speaking can increase your verbal dexterity.
 Increasing Working Memory
If you put verbal dexterity as the engine of verbal skills, then your working
memory becomes the spark plugs. Verbal dexterity is the entire engine.
Without the spark plugs, the engine won’t run and is completely useless.
If we can improve our working memory, our verbal dexterity can increase,
too. The easiest way to train our brains is by using brain games. Using them
daily can help maintain and enhance your working memory.

Think About Words

Using too many words is going to bore your listeners. It will take up a lot of
time and could result in losing your credibility. Don’t use words that people
don’t understand. They won’t tell you that they can’t understand you
because you appear intimidating and you make them feel inferior.

Be Interested and Listen

Talking less and listening more means you listen well and will bring your
listener into your conversation. This will help them trust you. It makes them
feel as if you actually understand what they need. When they are talking,
show your interest and be interested. This improves rapport that you are
trying to create. Use note-taking skills to help you learn how to take
memorable and effective notes.

Look Out for Communication Traps

The impact of your words is just a small element in the communication that
you are giving. You need to make sure that your body language, facial
expressions, gestures, tone, and words are all relevant to the conversation.

Always Be Honest
If you promise something that isn’t possible is going to break any trust that
you might have already developed. Telling somebody that you “don’t know
but you will be glad to find out” is a lot more positive than trying to come
up with an answer that you hope will be effective.

Look for and Show Understanding

Take notice and see if your audience understands what you are saying. It
will be easier to backtrack a little than to go through the entire conversation
again or you get the wrong results because your audience didn’t understand
you at all. You can do this when receiving or delivering a message. Using
confirmation questions and summaries could be very useful.

Perspectives
Think about your presentation from the audience’s point of view. Just
because you know what you are talking about doesn’t mean that they are
going to.

Develop Skills
There are many techniques that you can learn that will help you improve
your verbal skills. These can include:

1. Skills to develop plans that you could use to create responses

whether they are impromptu or planned.
2. Learn what techniques you should have to be more effective
during this type of interactions.
 Chapter 7: Tell Stories Without Losing Listeners

Giving a presentation can be either really bad or really good. Even

presentations that are “okay,” like the ones that have been put together
fairly well but they just don’t stand out, will end up being bad and it is
mainly for just one reason: They are boring. Giving a boring presentation
will kill your reputation. They could turn a room of attentive professionals
into a room of zombies who are counting each slide and checking their
phones.
The best practices for presenters, and this include structuring and practicing
the presentation, are extremely important to create a quality show. But it is
the little things, the body language, and the speaking that keeps your
audience’s attention.
There are two types of attention: neck up and neck down. Neck down is
when the listener is completely riveted to the speaker and they can’t help
but pay attention. Neck up is when they have to make themselves pay
attention.
In the English language, attention is “paid” because attention is valuable.
When a listener “pays” attention, they reward you with the most valuable
currency available.
Giving a one-way presentation is the worst way to give another person
information. It takes effort and discipline just to sit and listen to anyone
speak for any amount of time. You can make it easy on your audience by
following these guidelines:
With the first three, you are required to know your target audience. You
need to do some work and know what your audience is interested in, their
level of experience, and their background knowledge.

Never Make It Too Hard or Too Easy

You might have heard the concept “flow.” This is a state of being where you
are being fulfilled by what you are doing and where you can be completely
engaged. In this state, your mind won’t ever wonder, and you will lose track
of time. If you say that a speaker is compelling, this is because you were
caught in a state of flow. Your ultimate goal is to get your audience into this
state.
There are several things that you will have to do in order to achieve this, but
one prerequisite is the task can’t be too hard or too easy. If you are listening
to a presentation, your only task is to think. This is the task that you have to
set. This needs to have just the correct level of challenge for your audience.
The level of challenge needed will change with your audience, how
confident they are in the topic and their knowledge are all crucial factors.
Listening to someone talk you through a bunch of bullet points doesn’t
require you to think. So, it can get boring extremely fast.
If you put up a complicated chart and just dive into the details without
telling your audience what it is all about, the thinking is going to be too
challenging.
You have to audit each minute of your presentation in terms of what the
thinking task is that you have set for your audience. Is it going to be too
hard or too easy for them?

Let Them Know Why They Need to Listen

If your audience doesn’t have any reason to be interested, give them one.
This can be hard. Most people in the audience have to be there, but they
don’t have any interest in the topic. The solution is telling them why they
need to care. If your presentation is about safety and health, tell them stories
about people who have been injured in the workplace and what happened to
them. If you can’t figure out a reason why they need to listen to you, then
you shouldn’t give the presentation.

Talk About Things Your Audience Likes

You might think this is too obvious and you’ve never made this mistake. I
have seen many intelligent people talk about what they think is interesting
instead of what the audience is interested in.
If you are giving a presentation at a large conference, people will come to
your presentation because of what is on the synopsis. This is why interests
them. Don’t change it up because it suits you. I had to sit through a seminar
that was advertised to be email marketing, which was what I was interested
in at the time. I get to the seminar and the speaker I had come to listen to
gets up and begins rambling on about SEO for websites. She had been
entranced by this subject and decided her target audience would listen to
anything she had to say. She asked the audience how many people had their
own website and only five out of the hundreds raised their hands. I thought
for sure she would change back to her original but nope. We were subjected
to an hour of talk about nothing we were interested in.

Change Will Grab Their Attention

Everyone notices change. You will notice when the air conditioner comes
on and when it cuts off but not in between when it’s running. You can use
this to grab your audience’s attention.
There are two types of changes Micro and Macro:

1. Micro Changes
a. Make the changes between subtopics clear like: “So
that is the problem we are trying to fix, let’s look now
at what some options are.” If someone has checked out
mentally, this will give them a cue as to check back in.
b. Present short videos
c. Pause before and after statements that are crucial
d. Change your delivery style by content. If you are
stating facts, use a deliberate tone and stand very still.
If you are telling a story, talk faster, move around, and
get chatty.
2. Macro Changes
a. Change up the visuals from flipcharts to slides and
back
b. Make your audience move around like start off with
the sitting at a table them have them gather around
charts
c. Change the place in the room where you are
presenting from like move to the back and then back to
the front. This makes sure the audience stays engaged.
 d. Change your audience’s activities such as letting them
talk for some time about a question they might have
with someone sitting close to them and then back to
listening to you.
e. Change up the presenters
f. Change up the topics
Try to use micro changes constantly and macro changes every ten minutes
or so.

Short and Sweet

The best way to keep your audience’s attention is to not go on constantly.

Take Breaks
Place breaks into your presentation. If people begin lagging in attention,
take a small break for a few minutes where they can get a drink, take a
bathroom break, or walk around. Moving is the best way to revive people
who might begin dozing off.

Tell a Story
Every professional speaker uses the power of stories. There is so much
evidence that shows people have been hard-wired to listen to stories. If you
begin a presentation with: “Let me tell you a story…” you will have your
audience’s undivided attention. Your stories need to reinforce the point you
are trying to get across. Look at your presentation from a story’s point of
view. Are they scattered throughout the presentation or bunched altogether?
Scatter them for the best results.
You can exploit a story’s power to keep your audience’s attention by
structuring your entire presentation by putting it into story form.

Begin with Something Unexpected

Never begin a presentation with clunky and general facts. Don’t give a
normal introduction to the topic. If you have planned an explosive
conclusion, begin the presentation with a tease of the closer. If your
presentation is building to a conclusion that your company will be able to
change how people talk to one another, begin by introducing a peek at that
change. Grab their interest right away and people will want to know the
way you got there. You could also use some eye-opening quotes like: “We
stand today at a place of battle, one that 40 years ago saw and felt the worst
war.” – President Ronald Reagan
“I stand before you today, the representative of a family in grief, in a
country in mourning, before a world in shock.” – The Earl Spencer, Lady
Diana’s brother.
Each one of these will make you lean in and wonder where the speaker is
going to take you. They will jump right into their presentation and create
curiosity, intrigue, and suspense.

Don’t Stay on Script

It would be a good idea to prepare your presentation beforehand and
practice it to iron out any kinks. When you get on stage, you should try to
abandon your cue cards. You should be so familiar with your subject that
you will be able to talk about it in your sleep naturally. Get off course.
People are going to be able to tell what you have rehearsed and what you
haven’t.

Make the Presentation about Them

Once you have their attention, make the presentation about them. Talk
about their anxieties, aspirations, and goals. A Roman statesman and orator,
Cicero, who was the greatest speaker in the world once said, “Tickling and
soothing anxieties is the test of a speaker’s impact and technique.” What he
meant was that you can capture the attention if you remind your audience of
a threat to their wellbeing, a pain point, or a felt need.
During the late 60s and 70s Whisk used an advertising campaign where a
housewife protected her husband’s career and social status when she used
Whisk to clean his shirts. This is called FUD and many companies use it to
sell their products. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Just a little
bit of FUD will get their attention.

In the Beginning, Keep it Concrete

Show the audience a prop, use language that grabs their senses. Don’t start
boring them right away with academic concepts or abstract reasoning. It
would be better to hide how smart you are than to wear them in the open.
Again, storytelling is a great way to get your topic across because we are
wired to get information that way.

Put Emotional Inflections into Your Voice

If you can’t be emotionally invested in your presentation, don’t do a
presentation. You have to show emotion to get people to listen to you. If
your presentation calls for you to get angry about some statistics, then get
angry. If you propose some solutions, get excited about them. Use vocal
inflections to put texture to your words and become animated on stage. If
you don’t have emotional inflection, you should just let a robot do your
presentation.

Keep the Presentation Moving

I’m not talking about moving around on stage but in developing your
presentation. Be sure that each new piece of information you give will build
on what was before it. People lose interest in movies if nothing exciting
happens. They will put a novel down if the author takes two pages to
describe a setting. Our brains are wired for action, suspense, and drama.
This holds true for your audience. They are results-oriented, content-driven,
and time-pressed.
Think about the difference between a canal and a river. A canal is slow
moving where a river is constantly changing and dynamic. In order to
please your audience’s desire for variety, create your presentation like rivers
instead of canals. Be sure that something is constantly happening,
especially if you are doing webinars where your audience might become
distracted.

Soft and Loud Voices Are Powerful

Speaking in just one tone will bore your readers to death, even if you
manage to get some emotion into it. Some sections might be more
important or compelling than others. Use soft and loud voice to accentuate
these differences. Talk low when you can afford for the audience to trail off
a bit, and then get louder when you want to drive a point home.

Make Your Point

The biggest pleasure that an audience has is grasping what you are talking
about right out of the gate. They will resent you if you don’t give them this.
Give them one point, make this point early and make it often and your
audience will carry you out on their shoulders.

Change Up Your Talking Pace

It is a good idea to change up your pacing. Speak faster when talking about
information that most everyone knows or if you are recapping earlier
section, then slow down when you are hammering home some important
information. You can also use silence as a powerful tool but don’t get
trapped in predictable speech patterns.

Arouse Their Emotions

Humor is very persuasive. It will give you an advantage because it can
change the room’s chemistry and the brains of everybody present. Never try
to tell a joke if you aren’t a comedian. Just let your natural sense of humor
be present and if something comes to mind, let this humor come out.
If you can tell them something personal about yourself, you can make them
feel more connected to you. I listened to a presenter recently who confessed
to her audience that she had been a short-order cook, taxi driver, and
bartender to be able to pay her college tuition. Her audience was thrilled
and amazed while she drove her point home that everyone can do more than
we realize if we just have a will to do whatever it takes. A good definition
of courage is acting out of character.

Get Your Audience Involved

This takes some improvisation because you might not be able to predict
how willing your audience will be until the presentation day. Try to get
people involved in any way you can. This might include bringing them on
stage with you so you can demonstrate something when making a major
point.
An interactive audience can be persuaded faster than a passive one. With
most circumstances, having give and take between an audience and a
speaker can break the reserve and reticence of the audience and encourages
them to begin engaging with the presenter and to be a part of the
proceedings.
Some churches use the call and response tradition during worship. You can
see it in universities and schools where a good teacher can ask questions
and get even the shyest student to participate.

Make the Headlines Clear

Create the headlines for the slide to show a point of view. Your audience
will get the main idea and then read the rest of the slide for the evidence to
support your point.
Using a headline like: “We Can Dominate the Market” will get more
attention than: “Market Share.” It is better since it shows action. It is
brimming with emotional content and intellect. It captures their neck down
attention more than the sleepy phrase “Market Share.”

Don’t Read Your Slides

Don’t ever read from your slides or PowerPoint during your presentation,
that is if you use this sort of thing. The audience can see these and when
you read it to them, your presentation becomes boring and it insults their
intelligence. Talk about something different and let the slides do their job.

Be Present
Being on a stage of any type, whether it is in a huge ballroom, a small
meeting room, or a floor is profound. It brings your audience into neck
down attention. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “What you are speaks so
loudly that nobody can hear what you are saying.”
Listeners will interpret everything you do; they will read your stance, voice,
posture, inner rhythm, and face. Our minds will assign a moral intention to
physical cues that have just an inkling of emotional expression.
The problem lies in the fact that our minds do this in just a few seconds and
your speech is a lot longer than that. In addition, you might be nervous, not
at your best, so your technical skills at grabbing and holding onto your
audience’s attention might be the difference between failure and success.
Every presentation is going to have moments when your audience will have
to work just to grasp the material. When your audience finds your content
and you fascinating, your reputation and results will improve.
 Chapter 8: Relationship Communication

Human beings have a need to connect with others because it makes us

happy. You have to know how to communicate well in order to have good
social interactions.
What exactly will a healthy conversation look like? Are there ways you can
keep from communicating too much? Are there ways to improve the
communication between romantic partners?

Is Communication Important?
Everyone has a strong need to belong and connect. This is how positive
social interaction can give us better satisfaction in life and increase our
wellbeing. Helping to enhance social relationships can increase happiness
since spending time with colleagues or friends can build positive emotions.
You can interact with people, both nonverbally and verbally. You can
connect with others with just a smile. The main element to positive social
interaction will always be good communication. What does this mean?

Healthy Communication
To have effective communication, you need a receiver, sender, and a
message whether it is nonverbal or verbal that gets encoded by the sender
then the receiver decodes it. It will also include feedback, the receiver’s
response, and noise that could be anything that might interrupt
communication.
Encoding means the sender transforms their thoughts into messages they
communicate. The receiver then interprets what they think is the message
by using the nonverbal and verbal parts. This might seem simple in theory,
but it happens, and there isn’t a message that will get decoded without some
bias.
How we decode messages isn’t ever the objective. Everyone has their own
explanatory styles and filters that will paint the world as we see it.
Communication gets more complex because the sender’s message usually
isn’t just facts. We speak to tell others what we are thinking and to tell
ourselves what we should think. Speech is an important part of our
thoughts.
Every message will have four facets:

1. Fact: What you inform about like statements, facts, or data.

2. Self-revealing: What you will reveal about yourself basically
information about the sender.
3. Relationship: What you think about them the information about
how you get along with others.
4. Appeal: What you want to make them do to influence others.
You won’t ever place the same emphasis on the four facets. The emphasis
could be understood and meant differently. If a wife were to tell her
husband that “the sugar bowl is empty” might not be about the fact that
there isn’t any sugar in the bowl but about trying to get her husband to fill
the bowl.
To make communication more complex, receivers will have one of four
“ears”: appeal, self-revelation, relationship, or factual ear. If her husband
has a great relationship ear, he might understand the sentence to say “you
aren’t reliable because you forgot to refill the sugar bowl,” and he could
come back with: “Well you aren’t reliable either since you still haven’t
fixed the kitchen light.”
Does this conversation sound familiar to you? Things can unravel quickly if
we don’t hear each other.
The emphasis of both the receiver and sender could create a barrier that will
harm communication. We have to understand that the things we hear might
not be what they were trying to get us to understand.
Do you know which “ear” you have developed? Do you hear appeals in
each sentence? Do you feel questioned? Meaning you are listening with a
relationship “ear.”
You have to be aware of the four facets to be able to engage in healthy
communication. When you feel questioned, think back to the original
sentence and ponder about the four facets. Are there other ways the
message could have been interpreted? Focus on the face and use questions
to figure out if you understood what they were trying to tell you.

No Communication
What can you do if there isn’t any communication in the relationship?
Listening is the most important skill in communication. Positive, deep
relationships are only created when we listen to each other. If there isn’t any
communication in the relationship, it could be that neither person is
listening. Each party might be trying to prove they are right or they might
be “listening” when doing other things. You can’t listen to someone if you
are doing other things.
There are some common mistakes that people make when listening:

1. Thinking or daydreaming about other things while others are

talking. Things as simple as thinking about your grocery list.
2. Thinking about what you should say next.
3. Judging what others are saying
4. Listening while having a certain outcome or goal in mind.
Active listening is a lot more than talking. It’s an art that requires true
interest in another, a curiosity instead of anticipation. Active listening can
involve:

1. Involvement that is nonverbal – you show your attention.

2. Paying attention to whoever is speaking and not what is going on
in your head.
3. Not judging.
4. Being fine with silence.
To bring communication back to the relationship, try this exercise: The first
person is allowed to talk ten minutes about their day. The second person
will actively listen with true interest. The second person can ask questions
to clarify but shouldn’t interrupt completely.
If a silence happens, that is perfectly okay. Just take this time to relax.
After the ten minutes are up, the second person is allowed to talk for ten
minutes, too. The same listening rules apply to the first person. You will
soon see that ten minutes is an extremely long time to sit and listen.
You might be amazed at the number of things you can learn about one
another and how this simple exercise could add value to your
communication and relationship. Something as simple as doing this
exercise just once each week is a great way to practice active listening.
Here are more techniques that can help improve your communication in
both intimate and personal relationships:

Better Communication
A wonderful technique to improve communication in all relationships is
nonviolent communication. It’s based on the ability and willingness to
perceive and approach problems without judging. This is extremely
important because if you want someone to change, there will be resistance.
Using this technique is great when talking about a problem that has been on
your mind. Your partner is late for your dinner date and this makes you feel
disappointed and angry.
If you want a positive outcome, you can try the following steps:

1. Evaluation, Interpretation, and Observation

You have to first try communicating what you observe without interpreting
or labeling them. If you date has arrived late, it’s just that fact: they are late.
You might interpret that the date didn’t mean as much to them as it did for
you or something else might have been more important to them.
Instead of buying into how you interpret things, you could just say: “I
noticed you were late for our date.” This is an observation that is factual
and doesn’t need to be evaluated.

2. Thoughts and Feelings

You absolutely have to talk about your feelings. Arguments usually develop
from emotions that have been hidden. Be sure you understand emotions and
you can express them without judging.
Using the same example of the late date, you could say: “I feel annoyed.”
Or “I am bothered by this because I wonder if you really want to spend time
with me.”

3. Strategy and Needs

You have to know and be able to express your needs. By doing this, you
give your date a chance to figure out if you want to and can meet them. You
might say: “I would like to be treated with consideration and I would like to
feel important to you.”

4. Demand and Request

With this step, you have to make clear requests. What will your date need to
do in order for your needs to be met? You might say: “That is why I ask you
to arrive at a specific time.”
This process is simple, but by no means easy. It is going to take time to
wrap your head around it. It might feel clumsy at first, but with some
practice, communication will get easier and become clearer. You will be
accepting your partner with their flaws and asking them without becoming
violent for things you need so you can be happy.

Responding Actively and Constructively

Even though nonviolent communication can improve personal
communication, there are ways you can change how you respond. Positive
emotions can benefit a person’s well-being. Having conversations gives you
opportunities to increase your positive emotions.
Feedback that is appreciated has to be inspiring, supportive, and focused on
the situation’s strengths. The most common model that is used is the Active
Constructive Responding Model.
This model states that messages could be passive or active and destructive
or constructive. If your coworker tells you the presentation they gave went
well, there are various ways you could respond.
How you react could fall into one of these responses:
 1. Hurtful or active destructive: “That is surprising, you are
normally bad at giving presentations.
2. Ignorant or passive destructive: “Sorry, I don’t have time to
listen right now.”
3. Cold or passive constructive: “Oh, that’s good.”
4. Nurturing or active constructive: “That’s great! I’m really happy
for you! Tell me about it!”
If you want to improve the way you communicate with others, be sure you
respond to them in an active constructive way. Show true interest and be
enthusiastic. If you are genuinely happy for them, give them feedback such
as: “That’s great. Well done. I know you worked hard on that presentation.”
You might ask them what went well or to share some of the positive
comment that they got back. When you ask more questions, you let them
relive their experience and you encourage all those positive emotions to
come back up.
Allow them to feel all the positive emotions and happiness.

Improving Communications in Romantic

Relationships
Communication that is unhealthy usually begins with difficult emotions or
negative thoughts instead of words. If you have been in a romantic
relationship for a long time, you probably think you know your partner
better than they know themselves. You can anticipate how they are going to
react in specific situations. The way you think they are might cause you to
miss opportunities to discover them all over again.
This can cause a negative impact on the ways you communicate within a
romantic relationship. Relationships are about staying curious about who
your partner is and the way they view the world. After some time, is it
possible to see your partner differently?
Marva Collins was an American educator who was known for her teaching
method. She worked with troubled and impoverished students who had a
hard time succeeding during school. The way she taught helped them
succeed. Her approach can be valuable in all relationships.
At the start of every semester, she would tell her students that they had
received their grades for the entire year already. She had given them all top
marks, and all they had to do for the entire semester was doing whatever it
took not to lose these grades.
Instead of making the students prove they could get good grades, she told
them that she had faith in them and they deserved to have a good education.
This was very inspiring and motivating to the students.
Her approach created the correct perception for her students and herself.
She treated her students just like they were Harvard graduates if they didn’t
prove otherwise. Students started the year with her complete appreciation,
encouragement, and trust.
This can be applied to romantic relationships to improve communication.
Try this experiment and see what happens.
Want the best for your partner. Place them on a pedestal for being
wonderful and talk to them appropriately. You like being talked to like you
were loved, respected, appreciated, and valued in every way. How would
you respond to somebody who thought very highly of you? You might just
see your communication drastically improve.

Long Distance Relationships

Communicating with others is hard when you are beside one another. If you
are in a relationship with somebody who doesn’t live near you, it can be a
lot harder. Using effective maintenance strategies are essential with long
distance relationships. Being optimistic helps, too.
Talking openly about the relationship and assuring each other you are
committed are great strategies. Technology has made communicating
cheaper, faster, and easier in relationships today. Technology can also leave
room for miscommunications.
If your partner doesn’t respond to a message as quickly as you think they
should, you may be jumping to conclusions. Having distance between the
two of you can exacerbate feelings because you can speak with them in
person. Does this sound familiar?
If you realize you are thinking about what they might be up to, learning
more about thought distortions might be a good remedy. Negative thoughts
only lead to unhealthy communication. Thought distortions are an
automatic way you respond or think to an event that might cause distress. It
happens when an emotional response doesn’t match the situation.
If you get caught up in a spiral, you might get stuck in one of these thought
distortions:

1. Catastrophizing
This happens when you exaggerate any negative consequences. If your
partner doesn’t respond to your message quickly or they don’t call you
when they are supposed to, you automatically think they have fallen for
someone else.
This trap is dangerous because our minds like to “close the gap.” You will
look for information to feel your thoughts, and after you have made the
decision that your partner has been unfaithful, you will see evidence
everywhere.

2. Thinking Only in Black and White

The two of you agreed to meet up in a few months. A few days later, they
tell you that June isn’t a good time for them. You automatically decide that
they aren’t willing to make June work and you don’t want to see them at all.
There isn’t any room for any gradient; it is only black or white with you.

3. Emotional Reasoning
After you have hung up the phone, you feel misunderstood. The
conversation didn’t flow the way you thought it should and you are feeling
low and anxious. You figure that since you feel like this, it has to be true.
This thinking trap and won’t be helpful when trying to create a positive
relationship.
The best way to get out of this trap is to be able to recognize it. When you
realize what happened, you will be able to pull yourself out of the spiral of
negative thoughts.
Tell yourself that many events are very neutral. It’s the way you look at
them that will place them in categories of either bad or good. You might see
your partner on Facebook after you have finished talking to them, but that is
only a fact. There isn’t any reason to judge or interpret it. Let yourself
adjust your lens and focus on you. Do you have anything planned for the
rest of the day?
The things you focus on will grow. You have to invest in your thoughts
wisely. This means you have to change your focus. A good way to do this is
by using mindfulness, which means you are in a non-judgmental presence
in each moment. Being mindful could help calm those wild thoughts.
Meditation could also reduce cognitive and emotional bias.
You can find apps that offer meditations that are designed to help you deal
with hard emotions. This is a great way to label thought distortions and
bring your mind back into your breathing, living body.

Spotting Defensive Communication

The way we say and what we say can create a communication climate or
the emotional tone. If you have a communication climate that is destructive
could have bad impacts on the conversation.
If you make people feel comfortable while talking to you, they will speak
openly and share things with you. If they feel uneasy during a conversation,
they might just shut down. This goes back to the fact that humans can
behave like other animals when we get stressed: we will either run away or
attack (flight or fight).
There are specific patterns that can decrease or increase defensiveness
between people. Six behaviors could trigger a defensive reaction. Among
these is lack of concern, hidden motives, or judgmental language.
If you see any of these behaviors, you might react in a defensive manner
without even knowing it. Your muscles tense, your arms might be crossed
in front of your body, or you might freeze. You can’t perceive emotions,
values, or motives because you take a lot of time and energy on defending
ourselves and the message gets completely lost.
There are also six contrasting behaviors that could help keep a supportive
climate like openness to finding solutions, respect, and wanting to
understand.
Below are the 12 behavioral characteristics divided by defensive or
supportive communication climates:
 1. Supportive

Spontaneity: being direct or straightforward

Provisionalism: willing to investigate
Empathy: are worth love
Equality: being polite and respecting everybody
Problem orientation: willing to find a solution
Description: truly wanting to understand

2. Defensive

Strategy: being deceitful with hidden motives

Certainty: not willing to compromise
Neutrality: not having any concern
Superiority: thinking you are smarter and more powerful
Control: tries to manipulate
Evaluation: accuses and judges
Defensive climates won’t ever give a good basis to have constructive
conversation. This is why you have to be able to identify defensive patterns
and change them into supportive ones. Before you speak, ask yourself if
what you were beginning to say might cause defensiveness and try to
actively maintain or create a supportive tone to the conversation.

Over Communication
Sometimes we don’t communicate enough instead of too much. There is
such a thing as too much of a good thing. Many couples are constantly in
touch through social media all day long, even if they see each other each
day while others don’t feel they have to.
There aren’t any rules about how much communication will be healthy. If
you find something that works for you, there isn’t any reason to change
things. What makes you want to connect with others? What motivates you
to send a message or call someone? What do you want out of it?
Positive psychology is about thriving. Try to find solutions instead of trying
to figure out the problem. It’s human nature to want to connect with other
people, but we can’t forget about connecting with ourselves. Do you
communicate with yourself as much as you do with others? What types of
conversations do you have with yourself? Is this inner voice your worst
critic or your best friend?
It is critical in intimate relationships to communicate in ways that feel right
to all involved. You can use the following guidelines to open up
communication with each other. If you are in an abusive or unhealthy
relationship, use these tips with caution. Only you know your relationship.
If any of these tips might place you in danger, don’t ever try them.
To have healthy communication:

Pick a Good Time: If you have something that is bothering you

and you want to talk about it, it is helpful to pick a time that is
good for both of you. Find time when you both are calm and
there won’t be any distractions. Make sure you pick a time
where you won’t feel rushed or stressed. You could even
schedule a time to talk if both lead busy lives.
48 Hour Rule: If your significant other does something that
makes you mad, you should tell them about it. You don’t have to
do it immediately, if you are still hurting after 48 hours, tell them
about it otherwise forget it. You have to remember that your
significant other can’t read your mind. If you don’t let them
know when you are upset, there isn’t any way for them to
change or apologize. When you do bring up your hurt feelings
and they apologize and mean it, leave it alone. Don’t bring up
problems later on if they aren’t relevant.
Watch Your Body Language: Show your significant other that
you are listening by giving them your undivided attention. Sit up
while facing them and always make eye contact while they are
talking. Don’t answer the phone, play a game, or answer a text
while you’re talking. Give them the respect they deserve by
listening and responding.
 Honesty: You and your partner have to both agree to be honest.
There will be a time when the truth hurts, but it is the main key
to have a healthy relationship. Admitting that you aren’t perfect
and then apologize if you make mistakes rather than coming up
with an excuse. You are going to feel better, plus it will help
strengthen the relationship.
Never Attack: Even if you mean well, you might come across as
being too harsh due to our word choice. When you use the word
“you,” it might sound as if you are attacking. This only makes
your significant other less receptive and defensive to what you
are trying to say. Try to use “I” or “we” when talking. You could
say something like: “I feel like we haven’t been as close lately.”
Don’t say: “You have been very distant with me.”
Be Face to Face: don’t talk about matters or problems that are
serious in writing. Emails, letters, or text messages could be
misinterpreted. Speak with them face to face, so there aren’t any
miscommunications. If you have problems collecting your
thoughts, write them down beforehand and read them aloud to
your significant other.

Ways to Communicate When Angry

It is perfectly fine to get angry when you are in a relationship. Everybody
gets angry at some point. The important thing is you resolve these conflicts
in healthy ways. If your partner makes you angry, here are some steps you
can take:

Stop: When you are extremely angry, stop and take some time to
breathe. Tell your significant other that you need to take some
time before continuing with the conversation. Take enough time
to calm down by listening to music, taking a walk, playing a
game, talking with a friend, watching television, or whatever
will help you to relax. Taking some time off can keep the
situation from becoming volatile.
Think: Once you aren’t upset any longer, think about what
makes you angry. Was it the way they spoke and what they did?
 Find out the main problem and then figure out how to explain
the way you are feeling.
Talk: After you’ve done all the above, talk with your partner and
remember to use the above tips.
Listen: Once you have told your partner the way you feel, don’t
forget to stop talking and listen to them. Both of you deserve an
opportunity to express your feelings in a healthy and safe
environment.
Communicating isn’t easy. These tips might feel awkward or unnatural.
They will help you learn how to communicate better and help you build a
strong, healthy relationship.
Just like singing or painting, communicating in a relationship is just another
skill that you have to master. If you want to improve your communication
within your relationships, you should do these three things:
Unhealthy communication begins with difficult emotions or negative
thoughts. Words are the result of emotions and thoughts. Be mindful of
what is happening in your mind while you are talking to somebody. You
have to understand your emotions before you can communicate.
You need to be aware of your inner lens that is responsible for the way you
decode messages. A great tool to use is paraphrasing if you aren’t sure
whether or not you understand what your partner is saying. Use your words
to summarize the way you understood the message.
It is better to practice listening rather than talking. Try to focus on their
facial expressions while they are telling you their story. Listen without
thinking about what you should say next and don’t judge anything you hear.
You will soon see your relationship improve by using these three steps.
Why? Good communication shows appreciation. Good examples of ways to
show appreciation are: “I am curious about what you have to say,” “I enjoy
talking with you,” or” I value our time together.”
If you don’t have a lot of time, that is perfectly understandable. If you use
the above information, you will be on the road a happier, healthier romantic
relationship.
 Chapter 9: Eloquence

Have you ever been in a situation when after you’ve had a conversation
with someone, you think of something great you should have said? This has
happened to me a lot in both good and bad situations. If you are anything
like me, you hate that feeling.
You want to go back to them and tell them you want to add something to a
conversation you had over a month ago a conversation that they probably
don’t even remember. You aren’t going to do this, but you really want to.
You might feel like you just don’t know the right things to say, so here are
some ways to help you become eloquent and witty.
Wit is a great quality to have and it is a great way to get someone to let
down their guard. You can win people over easily by being witty. You can
charm and influence people. You will be able to turn any situation positive.
A person who is witty will be able to find themselves in the middle of any
gathering, event, or situation.
Wit doesn’t have anything to do with being silly, funny, being a comedian,
or entertaining others. Wit is an ability that is unique. It allows you to think
on your feet while coming up with comical or clever observations about the
situation.
Eloquence and wit are being able to say things that will make others
admire, love, and become immediately interested in you.
Just like anything else in life, eloquence and wit can be learned and
practiced by anyone. You just need some motivation and a desire to be more
eloquent and witty.
The next time you watch your favorite entertainer, writer, or speaker
eloquently speaking puns and one-liners without any effort at all, pay
attention to how they speak and what they say.
Here are some tips for becoming a more eloquent speaker:

Watch Television
Even though television shows are scripted, they are great resources to help
you master being eloquent and witty. Find television shows that have
outstanding one-liners and excellent dialogue. Look for shows that have
inspiring characters that you can learn things from. Immersing yourself in
witty and eloquent personalities will help you get more eloquent and witty
and you will soon be a smooth talker, too.

Expanding Your Vocabulary

According to research, a normal person knows about 35,000 words but only
uses around 3,000 of them. The rest of the words just turn into “passive
vocabulary” that doesn’t get used much at all.
A person who is eloquent won’t have any problems being able to get your
point across. Learn how to be exceptional. Use online resources like
dictionaries and thesauruses.
You should learn a new word each day. Know the origins of the words and
ways to use the word correctly. There isn’t anything worse than listening to
someone spew out words and using them incorrectly. After you can become
consistent doing this, you will surprise yourself at the results.

Memorize Some Quotes

Be that person who is always bringing up great quotes or saying during a
group conversation. Just think about what it would be like having that
perfect quote for each and every scenario and situation. This will make
everybody want to listen to what you have to say. You will have to learn,
memorize, digest, and be able to speak those quotes. This just might be the
best part of learning eloquence and wit.

Be Concise and Brief

There isn’t anything worse than sitting and listening to someone go on and
on and on…
People who can’t stop talking are the worst. You might have a hard time
being concise and brief, but sometimes nerves get in our way. You know
how annoying it is when you are sitting across from someone who doesn’t
listen to a thing you say because they can’t stop talking long enough to even
acknowledge that you are in the room.
It is imperative that you can be concise and brief. If you can learn how to
express yourself in just a few words, with some quotes and one-liners, you
will grab people’s attention faster than somebody who keeps talking while
trying to make their point.

Use a Script or Framework

Being eloquent and witty will take spontaneity, but you can use a script to
help you. Many professional speakers and writers will use frameworks,
scripts, and prompts to help them keep their thoughts in line. This doesn’t
make them less eloquent or witty. It helps them produce a great delivery,
which is their ultimate goal.
You never get a second chance to be eloquent. You just get the one and you
have to do it correctly.

Learn Some Puns

I have always been bad with puns, but this is one thing that I would really
like to get better at. To be able to master puns, you have to be able to use
words that mean the same thing or sound alike.
Think about a book publisher that is having some legal problems and they
have asked you to create them a tagline. You could do something like: “At
our company, our word is the law.” You have just brought together what
they are going through with what they do. This is how puns work.

Silence is Powerful
Some times when people speak, you can actually hear music because
language is sound.
If you have listened to a beautiful violin concerto or piano sonata and the
person hits a bad note during a great melody, could ruin the mood of the
entire audience. This also goes for anyone who adds uhmm, or uhh after or
before their sentences. These people are afraid of silence entering the
conversation.
People who know how to speak eloquently knows how powerful silence is.
If they are forced to pause, they know how to use silence as an advantage.
Silence can create suspense. It could either be looked at as an opportunity to
make the next sentence more poignant or uncomfortable. The power here is
that great speakers know the way to use it advantageously.

Get Rid of “Uhm” and “Uhh” and Replace it with “Now,” “You
See,” or “Well.”
People also like to fill the silence and stutter when they don’t understand
what they are saying, uncomfortable, or nervous.
Everybody learned this during middle school. The easiest way for your
teacher to think you didn’t do your work was standing there stuttering while
shoving your hands deep into your pockets.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what you are talking about or if you are
terribly nervous is beside the point. It is what you make your audience
believe that matters. You can easily conceal this by using words such as
“now,” “you see,” and “well.” Rather than saying something like: “Uhm, I
thought…” you would say: “Well, I thought…” These sound completely
different, don’t they? Little words like “now” is a great filler word that
could help you make the silence longer if you need some time to think. You
could take some time to pause by saying: “Now,” pausing and moving on
with what you were saying. That can give you two seconds for you to get
your thoughts together.

Watch Your Speed

If you aren’t sure that you are talking too slow or too fast? Try this little
exercise: Find a passage that is 160 words long. Read this out loud while
you record yourself. How long did it take? It should have taken you about
one minute. You should be able to speak between 155 and 175 words a
minute for a normal conversation. If you are summarizing or reciting
information, you can talk a bit faster. If you are trying to explain something
technical, slow down the speed.

Emphasize the Last Sounds

Try not to trail off or mumble by making an effort to pronounce every
syllable. Pay attention to the last word in each sentence and the “Ts” in
contractions.
 Be Confident
How can you be more eloquent? Speak with confidence. If you are just
talking to someone on the phone, how you hold yourself will impact the
way people receive your thoughts. Lengthen your vocal cords by holding
your chin parallel with the floor, sit up straight, and don’t move your hands
too much. Keep your hands folded on your lap or table. This projects
trustworthiness.

Jargon Won’t Impress

The best speakers will leave jargon alone. Would you like to know the
difference between a seasoned salesperson and a new one? A seasoned
salesperson will make you feel educated where the new one will leave you
dazed and confused.
Jargon is completely pointless. It isn’t meant for people to be able to do
things faster. It isn’t intended to be used to make people feel impressed. It
normally doesn’t impress anyone. It will just make them feel left out and
confused about what the conversation is about and who they can give value
to it or some emotion that will make it easier to relate to.
Think of it as using more poetry and less endless prose.

Stop Using Curse Words

Sophisticated people won’t ever use words such as bitch, ass, shit, fuck, etc.
They just won’t.
You might have the vocabulary of a sailor, but there is a place and time for
it to be used. The best way to earn trust and respect of others is speaking
well, and this means you have to get rid of curse words.

Get to the Point and be Descriptive

This is close to using jargon; you need to make your point and never talk
around it. There isn’t any point to it.
Nobody likes sitting around listening to a stream of words tied together. Say
exactly what you mean in as little words as humanly possible. Once you get
to the essence of what you are saying, describe it so well that whomever
you are talking to will be able to “see” it perfectly.
Details are very important. They are what draw people in and stimulate our
senses. It is why some are great storytellers, whereas others will put you to
sleep. Don’t confuse this with saying a lot of stuff. It isn’t about length.
What it is about is meaning what you say and saying it well.

Keep Your Spine Straight but Remain Relaxed

Being eloquent isn’t just about the way you use language. It’s about using
body language, too. How your back is positioned creates the foundation for
your body language and is the root of your eloquence.
Slumping tells others you lack confidence in your words and yourself. If
you go too far and stand “at attention” straight, this is saying you are in
“fight or flight” mode. If your back is straight but relaxed will put you in a
physical and mental state where words will flow easily and smoothly.

Chin Up
The way you hold your head is as important as the way you position your
spine. This fact can be reflected in many expressions like: “Hold your head
high” means to show determination and pride. Saying someone is
“downcast” tells others that you are being beaten down.
Keeping your head up is needed to be eloquent for physiological reasons,
too. If your neck is tense, it will strangle your words and keeps you from
clearly speaking.

Focus on the People Who Are Listening

Eloquence is only meaningful if people listen to you. They aren’t going to
listen if you think about other things or if your eyes are darting all over the
place. If people aren’t paying attention, you are just giving a speech.
Two things to remember: Don’t glance sideways: this makes you look
dishonest. If you have to check notes, look down without moving your head
down. Only move your eyes.

Learn to Project Your Words

To have the maximum eloquence, you have to speak loud enough so the
people in the back of the room can hear, but it isn’t too loud for the people
sitting in front.
If you aren’t sure about your volume, as someone in the back if they can
clearly hear you. If they tell you “yes,” drop your voice a notch and ask
again. If they can’t hear that, then go back to the previous volume.
Never start yelling. Yelling will make you sound insane instead of eloquent.
If you find yourself having to yell, you can ask the people to move closer to
you or for a microphone.

Support Your Words with the Right Gestures

Learn to use your hands to emphasize your important points. The best way
to learn this is to watch the way popular speakers and celebrities use
gestures while speaking. Notice how their hand movements “emerge” out of
their hands.
If you aren’t actively using gestures, don’t move your hands. Scratching,
rattling papers, rearranging your glasses, etc. will distract your audience and
will cancel your eloquence.

Position Your Body Correctly

You can add power to your speech if you move your body the right way. If
you are speaking from a stage, you can move from one place to another to
show that you are beginning a new topic.
If you are sting around a conference table, lean forward a bit when you
would like to emphasize your point. Change your position when you move
from one concept or subject to another one.

Use Words Everybody Can Understand

Using clichés are just the opposite of being eloquent. Use common phrases
or words that are unexpected that will illustrate your point memorably. You
could use: “common as houseflies” instead of “a dime a dozen.”
Stay away from words that people in your audience may not understand. If
you use snobby words, it might make you sound snobby instead of smart. If
you have to speak a term that the audience doesn’t understand, explain it in
plain language.
 Talk in Various Speeds
If you speak at one speed will turn whatever you say into a monotonous
drone. Change up your speed, depending on how important what you are
trying to communicate is at the time.
If you are going over the background or summarizing you can talk faster
than if you are giving new information. If you are introducing or describing
a new concept, slow down to give your audience time to absorb it.

Pause to Emphasize
Silence isn’t only golden, but it is eloquence’s crowning glory. A small
pause right before you say something important can create suspense. It will
make your audience “hand on every word.”
Pausing after you have stated something important will show how
important it is and will give listeners time to reflect on its importance. The
best example of perfect eloquence when pausing is Martin Luther King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech.

Think Before You Talk

The best trick for an eloquent speaker is to know what you are talking
about. When you have a clear idea about what you would like to say will
help you organize your thoughts into something coherent. It’s as simple as
that.

Work on Weaknesses
Take some time to find out what your weaknesses are. When you have
identified them, make a plan to address them. A good strategy is to tackle
one problem every day. You could try to work on completing sentences on
Wednesday and getting rid of filler words on Friday. Keep doing this every
week until talking clear is just second nature to you.

Practice
Writing and reading are probably your favorite things to do if you would
like to be a great writer. If you want to be an eloquent writer or speaker, you
have to practice a lot.
This will involve practicing all the points that are mentioned above again
and again. Constantly practicing will ensure that you reach excellence and
success. Even if you can’t spend hours each day practicing, try to put in at
least one hour.
 Chapter 10: Choice of Words

‘Words have the power to destroy and to create. A word can change an
event and a feeling. It is so important to choose the right words
Words are a way of communication. The choice of the words we use is a
style of how we express ourselves be it in written words, spoken words or
even what we just think in our minds. The words we use might seem
insignificant, but they can create beauty in the hearts and minds of many
and at the same time, they can cause irreparable havoc that forever remains
in the minds of people and to go down in the books of history. Word Every
person chooses the words which he feels comfortable with, which he feels
are simple enough for the audience to understand and the choice of these
words accurately, can make a difference between building greatness and
hope or destroying by causing catastrophes.

Miscommunication of words causes big uncontainable catastrophes. Words

should be well communicated to make or drive home the meaning that is
intended. For everything to be successful in the world the words should be
communicated clearly and the choice of the words should be wise.
Successful relationships start and go further because of choice words. Those
in these relationships know when the red button has been pressed and then
make sure to choose the right words to change the button to green.

Sometimes words may have very simple and little meaning attached to them
but the audience misunderstands them and they end up causing great pain
and even wars. The audience feels disrespected because of the
misunderstanding of the words. Just like the wrong or the unsaid words can
bring down a space ship, so are the misunderstood words. It is important
that as much as your choice of words is good, you should be very clear and
thorough. You should reflect on how the message will be conveyed and
received.

The words that are unsaid hold the same importance as that of the spoken
words. The silence that falls between the unsaid words and the spoken
words hold a lot of significance in the message. The silence is the most
powerful of all of them. The silence between the words can help sink the
message in the minds and hearts of the audience. For example, a person
who talks nonstop is more likely to be misunderstood, misquoted and so
many other things than a person who speaks a few words which he has
chosen carefully. The words we use are definite; they do not have any
dynamic range or malleability unlike the interpretation of our lives. We can
define our lives in whichever way because we have powers within us to
change the way we live. Unfortunately, we cannot change the words we
have already spoken out after some time. Especially if we said them clearly
and explained them to sink in the audience's mind. Words do not have these
dynamics and malleability. When dealing with words, a dog is a dog and it
cannot and be a cat. If you tell someone he is stupid, you mean he is stupid,
it cannot change be stupid meant good or clever.
In your choice of words, you should not go deep looking into the meaning
of words. Sometimes the words are only simple and do not mean otherwise.
Always look out for the added benefits of the tone, look at the facial
expression and the body language of the speaker. The power of the choice
words is two-way traffic. There is power in their utterance and the power in
how they are ingested, so each time we speak, we write or when we think,
we should be very mindful of what we are engaging ourselves into.

There is a problem when we do not take any active role in choosing the
words we express. When we speak without taking into account the force
created from the flow of our speeches when we allow other people's words
to emotionally paralyze us and then we answer back without choosing our
words carefully.  Most of us, in one way or the other, are victims of the
power of choice of words.
There are principles of choice of words that everyone should uphold while
choosing the words to address an audience. These principles govern the
choice of words so that one is able to know if his choice of words is within
the complying rules or not, if not, you are always free to change your
choice of words before you air them out to cause harm or complications that
is irreparable.

Principles of Choice of Words

Obsolete words
Obsolete words are outdated words. Others call them archaic words though
the difference between the archaic words and the obsolete word is that the
obsolete word has fallen into the dilution more re4cently than the archaic
word. Obsolete words are words that have been overused and now hold less
meaning or impact when they are used again. They are diluted and can
easily be misinterpreted. Avoid using obsolete words while speaking or
writing. Your choice of words while addressing people no matter how good
they are. If you use obsolete words, they will dilute the meaning of the
whole speech. People will start misquoting you and they will end up
misunderstanding you which later o0n will cause problems.

Emphasize positive words

As a speaker or a writer if you want your points to be understood, maintain
positivity. Make sure you emphasize the positive effects of whatever the
message you are addressing. You cannot start speaking about the negativity
of a project when you really want that project to be implemented, you will
have to talk about the positivity of that project. Also, when a speaker is
talking about a certain product, he does not have to talk about the
competitor of the product in a negative way, this drives a wrong message
across. Could be you are jealousy. But if you maintain the positivity in your
emphasis, you may just get what you need. Choice of words playing it your
way and you get what you want, play it the competitors' way and you create
chaos.

Avoid Overused Words

There are words that have been used more than they should actually be
used. They have been overly used though they have their meaning. These
words make your message so boring and they make the audience have a
different judgment from you. It is either you did not prepare well or you are
not conversant with the trend of the world and civilization. You cannot
expect people to listen to you and agree with you when your choice of
words is not to their expected standards. Some audiences expect words to
reflect intelligence and if this cannot be achieved when you open your
mouth giving a speech to them, they switch off completely. Make sure the
choice of your words is not so repetitive in that they are everywhere.

Choose strong words

Strong words do not mean ambiguous words. It only means that you choose
the words that best suit the occasion and leaves no room for alteration. 
Choose the words that the audience might not be expecting to hear but
when they hear them, they will go along with them. Choose the words that
will put smiles on their faces and alleviate tension if any. For example, you
cannot go to a place where there are community wars, and start addressing
people by pointing fingers at one side of the group expecting the war to end.
You can point fingers yes, but at both of them. Your words should be strong
enough to drive the point at home by sinking clearly without misquote or
misinterpretation in the minds of the audience.

Use specific precise words

Your choice of words will depend on the audience you are addressing. You
should make sure your words are directed to what you intended to
communicate. They should address the point only meant to be addressed, in
other words, they should be specific. For example, you have a problem in
your relationship because your partner is drinking alcohol too much to
extend of forfeiting the responsibilities he is expected to execute. To
address this issue be exact. You want to address your partners’drunkenness,
choose the words that concern drunkenness. Then be specific. The specific
thing here is alcohol. Address alcohol and the effects it is causing in his life
and to the relationship. You should not just start jumping from one thing to
another, like the last time he bought you a dress, the last he ever took you
on a date, the girl you caught him with, his annoying sectary and so many
others. Maintain your choice of words by being specific and exact or
precise and things will be well solved.

Understandable words
Your choice of words, whether written or spoken should be understandable.
You should make sure that the audience will understand what you are
saying. If you choose words in a way that you alone can understand or with
a mindset that you do not care about who understands them and how they
understand them, then disaster is knocking on the door. How the audience
understands what you are saying or you are writing is very important. This
helps in clearances of any doubt and limits any chances of misinterpretation
of the message you are putting across. This also helps or gives room to
quickly remedy a disaster if any arises due to your wrong cho9ice of words.
While we have principles that govern our word choices, there are ways that
also help us improve our words choice and stay as relevant as possible.

Ways of Improving the Words Choices

Improve your vocabulary
You must be able to have a variety of vocabulary to use while addressing
the audience. You do not want to be one-eyed when you have two. Go to
libraries, read a lot, do online research and you will find that your
vocabularies have increased. You will find yourself using words that you
have never used before to address the audience. More vocabulary gives you
ease with the message and they paint the relevancy picture in you. They
make you stand out before the audience.

Use new words in a sentence for practice

If you want to improve in your choice of words, start practicing the new
words. Use them in sentences when talking to friends or families. You have
to familiarize yourself with words before you go out using them to new
audiences and the only to do that is to practice them in the sentence then
within no time you will know how they are used.

Image: Words affect

Always replace general words with specific words

You cannot generalize everything when choosing your words. This will end
up sending a wrong message. Be specific. Generalization while choosing
words can seem as disrespect to some people and when some people in the
audience feel that they are disrespected; your message will not be
conveyed. For example, if you are chosen to go to a global warming summit
that is being attended by presidents, governors, senators and other junior
delegates to address people in that meeting, do not generalize. Do not go
about and say ‘’’good evening ladies and gentlemen’’. As much as ladies
and gentlemen are good but it is not good enough. Some people in that
forum want their presence to be recognized. They want their titles to be
recognized without generalizing them with their juniors. You can start out
by the point the specifics, ‘the chairman of the global warming summit of
this year, the presidents of different states in the house, the governors
present, the senators around and other delegates present, good evening’’.
This will sound better to every ear that is listening to you. They will be
addressed. They will feel the attachment and inclusion of what you will be
telling them. So, to improve your choice of words, never generalize.

Avoid slang
Slangs are words that people consider casual ort informal. Writing slang or
giving a speech in slang to different audiences is very unprofessional. Slang
is mostly used in the streets. The use of slang can cause misinterpretation to
the audience because slang might be localized ion one part of the society
and the others do not understand its meaning. Sometimes slangs have
multiple meanings and can cause confusion in the minds of people. For
example, the use of the word ‘’fuck’’, people use these words differently. It
is slang. Some use it to mean surprise, some to mean hurt; some use it to
mean the intimacy between a man and a woman. Use in the sentences:

Fuck, you came, am so excited that you remembered to visit me.—this

person is surprised and happy that he was visited, he is using ‘’fuck’’ to
show his surprise

Fuck am going to disfigure his face—this person is hurting while using the
word fuck, he is even swearing of going to hurt the other person too.

It was a good fuck darling—this could be communication between lovers or

people in a relationship where one is appreciating or complimenting the
other for intimacy.
Therefore, if you want to improve your choice of words and maintain
relevance, you should avoid slang. People will not know what you mean
and this might end up bringing problems.

Pick words that match the tone

Your choice of words and the tone matters a lot. You cannot be angry while
your words are so soft. Your tone should reflect anger for someone to
understand. You cannot be addressing people about the importance of
growing trees while your tone is so high, people will feel that you are a
dictator. You are trying to command then around and, in the end, this will
fail. So how you choose your words, should be keen on the tone
accompanied by it. For example, if your sibling, friend or your child tells
you in a low tone, ‘am sorry am not going’’ after sending him somewhere.
You will be concerned and want to find out why he is saying that.  In the
same scenario, you decide to send him then and then he shouts back, ‘’ am
not going’’. There will be mixed reactions. You will have an argument;
because you will feel disrespected and even at times disciplinary measures
will be taken,the tone can be either positive or negative. In this case, the
first tone reflects positivity but needs concern, while the second signifies
negativity that requires disciplinary intervention. Therefore, your choice of
words and the tone matters a lot.
Use a dictionary to find antonyms or synonyms

If you are writing or maybe practicing on your speech, make sure, you do
not repeat the same words all the time. Your speech or article will be so
boring. It is advisable for you to look up synonyms of the words. You can
use words with the same meaning but they are different words.  In a case
where you take your trouser to the tailor and tell him

‘’ To be precise, I want the hem of this trouser folded twice’’. You can as
well say
‘’I want exactly two folds at the hem of this trouser’’.

All these statements are correct and relay the same message. Precise and
exact all mean the same thing but you did not want to repeat yourself in
both the statements.
Avoid redundancy
In your choice of words, avoid words that are useless. You know very well
the words are not so meaningful or useful but you add them to your speech
anyway. This drives the wrong messages sometimes. The audience might
think you did not do your research well that is why you are using less
useful. It also [portrays that you do not have confidence with whatever you
are selling out to the people. There I nothing as bad as when the audience
will think that you are not interested in what you are telling them, it will
become chaotic. Therefore, it is good to avoid redundancies in your choice
of words.

Importance of Words Choice

Use of incorrect words may not deliver the message

If you are addressing an audience and your words are incorrect, the crowd
will hang you for them. The audience does not think of what you wanted to
say, they think of what you said that is why your crucifixion or praise
comes after your speech. The incorrect choice of words sends a different
message thus it is very important to choose your words correctly before
speaking or written or even when thinking.

Cause of misunderstanding
Incorrect word choice will cause misunderstanding. Your intention might be
good but your words are not well chosen. Just like in the projects. Good
projects fail due to the wrong choice of words. Companies lose a lot of
money because of the wrong choice of words. The audience will
misunderstand you if you choose your words incorrectly and this might
result in problems.

Senselessness
You do not want to look senseless before an audience; this is so humiliating
and shameful. The choice of words will make you appear sense full or
senseless. The sense will come in when your choice of words is good and
vice-versa will result in the senselessness. Imagine going to a podium to
make a speech about the importance of unity and everyone is looking at you
like you just landed from Jupiter and start shooting questions from all sides.
This will freak you out and if you are not strong enough, you must just run
out of the building. Your choice of words matters here.

Impact increase on mind

When you choose the correct words, the impact of the message in the mind
of an audience is increased. A correct choice of words makes the audience
understand better and want to know more about what you are saying or
writing. You being a business who wants to add a price to your goods
whereby the addition of this price will bring more money to the
shareholders and better quality to the consumers. While addressing either of
these groups, you decide to choose your words correctly and carefully. This
idea will be appreciated and implemented not because you took a lot of time
explaining and convincing them, but because you chose your words
correctly and the impact of the correctness sunk the message to their minds
clearly without alterations.

Your choice of words reveals your attitude and personality

Attitude is the only word that has alphabets that reach up to 100. When
denoted in percentage form, this only means attitude is the only thing that
can make you reach your highest potential or remain where you are. If you
want positive results, you must have a positive attitude. A high level of
attitude awareness should be realized by everyone and the choices of every
word we say show which attitude we are harboring. If you are addressing an
audience about how to prevent HIV/AIDS and your words seem not to care
about the eradication, this only means, you have an attitude towards people
suffering from this virus and you do not care about it. This only shows you
might be giving this speech because of hidden motive which could be
money, fame or anything else. Your personality is portrayed by every word
you say in the speech.

We should be able to do some self-coaching in our choice of words so as

not to spread nit to the audience. Before addressing an audience, you should
always discover your motives. Do a self-motivation. Make yourself part of
the issue you want to address, visualize the issue at hand, how the people
will think and how they will see you as you address the issue. Do an
internal dialogue and this will help you choose your words carefully and
correctly. The words are chosen here and the attitude signified will help
drive the point home safely or will cause destruction, so be careful what
attitude you are showing when you speak or write.

CONCLUSION
The downfall or uprise of anything or anyone depends on the words we use.
A good choice of words will do marvelous things while the wrong choice
will cause pain. How your attitude is seen in your speech entirely depends
on your choice of words. You might not like something, but your choice of
words will say differently. Our choice of words will have to also depend on
the audience we will be addressing. Controversial issues like religions have
to be handled keenly with high expertise of word choices because a single
match stick here can burn the entire universe. If words have always failed
you and brought more chaos than good, you can always learn. Nobody was
born knowing the words, we all learned these words but how we use them is
entirely our choice. So, you can learn ways on how to improve on the
choice of words that you use. Choice of words are like ticking time bombs,
it either you detonate the bomb or you let it go off and become a calamity.
 Chapter 11: Anxiety: The Worry about Other
People’s Thoughts about Us

It is for our own good when reality occasionally punches us in the face. And
that can be through our own selves or through others. Most of us have heard
that the many troubles we fear never actually get to happen. Have you
really considered whether what you think others regard you to be is actually
what they think of you? Oftentimes we overestimate how much and how
badly people think of our failings. Many people have in this way over-
inhibited themselves and they live lives far less spontaneous and less joyous
than it ought to be for them.
The one thing you do or don’t do because of how you expect other people
to react; you need to analyze it and decide upon it in a rational manner. You
surely know that you are not being true to yourself caring about others’
thoughts and not your own concerning you, right? But stop and think. If you
were on your deathbed this very minute, would it matter what you are
worrying yourself about? I will tell you, mostly no. Think about that. Have
you loved enough by now? Have you done all the things you ever wanted
done by now?
True. Our happiness does depend on the quality of relationships that we
keep. In fact, quite many of our routine activities involve other people. We
eat with others. We socialize with others. We work with others. And we do
not want to do these things with cynical people or sadists. But we are not
going to peg our success or lack of it entirely on other people’s
expectations. You must choose to follow your heart and stop so much caring
what everyone thinks. You will be amazed how life will get significantly
better for you.
Worrying About Things That Won’t Matter To You Later
Many do not consider it in this way. Or they just do not realize this. There
are also many who despite this realization just do not know how to get
started out of their already worsening situations. Worrying and fearing is the
most impractical way anyone can spend their time and energy. When you
worry and worry about something you want, it does not in any way become
evident you will have it. Similarly, worrying about what you do not want
will not get it out of your way.
Worrying is counterproductive instead. It just does not serve you. So what
things are people thinking about your lack and you’re buying on that to
perpetuate your inaction? They are not real. Rather, inaction leads to
anxiety and it overwhelms. You render yourself into a state of endless
confusion and therein waste away your potentials. Watch your minds. Are
they wired for negativity, only seeing difficulties and impossibilities?
Undoubtedly, that is not what matters to you.
If you ever worry about anything, see it as an opportunity for you to dig
deep into yourself because therein is your being and power thereof. It only
matters what you make of yourself and what you use it for.
Do You Not Feel Whole Without The Approval Of Others?
Peace is found within; do not seek it without. What will you find outside
that will fill a gap within you? Only you can fill your inside from inside.
Choose to affect the environment. Do not wait to be affected. Affecting is
the only effective way. To be affected is to be infected. You do not want that
because it makes you unhealthy and ineffective, however you perceive it.
Dependence on the externalities can be the addictive cycle that will turn
you away from yourself. You stand against your own chances and grounds.
You rob yourself of authenticity and power. Contrary to your expectation,
you drain yourself dry without recompense. What you create out of weak
thoughts never holds your water. Not even for yourself or others. You
become a fake. And when you become all aware, everyone turns against
you because they think you lost your values.
Understand it thus; dwelling on the thoughts of others is disempowering
you.
Be Content with Who You Are
Live your life for you. Have you created an ideal in your mind as a result of
your mindfulness of others’ thoughts? Forget it. Live your life not for others
but for you. That is the right and most fitting thing to do. What you have is
what you need to start with. Where you are is where you must start. How
you are is all the arrangement necessary for you to embark. Any other
standards you draw must be founded on these factual understandings of
self.
Have you taken the time to discover yourself? That is the incredible person
you must show to the world. If anyone shall matter to you, they must
choose to love and admire you for who you are. Shun hanging judging
yourself on the basis of those who you are trying to be. What are your
values? What is your belief? What is your purpose? You need to come to
the full knowledge that you are different in every way. That is how
differently powerful you are. First, take care what you think about yourself.
The others’ thoughts come subsequent but might as well be left to be just
that – their own for them.

Worrying About Others’ Thoughts Doesn’t Contribute to Your Positive

Transformation
The person who chooses and really sees you even when you are fumbling
with issues is the one who matters to you. You are obliged to live a life you
are proud of, know yourself and share that with your loved ones. Stand up
and advocate for yourself. Do not give that power to someone else.
Your mind will occasionally try to wander into the thoughts of others about
you. Teach yourself to realize that promptly and bring it right on back to
you. Whatever voids there are, fill them with your love. Stand in your own
power. Show the world who you really are. And do it unapologetically. It
does not matter whether or not they get to notice it.
At the end of the day, you reflect someone's image. Would you mirror the
wrecked image of someone or would you be the best version of you? Be
your own biggest fan.
 Chapter 12: The Magical Power of Words

Magical power of words in our lives; a single word can change the
emotional intensity of a message.
The magical power of words in our lives; a single word is able to change
the emotional intensity of a message.

When we look beyond the religious connotations of’’ in the beginning there
was a word’’, everything truly begins with a word. This word carries
vibrations and sounds that they send to our minds to make the mind choose
and decide whether to believe it as true or false. The reality which
surrounds us is created by the vibrations consisted of the words. Words can
be called as the creator, without a word, there is no reality in the thought at
all. They can create a universe in your mind, they can create our lives to be
able to move or remain where you are, and they can create reality.

We can always create anything we want with the words in our lives. The
emotions attached to them are surprised at what they can do. From our own
words, we have the most important tools that create reality. Our words
provide the confirmation that lies deep within us. When someone speaks
something, it is not that it just popped out of his mouth; he is confirming the
reality that is in him. It is his powerful affirmation of words that his
thoughts are coming into reality by speaking them to the audience.

Words are like magic; they are the labels given to emotions and feelings.
The words are descriptions of your experiences. They help you understand
your life. Words do not describe reality; they describe how you understand
as reality. Reality is understood as perceived. Your perception of something
is what your reality becomes. In simpler words, the interpretation you make
of things that happen, are the words you use.

Words just like magic have the power to influence. You are always
emotionally influenced by the words you read, you hear or you speak. The
influence of these words may change the emotional intensity of the message
by either under-delivering,over-delivering or not delivering at all. When we
feel so down or lively at times, this is influenced by the words we use to
describe our experiences. The intensity of the words we use either pulls us
down the drain or lifts us up the clouds. You will feel good or bad according
to the label; you give yourself or anything.

Words with their magical power can transform your state of mind and not
only that, but they can transform your life as a whole. The words you use
carries different weight to your emotional wellbeing. Your thoughts will
always imp-act what you do or manifest in your life. If you say, you are
going to make it in life you surely are going to make nit because you have
made up your mind to work towards your goal.

Our behaviors are shaped because of the words we use. The words we use
have different meanings and carry different intensity at any given time. The
choice of words at any point can transform your emotions and shape your
destiny. Take, for instance, political leaders. Political leaders come up with
their manifestos and sell them to us using the power of words, they do it
affectionately ion that we are emotionally attached to every single word
they say and we end up voting them in. Some political leaders when they
open their mouths to speak, they speak so well but then one word, just one
lets them down. It could be a specification term or a generalization term.
The intensity that term that he uses drives fear, anger, confusion and so
many other mixed reactions that the audience does not want to hear him
speak again. The audience starts seeing the political leader as an ill cultured
person because they feel their emotions were stepped onto.

The words that we use in our daily lives carry a lot of weight. The weight
the words carry can affect you or the audience emotionally. How words are
expressed or said might bring a lot of chaos or a lot of joy. They can result
in emotional reactions like anger, hatred, stress, frustrations and so many
other reactions. Like a matchstick, the way it is so small can cause a lot of
disasters buy burning down everything or it can cause a lot of joy by
lighting a candle in the dark house when light is needed. This is no different
from words. A single word spoken, with the intensity it carries can bring
many mixed reactions that cause emotional torment or it can bring a lot of
joy to the heart.

Each time we speak, we should be keen and fast to weigh the words we let
go out of our mouths because you never know the impact of those words.
For example, if you are in a densely crowded place, then you shout ‘fire’.
There will be mixed reactions. Some people will panic and start running in
any of the directions while others will be so confused not to know what
they can do and, in that state, they are likely to do things that are harmful
because of the emotional confusion. The intensity of the word ‘fire’ is so
strong to create a lot of emotional imbalance in the minds of the people.

The energy that words carry gives the language its capability and possibility
to hurt or heal. If you could remember the first time, or anytime someone
said something to you and it refused to leave your mind. It literally stuck in
your mind; these only means words have weight. The emotional intensity of
the message is completely changed by the weight of the words you
received. For example, you go to a hospital when you are sick after the
doctor runs some tests on you, he comes back with the results and tells ‘you
have leukemia’ this might be the unprofessional way of relaying a message,
but the message is correct. However, the weight of the words of the doctor
will send a different message to the mind that will cause emotional
problems. The emotional intensity of the message has been changed with
the way the doctor said the words. The first thing after receiving that
message is you die. No matter how you try to shake off the idea but it will
play in your mind for quite some time or maybe forever. All this is a
reminder to us that words are ‘alive’ they carry consciousness and we
should be very conscious of how much weight they carry while using them.

When we are conscious of how to use the words bearing in mind the weight
of these words, we always deepen the relationship between the words and
us. We are able to understand that words not only interpret something or
convey a message but they also convey feelings. We have to be able to feel
the weight of every word that we speak. We have to understand that words
do not exist independently, they cannot support themselves alone and they
are not abstract. This means we have to know that words are the most
powerful transmitters of feelings.

You may want to make an observation of how your words affect others
when you speak or how other people’s words affect you emotionally when
they speak. You will realize that for every spoken word, there is an
emotional reaction attached to it. In words, there is no single word that one
can assume and call an insignificant word. Every word spoken has an
emotional attachment to it and can change the message delivered. In some
cases, people speak words and told to repeat they say ‘never mind’. This
never minds actually should be minded. The words heard while you were
speaking carried weight that drove a certain reaction to the mind of your
audience and you should be very mindful of this. You may realize that
people who speak faster without thinking, they just throw words anyhow do
not have the word power as the people who speak slowly and confidently.
Those who speak confidently and slowly wield all the power of the words.
The people listening to him will be keen on what he is saying. The words in
his speech carry a certain weight that sinks in the mind of people well. The
emotional intensity attached to the message is well received and unaltered
from the slow confident speakers than the fast-careless speaker. When you
become a good listener before you speak your mind, your words carry more
integrity than when you rush to speak without listening. You will achieve
the power of speech when you center yourself before speaking. Each time
we measure the emotional intensity of our words before we speak, it will
help us be intelligent message conveyers for healing messages and be able
to transmit positive feelings deeply to the audience listening to us.

The words that we use have a biochemical effect on our bodies. For
instance, you use the word ‘terribly disappointed instead of using the word
a little bit disappointed. The word terribly sends certain biochemical
manufacture in our bodies that in the end causes the emotional problem.
You can imagine while speaking to your sibling an argument arises arise
and he tells you,’ you are dumb’. This will crumble you emotionally
because of the words he has used, but what if he had used words like,
‘please let me explain to you how it is or let us check it up and get the real
picture of the issue?’ It sounds better right? This process also happens with
words we use internally. When we criticize ourselves and say mean things
about ourselves the biochemical effect is released. Sometimes it causes
different emotional reactions and fears just happen to be one of the
emotional reactions caused by the emotional intensity of the words.

Repetitive words can carry a lot of weight in the messages. Language is

learned by repeating some words almost every day. When a child is born, he
does not know when to speak, but when he hears a certain word more times
than the other words, he will definitely speak that word. When words are
repeated most of the time, they carry a weight that affects the emotional
intensity of the message. When you constantly tell yourself that, you are too
fat or too thin or too ugly all the time, these words drive a message to the
emotions. These words get stuck in your mind because of their repetition
and they send a certain signal that activates the emotional reactions. Just
like in the nursery school when we use to sing the rhymes ‘row row row
your boat’, probably the rhyme still lingers in your mind up to now because
of its repetitive nature. Each time you remember this rhyme, a certain
emotional feeling is attached to it. The emotional intensity in the song
makes you feel differently emotionally.

While using words, a single effective word can dampen the emotions of
someone or alleviate it and they can completely change the meaning of the
message. Words that affect people can cause positive effects or negative
effects on the emotions of the audience.  Angry words are affective words
and they can send an alarm to the brains, which block the logic and all the
reasoning centers from working effectively leaving one emotionally
bruised. Using the right words and measuring the weight of the words we
use can transform our reality and helps the emotional messages be relayed
or conveyed accordingly.

Hostile words can change the emotional intensity of the message. They can
disrupt certain genes that produce chemicals that keep us from stress. When
these genes are disrupted, we become emotionally naked and any form of
emotional disturbance hits our emotions so hard that we may not be able to
withstand at times.

Some single words can increase the activity in the fear center of the brain
because of the weight they impart on the emotional intensity of the message
passed across. When these words increase the activity in the amygdala,
which is the center fear of the brain, a lot of stress, is released which
produces a chemical that interferes with the normal functioning of our
brains.

Positive words or a single positive word is able to intensely affect the

emotional meaning of a message. Positive words are like an airborne
disease. They spread through the mind if you keep telling yourself about
positive things. You will find that when positive words start spreading in
your mind, your perception of different things and yourself change. You
will realize that the perception of others about your changes too.

The positive use of words and the positive view of yourself help you see the
good in others. If you are emotionally satisfied by what you have heard,
written, or read, this means your emotions are healthy and you will feel
good about them. When you feel good about yourself, you are more likely
to feel good about others. An emotionally haunted person cannot regard
others as good. He will always see the negative side of other people.  He
will always picture someone as doubtful and will constantly suspect people.
This person is full of doubt and suspicion. This haunt can only be caused by
emotional intensity delivered by words in the message.

We should always sit down and reflect on the harm or on the benefit a word
will cause emotionally to the audience before speaking it. Reflecting on
words is a process that includes one paraphrasing and stating again the
words of the speaker as well as the feelings of the speaker. Be in the shoe of
the audience, listen to yourself and know the emotional intensity attached to
the message to be delivered. Reflecting on words you as speaker uses will
help you be able to understand the emotions attached to them. It will help
you have a greater understanding of the meaning of words and the feeling
of those words.
Reflecting on your words before uttering helps, you hear your own
thoughts. It will help you be in the shoe of the listener and be able to focus
on what you will be saying and feeling.  Mostly in the content, the speaker
uses ‘’you’ instead of ‘I’’. He may say ‘‘you feel terrible about the idea’
instead of’’ I feel terrible about the idea’’. Reflection helps him focus and
understand that he is not only addressing and conserving his emotional well
being, but his words are addressing the emotional well being of the
audience and the message should be passed across emotionally clear
without hurting anyone emotionally. When you feel what you are saying,
this will help you adjust the emotional intensity degree of every word you
will use in your speech.

Reflecting on your words helps you tell the audience through your emotions
that you are part of their world. If you are addressing a concern like a
drought, you have to weigh the strength of the emotional impact your words
will make on those affected by the drought. Your words should be able to
make them emotionally comfortable and satisfied that you are standing with
them during this hour of need.

When we do a reflection of our words, it helps us continue talking while

motioning the emotional trigger of the audience. One is able to understand
if the mood of the audience has changed during the reflection and can
quickly umbrella the situation before it gets out of hand.

As much as you need to reflect on the feelings and emotions of what you
are speaking, you also need to reflect on the degree of intensity of these
emotions. Being emotional or reflecting on them is not bad, but is your
reflection on these emotions appropriate? This is a question you should ask
yourself while reflecting. Therefore, when you reflect on your words, you
are required to combine both the content and the feeling to truly get the
meaning of what you want to say.

Reflection of Words Before We Speak Is Based On

the Two Techniques Below;
Mirroring technique
This technique is very simple and does not take much of your time. It
involves one repeating keyword or the last words spoken during the
reflection. One has to point out the keywords in the speech and repeat them
to see the degree of intensity of emotions attached to the message. In as
much as mirroring is a good technique during reflection time, make sure
you do not overdo it because it will become irritating and cause a
distraction from the message.

Paraphrasing technique
This is where other words are used to replace the speaker’s words but the
meaning is maintained. Most people have formed the mind of what they
want to hear or write at a given time. It is advisable to keep away your ideas
during paraphrasing and do it without bias or judgment. Paraphrasing
should be non-directive.
Benefits of Watching the Degree of Intensity of the
Words
Since the degree of intensity of words determines the emotional reactions of
an audience, it is important to understand this and be able to remedy our
failure. Below are the benefits of doing so;

Reduce the risk of hurt

When we apply the right words with the right words to our speeches, the
risk of emotional hurt by the words is eliminated or reduced.  Stress,
confusion and many more mixed reactions arising from the degree of
intensity of the message will be elevated if not at all reduced.

Certainty
Words well chosen with the correct intensity have certainty that gives hope
to the emotionally deranged. Imagine giving a speech of help to the hunger-
stricken families somewhere in the world, your weight of words will show
the certainty in the speech and will restore hope to the victims.

Eliminates misinterpretation
One single word can change the entire message. The weight this word
carries sends a different message emotionally to the receiver. If we can be
able to choose our words well with the appropriate weight they deserve, we
will be able to eliminate the misinterpretation of the message.

Shows the attitude accorded

Attitude is a very important thing while using words. Your attitude defines
your habits which defines your behavior. The words you choose with their
respective weight shows or reveals your attitude to the audience. One is
able to understand or know that you are with them in whatever the issue and
you like being with them or not at all. Your attitude while addressing the
audience will drive the emotional harm or health to the mind of the
audience.

CONCLUSION
The emotional intensity of any message is determined or characterized by
the words we say. Words can change meaning because of the weight they
carry. You may want to pass a certain message across but due to the degree
of intensity of the words you are using the message will be distorted. It will
not be a clear message and it can be misquoted.
Each time you open your mouth to speak, put in mind the impact your
words will make on the audience. Is it a negative or positive impact? The
positivity or negativity of the words in your speech is brought about by the
weight the words hold. You have to be careful with some words for they
carry the weight that can cause more irreparable damage.

Words cannot be called back once spoken but a remedy can be applied to
ease the pain, hurt or ruin they caused. You have to put in mind that some
words are more disastrous than others because of the weight they cause. For
example, if you hear the word ‘’ death’’ and ‘’sick’’, what comes to your
mind first?  It is sadness. Both death and sick are saddening words but the
degree of intensity each word carry is different from each other. The word
death is more saddening than the word sick because of the weight accorded
to it. In death, there is no hope and in sickness, there is hope that he will be
well.

Therefore, the degree of intensity of any word is always formed by our

minds and then the mind attaches different emotions to the words. This is
simply notifying us that words come into reality when we ourselves define
reality. How we define ourselves in the mind is how our reality comes into
being.

Mark this, each time you speak, the audience filters the words that you have
used basing on their psycho-emotional state. During this filtering, they can
interpret the meaning of these words wrongly. That is why it is very
important for you to know that one single word spoken or written by you
can easily change the emotional intensity of a message.
 Chapter 13: Power of Words in Strengthening,
Encouraging and Boosting Confidence

The words we use also have power over our lives; Words help us improve
others-encourages and strengthens your self-esteem and that of others.
Words can make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others. The real
power in our lives is in the words we speak as much as thoughts impact
what we manifest. Our words confirm our most internal thoughts. The sub-
consciousness of any person is always awoken or represented by the words
the person speaks.

The words we speak to ourselves or to others are like a lamp that gives
light. This lamp lights your path so as to be able to see clearly the direction
you are heading to and be able to fulfill your goal and objectives. If we
allow well-lit paths that the words provide in our lives, this will transform
us into better humans that will be able to know the direction of life and
understand completely where we are supposed to head.

When you open up your mouth to speak or when you decide to write at any
given time, always put in mind that you are either going to encourage
yourself or pull yourself down, the speech you will make will define who
you are, also mind that you are going to encourage someone or hurt
someone by taking away what would have made him better. Make sure that
you always have something good to say.

Speaking good things are likely to encourage you or the person you are
talking to. When your words are good, they are likely to bring the best out
of you and out of your audience. You must also make sure you have the
knowledge of what you are talking about. Good knowledge of your facts or
ideas is able to instill confidence in you or your audience. If you have ever
known the answer in the class and then the teacher points to you to give out
the answer, you feel so confident when giving out your answer because you
are certain that it is the correct answer. This is the same with words. Have
full knowledge of what you are saying so that your words can encourage
you and the audience you are addressing.
Sometimes no matter how much you have tried to improve yourself and
others by encouraging them and strengthening their self-esteem you find
that your efforts hit a rock. Your efforts are just simply not fruitful at all and
this dampens you completely. There is always a way for everything. Even
the most strongly built walls have a loophole of bringing them down. Same
to your situation, there is a way that can make you be able to reach the
hearts and minds of people through the words you speak.

First, consider the ‘’If’s’ that makes life worthwhile

Life is worthwhile if you learn

Words shape our lives in one way or the other. This means we have to
always learn the words that can improve the self-esteem of others and
encourage them. If you do not know anything in life the best weapon to
know it is by leaning. If life is worthwhile while we learn, good
encouraging words can be obtained by learning too.

Life Is Worthwhile If We Learn From Our Own

Experience.
They say experience is the best teacher. Our experiences are defined by the
words we speak and these experiences will help you be able to encourage
someone and strengthen their self-esteem. The positive or negative
experiences in your life can be used as a weapon through your words to
encourage someone. If at a certain point in life you failed, your experience
about this failure can be used to encourage someone to pursue his or her
goals through the words you speak.

Life is worthwhile if we learn from others

Learning from others is the best way to understand something. Sometimes
you may learn something but later on find out that you do not the thing you
learned about, it is fine, but words of encouragement, strengthening words
can be learned from others. They could be motivational speakers or experts
in the fields. When you learn what others are saying to encourage people,
you will be able to encourage someone through your words too.
Life is worthwhile if we try
In life you do not give up, you do not stay wherever you are and wait for
your judgment. You must do something to improve your situation. This is
not any different from words. You cannot give up because your words are
not encouraging and no one seems to like everything that comes out of your
mouth. You must fight. Try again and again and again until you make it.
They say winners never quit, and if they quit, they have won. Therefore,
with words, for you to be able to strengthen someone or even yourself, try
as many times as possible.

Life is worthwhile when we are selective

If you want to go far in life, have goals. Select them one by one. Have
priorities and you will know what you want. In the case of words, it is the
same. If you want encouraging words, esteem strengthening words, be
selective. You cannot just go out there and say everything that pops up in
your mind. Choose what to say every time. Words are as if the lamp is
shown direction. If you cannot select them carefully, you might not just get
enough light to light your path.
The “Ifs’’ of life will help you improve and know how to use your words to
encourage others and even yourself. Each time we speak, we should always
put in mind that words once said they never are forgotten even if they can
be forgiven.  Sometimes we may not even want to say some words but our
tongues are like beasts that are constantly trying to get out their cages, it is
only that if we let some beasts out that they will cause grief to us and to
everyone else listening to us.

The tongue has no bones but it can break so many hearts including yours.
We should put in mind that each time we speak; one kind word can change
someone’s whole day or even life. There are other fragile minds that just
need encouragement and kindness. They need someone to utter kind words
to encourage them or uplift their self-esteem. As a speaker, your words
should be able to do this.  The echoes of kind words are longer and stronger.
They are soothing, encouraging and strengthening to anyone. They should
be kind enough to change someone’s life and days positively.

The words we say to people and to ourselves change our worlds and their
world completely. They are like seeds that do not just land anywhere but in
the hearts. We have to be careful what we planting by the words we say
because we might just one day eat the produce of what we planted. We have
seen political instabilities in countries, wars in those countries, the leaders
and citizens of those countries just need some words of encouragement,
words that will lift their confidence to keep on hoping for better, but if we
go there and plant different seeds, seeds that are not worthwhile, they will
grow in the hearts of those people and they will not only bring problems to
them but to you as well.

Always make sure that you do not mix your bad moods with your words.
Your bad moods will always influence your words negatively and this will
be discouraging to you and your audience. Your bad moods should always
be handled separately from your words because moods can be changed with
time but you will never get any chance to replace the bad words that you
say. Broken bones can always heal faster but wounds that words open will
never heal. They will be permanent in your heart and mind and might
continue discouraging someone as each day goes by.

If we want to under5stand the power of our thoughts, we, first, have to

understand the power of our words. If we understand what words can do to
the lives of others rather than encouraging them and strengthening their
self-esteem, we would simply decide to be silent forever when it comes to
anything that is negative. We always create our own weaknesses and
strengths in our thoughts and words. We always have a choice to replace the
negative with the positive when we talk to encourage and boost self-esteem.

How Your Words Can Affect Your Life

Words can encourage you, strengthen your self-esteem or discourage you.
When you say negative things like ‘’ I cannot, I am a loser, I am a total
failure, I will try’’, your subconscious interprets these words because our
subconscious interprets what it hears. In the end, our bodies and minds
follow the lead of leads. The words we utter act as direction to what we do.
To achieve confidence, influence, connection and other encouraging and
strengthening things, start with what you say to the audience each time you
stand up to give a speech. Speeches have powers; they start as words and in
the end, turns into deeds.
The words you use against yourself hold a lot of power. The power that will
give you confidence and the strength to move on or the power to make you
feel inadequate and feeble, the power to bring forth opportunities in your
life each time you say them or the power to take away those opportunities.

Using negative words in your life will hold you down and you will not be
able to rise beyond your reality. Just like a house, we live in words that are
the same as a house. The words you will speak to yourself is like your own
house. If you do not sweep or clean your house it will become so dirty that
no one will want to come near it. If you do not do anything about your
negative words, they will continue pressing you down that you will be lost
in them. Words like ‘never, am doomed’ will never give you an opportunity
to build your skills in anything.

The world looks at you and defines through the words that you use. Your
words are your own mirror that gives a reflection of who you are. When
you use negative words about yourself, it will be very hard for you to stand
up to your challenges and meet your goals. The negative words you say
about your self-drives in pessimism, fear, anxiety and so many other
dreadful things that in the end shapes your reality. When you use positive
words about yourself, this will help you be able to keep on fighting and
have a clear sight of your goals and what is required of you.

You should be able to develop positive thinking habits that will help you be
able to think positively about yourself. The habits that will help shape your
reality into positivity. Below are some habits that will help you be able to
embrace the goodness in you and lead to a positive strengthening of your
self-esteem.

Spend your time with positive people.

When you spend your time with negative people, their negativity is likely to
transfer itself to you. Words are learned by the repetitive strategy so if you
hang out with the negatively worded people, they will make you start
thinking negatively and you will give out negative words, which will not
encourage you. If you spend your time with the positive people, they could
be friends, family members, their positivity will transfer to you which will
fix your thinking and change the words that come out of your mouth from
the draining ones to the strengthening ones.
Be responsible for your behavior.
In life when you encounter problems and difficulties, stand up to them and
own them up. Do not go about whining and blaming people for what is
happening in your life. Accepting your responsibilities in the problems and
difficulties will help you learn from them and be able to prevent them in the
future. The experiences you go through while handling these problems are
the ones that will help you use the right words to encourage someone,
strengthen their self-esteem, and encourage yourself.

Help
Be a contributor to the community. Your contributions through words that
encourage are able to also shape your life positively. They will encourage
you and lift your self-esteem. If you have ever helped anyone and then
received that ‘’thank you’’ word, it elevated your esteem to a different level.
It makes you want more ‘’thank you’’ because you feel good. Helping gives
you a new view of the world and helps in your positive thinking.

You should read inspirational and positive materials

We have said that positivity or negativity is communicable. It spreads from
one person to another. When you read positive materials, you are more
likely to fix your thinking into positive thinking. You will be inspired by the
positivity of the materials and thus try to think in the same way as the
writers of the materials.  The materials will leave you more confident, more
motivated and more competent. The positivity influenced by the positive
and inspirational materials will help you use good words or positive words
about yourself.

Point out and replace the negative thoughts.

To be successful you must make sure that negative thoughts are not hanging
above your head like a dark cloud. If the negative thoughts are above, it
could rain any time which will not be good for you or your audience. Make
sure that you recognize all the negative thoughts and replace them with
positive thoughts. The positive thoughts will help build your self-esteem
and confidence.

Consider negativity consequences.

In life, everything we do has consequences. In every speech we make there
are consequences. All the words we use against or for ourselves have
consequences. Words bring about deeds, so you should think about the
consequence of every word. Is it going to encourage you or discourage you?
You should understand the consequences if you think negative about
yourself and if you think positive about yourself. You will realize that
negative thinking will bring a lot of harm to you. After knowing this, it is
better that you adjust your thinking band change from negativity to
positivity.

Take care of yourself.

Self-care will help you be able to think positively. Getting enough rest,
exercising, and eating well helps release and reduce stress. It lightens up
your moods and when your moods are good the words you think about
yourself are good too. The mental and physical health maintained it would
help you think positively about yourself.

Have your own daily gratitude list

Keeping a record of your accomplishments daily will keep your mind
positive. It will encourage you to accomplish more good things and this
imparts positivity in your words and deeds. This gives you more confidence
and encouragement to forge ahead.

Recall your best experiences

By remembering your happy past, it gives you hope and encouragement
when talking about yourself or when judging yourself. Your happy past will
flashlight of positivity into your thinking and you will realize that things are
not as bad as you think. It will make you realize that you can do anything
you want to do. You can be able to say the right words about yourself as
you want.

Do what you like

Doing what you like gives you a lot of positivity. The words you will use
about yourself will be filled with positivity because this is something you
really like. It is just like forcing your child to do something they do not like.
They will feel hated, they will useless, they will feel hopeless unlike when
the child himself decides to do their own things. They will feel so happy
and even see themselves as heroes. They will speak positively about
themselves and this helps shape their life around themselves and around
others.

Controlling your emotions

This is something that most people are not able to master. When you control
your emotions, you will be able to measure what you say about you. If you
are angry and mood, this does not mean that you are a failure, it only means
that you are feeling bad and you will come out of it. If you let, your
emotions define your words, your words will define you and the image you
will see in the mirror of words will break you more than encourage you.

The habits above will help you think positively about yourself and in the
end, will make your words encourage you and strengthen yourself-esteem.
The words that we say can also be of much importance to others by
encouraging them and strengthening or improving their confidence in
whatever they do. To harness the power of the words we speak to others, we
should:

Express gratitude.
Gratitude helps change everything. A magic word makes someone feel
complimented, encouraged and confident enough to do something else for
you. When you show gratitude through your words to someone, you are
improving the thinking of this person and the confidence that he has. He
will have the courage to do better than harm.

Offer positivity
Instead of giving a wrong compliment like ‘’you look like a monkey with
that makeup’’, offer another positive word. You can simply say, ‘’please let
me redo your makeup, this one does not suit you well’’. All the statements
hold the same meaning, but the words in the first statement are negative and
damaging. They are discouraging and may make someone hate themselves
forever, while the words in the second statement are encouraging, they
strengthen someone’s confidence and makes them feel that a change of the
makeup is better. The words maintain positivity, which is good.
Do not participate in negativity.
When you participate in negativity, the words that will come out of your
mouth will be negative and their aim will be to disco rage, cause stress and
other emotional tortures. These words will drain someone of confidence and
they will not want to listen to you again or if they do, they will feel lost and
stuck in their own realities that will make their lives useless.
Be constructive
Construct something that will help strengthen someone’s self-esteem and
not bring it down. Let your words be constructive in a way that they will
encourage someone and not discourage them. Words have more power than
the most fearful bombs so you have to be very careful and constructive
while using them to be able to achieve your goals of encouragement.

You Should Offer Compliments to Others

Your words of compliments encourage people. Any compliment offered to
drive all the way to the mind and to the heart. When someone is
complimented, his confidence kicks in and he is able to positively do other
good things that will shape his life the life of others. Each time you offer a
compliment by your words, just know that you are touching hearts and
mind minds of more than just the audience. As much as a bad word is like a
wildfire, a good word lasts and builds. On a morning at the office, just
complimenting someone’s good dressing is enough to put a smile on the
face of that person. Maybe that person had a rough night or morning, but
you have been able to encourage him to push through the day by
complimenting him. Your compliment to him is like holding his hand when
he was stuck, pulling him up and telling him, you can do it.
Summarily, the words we speak to ourselves and others either encourage us
or discourages us. We can always increase or decrease our own happiness
by choosing to speak the right words to ourselves. We can upset others or
ourselves by also speaking unnecessarily about things that hurt us or have
hurt us.

When you speak optimism to yourself or another person, optimism follows,

you band him or her. If you speak negative things, negativity follows you.
The interpretation of our reality is in our words, so if you use your words
without knowing the impact, they will create a reality that you may not like
or others may not like and will end up bringing harm.

Habits that help your positive thinking helps you get the right words to use.
Words that boost confidence, words that strengthen the self-esteem of
others, words that encourage others are all gotten from the habits we have.
When our habits portray a lot of negativity, our words will mostly be
negative, positive habits will give positive encouraging words.

Words may seem so small and tinny but what they do in our lives is
wondrous, so be careful when speaking, think first before you speak. You
might be discouraging rather than encouraging.
Chapter 14: Words Shape the Beliefs, Values, and
Destiny of a Person

Language is something we learn from the environment in which we live and

varies according to location, culture, and religion.
The words we use to interpret our reality. This means our reality is what
constitutes our beliefs, our values, and our destiny. Words used when
speaking form, a language pattern, which is a means of communication.
The language we speak influences how we see the world. How we look at
the world, how we see things is the manifestation of the words that we use
in our languages. The principle of linguistic relativity states that the
language people use to describe or discuss the world directly influences the
way people think about the world. Every time we use words, we have to be
careful because they hold our destinies and not just that but words can hurt
just as much as any physical pain inflicted on you by someone.

A word that you use in your daily life is able to shape the way you think or
the way you judge life. The words can shape your values. The values of a
person are motivated by actions or attitudes. The words you use are also
motivated by actions or attitudes. The actions you take when speaking are
very important in your speech. If you feel that you have gone wrong or your
words have been misquoted, it is better to take an action and own up the
responsibility of clearing up the confusion.

The values we uphold in life are always described by the words we use.
Good values that bring about positivity and prosperity in people’s lives are
shaped by the words we say or write. If we write or speak positivity, that
will be a stepping stone of our values. The negativity in the values is also
shaped by the words we speak. If you speak negativity, you are planting it
and anything that is planted where there are favoring conditions must grow.
The negativity will grow and shape our values in that manner. Our attitude
as a value contributes to everything in our lives.

The attitude we develop will always come from the words we say to
ourselves or the words that we are told by others. Since the words said are
an expression of our realities, attitude as a value is shaped by this world and
it either contributes negatively or positively to our realities.  The attitude
value that the shape of the word is able to shape our destinies. One's
destinies can be determined by the attitude he has. If words shape values,
those values will help the words shape our destinies.

The words and language we use to describe our experiences whether bad or
good, holds a lot of power in shaping our view of the world. The words we
use help us express our values and our ideas. They help us be able to refer
to our attitudes and they end up shaping our behaviors. When our behaviors
are shaped, our beliefs are shaped too by these very words. For example,
when you tell your child every day that he is so dumb and failure, each time
he sits he will remember these words and he will behave in a dump way and
also in a way that failures behave. You will find that this child will believe
within no time that he is not good at anything because you as a parent told
him so. He will not be able to accomplish anything because he believes that
he does not know anything and he will fail because he is a failure.

The greater good of something that you believe in is always shaped by the
words you tell yourself and believe. Our own destinies are determined or
shaped by our very own words. Since words interpret our realities, our
realities can interpret our destinies. What we think of or do is all because of
words. When we want to do something, we cannot do that thing without
using words to describe or interpret what we want to do. If we want to
communicate to our audience more effectively, we must use words. Even
graphical communications will need words to be well understood.

What other think of you can only be described through words?  If others
think that you are good, intelligent, beautiful, all these can only be done
through words. Look at the sign language, with all the beauty it holds, if
you know sign language and someone tells you in sign language that you
are beautiful, it won’t feel as good as when someone used words to describe
how beautiful you are. You will want to hear every single detail of how
beautiful you are and this cannot be achieved in any other means rather than
in words.

What we tell ourselves, we do so through words. When we talk to

ourselves, whether negatively or positively we are only able to do so
through the words we use. If you want to tell yourself that you are a
conqueror, you are only able to do that through words. The word conquer is
a word that will help you reach your destiny. It shapes the destiny you will
go through your thinking.

How we remember those that we loved so much and died or left us can only
be done through words. Our experiences, grievances, fears, anxiety, pain is
only achieved through words. Someone is able to know that you are
grieving or you are happy through words. Your way of speaking is
expressed by the words, which interpret the reality of the moment.

How we explain our future, we are only able to so by use of the words. Our
futures are our destinies. These destinies are shaped by the words we speak.
When explaining to someone how you want to settle in a certain country in
the future, how you want to buy a certain model of a car within a certain
time, all these are done through words. Nobody will understand how your
future is planned if you simply keep quiet and look at them, It is either you
write it down or speak it out from your mouth for one to know, and all these
will be done by the use of words.

We imagine the perfection of things and use our words to explain this
perfection. We bring it out and so lively that it is the only reality we have
and see. When someone says she carries the epitome of beauty. The word
epitome is the perfect word, but when the words epitome beauty falls in
your ears than in your mind, you will see a reality in the phrase and you will
make it real.

How we describe our feelings, how we make someone smile, how we speak
to our souls to heal, how we describe our dreams, all these and many others
must have words attached to them so that they can make sense and bring
upon reality. Do you think anything would have existed if words did not
exist at all? No. Nothing will exist without words. Destinies will not be
shared without words. Values will not be shaped without words and cultures
will not even dare exist without the words. The words are the only
intervention that gives us humans our sense of immortality. Words are the
only powerful tools in human life that will determine your existence and
destiny.
Language patterns are formed by words we speak. It is like a mother giving
birth to a child. The words are the mother and the language is the child.
There are various languages that people speak around the globe. There are
different language variations and these languages can influence the beliefs,
behaviors, values, thinking, and culture of people. The language variation is
the characteristic of the language. There are so many ways of saying some
things in different ways but maintaining the meaning of the things you are
talking about. Some things like pronunciation in languages can vary, word
choices can vary and grammar too can vary but the meanings of the words
are maintained.
Languages can be learned from different environments, which we live in
but they can vary according to location, culture, and religion.

The Causes of Difference in languages

Settlement patterns
Where we settle or live determines the language we speak.  The density of
the population will determine the language we speak. There is a saying that
says when you go to roam, you do what the Romans do. It is not by force
you speak the language of someone else, but you will find yourself
speaking the language the majority of the people are speaking for ease of
communication. For example, the African Americans in Chicago, if you
listen to their English language are different from the other Americans'
English. They speak like they are singing without minding punctuations at
all. Their sentences are sometimes longer than the time you can use to hold
your breath. This does not mean their language changes the meanings of a
word, it only means their pronunciations and grammar is different but the
meaning of the words is maintained.  Any person that goes to live in
Chicago, within no time will be speaking this type of English so that he can
be able to communicate easily and fit in. This kind of language is brought
about by the settlement patterns.

The Migration routes

When people migrate from one place to another, a boundary of the dialect is
developed and set. No other language crosses the boundary to come in. The
set boundaries are to enable maintain the language the people speaking it
from vanishing or mixing with another language that they cannot
understand.
Language contact
This happens when during migration, people interact with different other
peoples with different languages and in the process, they borrow
vocabularies, pronunciation, and grammar or syntax from their languages.
As a result, a language is formed due to language contact.

Geographical factors
Some languages come about because of the geography of the location of the
people. Rivers, lakes, and mountains affect the movement of people hence
they end up settling for one language that makes sense to all of them since
the geographical factors tend to isolate them from other speakers. For
example, in Africa, there is a group of people that were divided by the
mountains and they called themselves the highland nilotes. All the highland
nilotes speak one language in a country called Kenya in the eastern part of
Africa from the other group of nilotes, the plain nilotes, and the river lake
nilotes because they were separated from other speakers and could only
master one language. Therefore, geographical factors cause differences in
the language.

The region and occupation of people

The people in rural areas are more likely to speak a language that is
outdated than the people living in urban areas. The people in the urban
areas are exposed to the diversity of so many other languages while the
people of the rural area only have one language that they can communicate
with. This makes it a more reason of language variation.

The linguistic process

The new developments and improvement in the pronunciation and
simplification of the grammar of languages give language a difference and
these results in the difference in the language people speak. When the
grammar is the change for simplification purposes, it changes how the
words sound even though the meaning is maintained. For example, the
pronunciation of the words ‘’chips and fries’’ is different, even the grammar
in it is different but the meaning is the same. These are Irish potatoes
chopped and deep-fried in the cooking oil to give them a crunchy taste
when you eat them. The development of the word chips brought about fries,
and that contributed to the difference in the language.

Group -reference
Different groups of people speak different languages. Groups could be an
ethnic group, a nation, age gender and even the origin of the ancestors.
Different ethnic groups speak different languages that make them
understand each other. Different nations have national languages or
language that is different or might be same as another nation that they share
some things. Age groups and age sets have their own languages. Every age
has its own language. To some ages, languages are like fashions, they speak
a certain language only during that age bracket but when they move to
another age, they drop the language and move along with the one in the age
bracket they have moved in.

Each human gender has its own language just like there is grammatical
gender. A certain gender is described by the language it uses or is used
against them. For example, the word ‘’bitch’’ is an irritating word yes, it is
normally used to refer to females provocatively. At no time whatsoever can
this word be used to mean a man. While the word ”men’’, is mostly used by
African Americans to mean friend or male friend. A sentence, ‘’I have
missed you, men’’. This sentence means that he has missed his friend. The
word men can never be used to refer to a woman at any time.

Social class
The cause of the difference in languages can be due to the difference in the
social class. Different social classes speak different languages that reflect
the education of the speakers and their level of income. A class of lawyers
will speak their own language that they can understand as well as a group of
doctors can speak their own language that is understandable to them only
during their talks. Therefore, the difference in the social class is a cause of
the difference in the languages.

Language and Culture

The values, beliefs, attitudes and behavioral conventions shared by a certain
or specific group are what we call culture. Language and culture share a big
connection. The patterns in the languages we speak give culture disposition
and priorities. We cannot interact with another language without interacting
with its culture. When you learn a new language, it is not all about learning
its alphabets, grammar or word arrangement, it goes deeper this. You have
to learn the specific society’s customs and culture.

There are different cultures that have more words that mean one word.
Aboriginal groups like the Pormpuraaw on the western edge of Cape York
in Australia have different words that mean one word. They do not use
words like left, right or center. They rely on obsolete directions for space.
They keep track of where they are going or coming from or are settled even
in the most unfamiliar places. The Pormpuraaw uses words like east, west,
south, and north. Quite confusing, right? Yea it is. They maintain the
obsoleteness for space. If you asked a person from this group, where the
remote controller of the television is, he will answer you by using the
direction. His answer could be, ‘’the remote is on your southwest’’.

Different languages spoken by different people around the world changes

how people interact with each other. There are people that are bilingual and
it is believed that their thinking is different especially when they switch
from one language to another. Languages just like their parent words are
learned and when trying to learn a language, always bear in mind that it is
very important that the culture from which you are learning that language
be referenced.

When learning the languages in different cultures you will need

paralanguage. Paralanguage will help transmit messages in different
languages because human communication is very complicated. When you
are raised in a certain society, you will automatically learn about the tones,
the gestures, the glances and other communication tools that will help you
put emphasis on what you are putting across.

Observation and imitating people that are close to you mostly learn these
communication strategies of culture. They could be close relatives and
family members then, later on, you will start learning from people that are
away from your close relative. The immigrants are more likely to get
difficulty in picking languages in the places they have moved to than their
little children because;
The language humans speak is instinctive. Every language spoken in any
culture has instincts attached to it. The older immigrants have their instincts
attached to their languages from their cultures and it is very hard for them
to learn a new language, unlike their children.

The language we speak is an adaptation of where we come from and

evolutional. Languages just like cultures evolve. The mature immigrant’s
languages already evolved through their culture that is why they are finding
it difficult to master the new language unlike their little children, their
language is still evolving and can pick any language during their evolution
of languages.

Image: words destroy self and others

The languages we speak are characteristics of science and human nature

should be understood first. Understanding your nature includes
understanding your culture. The immigrants will find it hard to learn the
language faster because it is not in their culture. The nature of the language
is different from what they know; unlike the children who will simply adapt
to nature and are able to learn the language very fast.

The language we speak was developed together by the culture. These two
being intertwined they influenced each other. Alfred L Kroeber, a cultural
anthropologist said that ‘’culture started when speech was available and
from that beginning, the enrichment of either one led to the other to develop
much further. This means without language, culture would not be there and
also, culture is the consequence of the interactions of every human being
and the acts of the humans' communication are just their cultural
manifestations within a specific community. All the set attributes of any
culture are expressed through the language.

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

The different religions in the world just like languages evolve. The
language spoken in different religions differs from each other. When you
must acquire religion, then it involves learning some new vocabulary and
grammar. For example, some religions like the Quakers use the word
‘’thee’’ and other Christians use the words like to believe ‘’on ‘’Jesus
instead of to believe’’ in ‘’Jesus such language patterns have psychological
effects on the speaker which in the end limits his thoughts.

In religions, there are different sacred languages that are used. For instance,
Islam used Arabic, the Hebrews uses Judaism, and Buddhism uses Pali.
Different languages are accorded to every different religion basing on their
beliefs and values. The languages used by these religions have seen ages.
They are archaic and remote but their remoteness is a symbol of strength
and not weakness. When anyone tries to bring these remote languages up to
date, it will result in the loss of faith.

The universal features in different religions provide the grammatical

similarities among the languages. These results in the languages in the
religions become parallel. In Christianity, there is the religion is parallel in
that there are Catholicism and Protestantism. The Catholics are moiré
devoted to the Virgin Mary and feel that Protestants are not, which is true,
there is no single devotion to Mary in the protests because they only believe
she was a vessel and devotion is accorded to her.

In Buddhism, there is a difference between Mahayana and Theravada.

Theravada is unemotional while Mahayana is not. The Muslims, there are
differences in the tones of Sunni and Shia.

Conclusively, the words that we speak to ourselves and to other people can
always shape beliefs, values cultures or destinies. One's value is determined
by the words he puts in in his mind. Your destiny is also determined by
words. What you say, what you think, how you express your experiences,
how you plan your future is all done by the words. Our beliefs and cultures
are determined by our words and we should always be careful when using
words because they can shape you the way they are being used.

We have looked at languages. It is important to understand that languages

derive from words. The language patterns we use come from the words we
utter. Different cultures and religions uphold different languages hence
language variation. The language variations are caused by a variety of
things discussed above. The languages we speak can be learned and the
mastery of any language depends on the age of a person. Children are more
likely to master languages faster than older people are.

Languages we use to influence different, religions, cultures, beliefs, values

like attitude, behavior and even the thinking of a person. The effects of
language on a person’s attitude show how the person views the world. The
words used in languages are able to reference the attitude of someone and
shape the behavior of that person.
 Chapter 15: Conversation: Developing Empathy
by Improving Conversational Skills

Just about everyone engages in various forms of communication on a day-

to-day basis. One of the most common forms of communication is through
conversation. Conversation can be face to face in which the person you are
able to see the person you are talking to. Similarly, conversation might also
be in the form of online conversation whereby you talk to another person
through various digital platforms. Despite the prevalence of conversation as
a preferred mode of communication, you might end up feeling
misunderstood in a conversation you are having with someone else.
Similarly, the people you talk to might also feel the same way about you.
This feeling can be attributed to a lack of empathetic communication.

Empathetic communication can be defined as communication that seeks to

enhance empathy through conversation. Empathy in this context refers to
your ability to adequately understand other people, their point of views and
the idea that they are trying to put across. Ultimately, empathetic
communication seeks to make it much easier for you to really understand
what the person next to you is saying. You, therefore, end up being a good
communicator by doing so.

Learn to listen

There are several ways through which you can develop empathy by
enhancing your conversation skills with one such approach being improved
listening. Many people are very good at talking but quite poor when it
comes to listening. You might find that you always want to insist on having
your say in a conversation but at the same time, you are not really interested
in what others have to say. This is because you are a poor listener. Similarly,
it is also common to appear to be listening to someone else but you are not
really listening to them. If you cannot really listen to someone, then you
might not be able to know exactly how they feel about the issue at hand and
where exactly they are coming from.
Being a good listener is a great conversational skill that can enhance deeper
understanding hence empathy. First and foremost, you will be able to hear
everything that the other person has to say and their position on an issue.
Enhanced listening can also enable you take notice of important aspects
such as the tone of voice of the person you are having a conversation with.
The tone of voice can tell you a lot about how exactly the other person feels
about an issue. For instance, someone might agree to something but with a
resigned tone of voice. Such a person might, therefore, agree to your idea
because they feel obliged to do so. Ultimately, learning to listen more will
significantly enhance your conversation skills and make you more
empathetic towards others.

Do not be a selective listener

When it comes to listening, there are people who engage in what is referred
to as selective listening. Selective listening refers to an activity in which
you mainly end up choosing what you want to hear and not listening to
everything that the other person has to say. Selective listening can be
attributed to some inherent fears that a person might have regarding a
particular topic and thus, they might not be open to the idea of openly
discussing such a topic. Selective listening is a major hindrance when it
comes to empathetic communication since you do not get to listen to
everything that the other person has to say. The overall implication is that
you will not be able to fully understand the concerns, the fears and the
perspective that the other person has on an issue.
On the contrary, when you are able to do away with selective listening in
your conversations, you will be in a better position to understand another
person. You will be able to really put yourself in their position, appreciate
their concerns, fears, life goals and objectives. This will improve your
overall interaction with them.

Do not be prejudiced

Prejudice refers to beliefs that you might be having regarding other people
or groups of people. For instance, that all Muslims are intolerant. Prejudices
are most often than not regarded as pure misconceptions and they can
significantly distort empathetic communication. When you are engaged in a
conversation with other people and you have already made up your mind
who they are, then you might not be able to see things from their
perspective. They will, therefore, end up feeling misunderstood thus
negating the very essence of empathetic communication.

Eliminating various forms of prejudice is a vital conversation skill that can

go a long way in improving your capacity to empathize with others. You
will not allow any false beliefs or misconceptions inform on your opinion
of other people. Instead, you will listen to the, and come up with an
informed opinion about who they are and what their aspirations might be.
Such people will end up feeling that you have understood them and this will
make you an empathetic communicator.

Importance of empathetic communication

You might have gone through all the aforementioned ways of improving
your empathetic conversation skills but still wondering, what is the
importance of empathetic communication? First and foremost, empathetic
conversational skills improve your understanding of the person you are
having a conversation with. A good understanding of other people is very
important when it comes to your day-to-day interaction with them. This is
because you will be able to get to know their sensitivities and thus have a
good idea of what to say and what not to say while interacting with them.

Secondly, empathetic conversation and communication, in general, can also

make you a much better person. You will be able to be a better friend,
colleague or even spouse when you constantly engage in empathetic
conversation. This is because; enhanced understanding of other people will
make you know their needs and aspirations in life. You will thus be in better
position to contribute in your little way towards the realization of such
needs and aspirations hence making you a better human being.

Connection with other people is an inherent human need. No one wants to

lead a lonely life but this might happen if you cannot connect with others.
Empathetic conversation will enable you to connect very well with the
people around you and you will end up making friends from all walks of
life. This implies that your life will generally be enhanced since other
people will be more than willing to be around you and interact with you on
a daily basis since they feel that you are able to really connect with them.
How to go about developing empathetic conversation

It is very important to know how to go about developing empathetic

conversation skills. Generally, you should start with the process by
enhancing the conversation that you have with those around you.  It is
important to connect well with those around you before you can extend the
same to others. Start by listening more to your family members, your
friends, and colleagues at work. Workplaces are more diverse than ever
nowadays and this implies that you should not be influenced by any
prejudices about some of your colleagues at work and their socio-cultural
backgrounds.  By doing so, you will be able to create a better pool of inner
circle members who you can easily connect with.

In addition to improving the conversations that you have with those close to
you, it is also important to improve the same when it comes to other people
including strangers and groups. Try not to judge a person when you first
encounter them. In case, you are interacting with a group of people from a
specific community say Asians or Arabs, try not to allow any prejudices to
crop into your mind while interacting with them. This is because; such
prejudice will undermine your perception of them hence undermining the
whole conversational process.  All in all, improved empathetic
communication at the communal level will make you a better member of
society. This distinction can also come in handy in case you try to ascend to
any leadership role in the community since many people would be willing
to have people in authority who they can easily connect with.

To sum it all up, empathetic conversation refers to a conversation in which

one is able to really understand the other person. There are various ways
through which you can develop this essential conversation skills and it
includes listening more to other people and what it is that they are saying.
Furthermore, you should avoid selective listening since you will not be able
to fully understand the perspective of the other person if you do this.  As an
empathetic communicator, you should also shun away from prejudice since
they will undermine your capacity to understand others. Ultimately, as an
empathetic communicator, you will be able to better understand others,
attract other people into your life and become a better person. Finally, in
order to develop your empathetic communication skills, you should first
and foremost start with those around you before moving onto strangers and
larger groups of people.
 Chapter 16: Be Interesting: Develop the Skills Of
Great Successful People

Each and every person wants to be successful at one point or the other in
their lives. However, many people do not simply know how to go about
attaining success. There are many drags to riches stories out there but some
of them fail to capture the essence of what one needs in order to be
successful. Of course, there are the obvious things that many successful
people would be more than willing to point out including the fact that you
should be a hard-working individual, stay focused on your dreams, letting
your money work for you among others. But the truth of the matter is, your
personality can go a long way in making you a success story. Simply put,
the way other people perceive you can make or break your dreams. This is
because; it is the people around you who will be the driving force towards
your success. For instance, if you are businessman, your customers will be
the key to your success. If you are a lawyer, accountant or real estate agent,
your clients will be the key to your success.

One of the ways through which you can enhance your chances of attaining
success is simply by being interesting. When you are an interesting person,
other people would be more than willing to listen to and literally, buy into
your ideas. At this point you are probably asking yourself; how do I go
about being an interesting person? Do not worry, the next few paragraphs
will be dedicated to answering that question.

Make others feel like they know you

We are unique in one way or the other and this implies that we all have the
potential to be interesting. The main mistake is that many people make is
fear letting other people know them since they think they will be misjudged.
However, in order for people to find you interesting, you have to make them
feel like they really know you. Obviously, you should not be an open book
and reveal all your dirty little secrets to the whole world. Instead, you
should allow others to know something or even several things about you
that portray you in a positive light.
One of the most reliable ways that has worked for many successful people
is by sharing an interesting story about yourself. The story should capture
the essence of some of the values that you espouse such as hard work,
resilience and even your love for humanity. For instance, you can say
something about how you were brought up in a poor background where you
lacked access to a square meal day in row but still managed to reach where
you are.  Having a background story about yourself and one that is actually
interesting will make other people find you interesting and willing to be
around you and work with you. However, as much as you need to make the
story interesting, you should always avoid giving in to the temptation of
lying. With all the technology around, one can easily dig into your past and
if they find out that you are a liar, then you can kiss goodbye any dreams
you ever had of being successful.

Have several interesting stories about other people

Everyone loves a story. There are millions of interesting positive stories out
there that might not necessarily be in the public domain. In addition to
telling other people an interesting background story about yourself, you can
also make a habit of sharing the stories of other people. Find one that you
know will captivate the attention of others and one that has not been
popularly shared in the public domain. This is because not many people will
have the time and patience for a story that they already know.

Just like is the case with your background story, the story that you select
should one that seeks to promote values that you want to be identified with.
Sharing interesting stories about others will make you interesting as well.
This will make it easy for you to attract the attention of other people, sell
your ideas to them and even easily convince them to buy into your ideas.

Develop new skills

Having a set of skills especially those that people might not ordinarily
associate you with can go a long way in making you more interesting. For
instance, you might be the manager of a company but one day, you reveal
your high-level culinary skills during a team-building retreat. Your
colleagues at work will really find this interesting and they might even be
willing to invest their time and money in developing similar skills.
Furthermore, having a set of skills that are relevant makes you a reliable
person who others to those around you. Skills such as plumbing, web
design and even culinary skills will make you the go-to-guy with respect to
your colleges, neighbors and family members. Once people are willing to
rely on you for solutions and pay you for your time, you will be on your
way to becoming a successful human being.

Be open-minded

One way of driving other people away from you is by being a closed-
minded kind of person. When you are not open to hearing the opinion of
other people and their perspectives on things, then they are most likely to
avoid your company since they will not find you interesting enough. On the
contrary, when you are an open-minded individual, who is genuinely
interested what others have to say, other people will find you interesting and
will be willing to be around you and also listen to what you have to say.

Be curious about others

In order to be an interesting person, you must not be self-absorbed. People

will find you more attractive if you are curious about their lives. To this
end, you should always ask people personal questions that will allow them
to tell you more about who they are for example, where they live, their
hobbies and their views on certain issues such as religion. If you are able to
do this, then you will be a much more interesting person by making people
around you feel noticed and appreciated.

Try not to appear to be a know it all

No one likes a person who appears to know everything. People usually

prefer the company of someone who is able keen to learn something or two
from them. Even if you are the most learned person with several PHDs, the
fact of the matter is that you cannot know everything. Even when you are
interacting with people who are seemingly not at your status in life, you
should always go out of your way to learn something or two from them. So
as much as it is important to talk and share your stories, it is equally
important to shut up and listen to others as they tell you something that you
probably might not know.
Develop a sense of humor

Ultimately, it is almost impossible to be considered an interesting person if

you have close to zero sense of humor. People will find you interesting if
you are able to appreciate the lighter side of life from time to time. For
instance, in case someone cracks a joke and you find it funny; do not
hesitate to laugh out loud. But you should also be genuine in your quest to
establish a sense of humor, there is nothing more annoying than a fake
laugh.

Spend time with people who are interesting

It is very easy to become interesting by spending time with people who are
also equally interested. This is because, even if you are not that interesting,
the attribute might rub off on you and you might end up becoming a more
interesting person in no time. For instance, hang around people who have
an optimistic outlook in life, people who are open-minded and people who
have a high sense of humor.

All in all, one of the simplest approaches to becoming successful is by

making you an interesting person. When people find you interesting, they
will be willing to associate with you and even go a step further and invest in
you. Several things you can do in order to make you an interesting person
including making other people feel like they know you, sharing interesting
stories, develop new skills, be open-minded, be curious about other people
and even spend more time in the company of other interesting people. If
you are able to implement all these suggestions in your day-to-day life, then
you will have commenced your journey to becoming a much more
interesting person and this will significantly enhance your chances of
success in life.

It is also equally important to remember that success does not necessarily

mean financial success, but you can also attain success in other areas by
applying some of the aforementioned strategies. For instance, you can
improve your relationships with your friends, family members and
significant other and all these are good examples of success in life.
 Chapter 17: The Power of Metaphor

Language is one of the most reliable tools for communicating. Language is

particularly vital when it comes to literal communication whereby what is
said is what is actually meant. However, there are additional features of
language that seek to make it more interesting with one such feature being
metaphors. A metaphor is essentially a figure of speech in which the words
are used to infer indirect connotations with something else.  The metaphor
thus renders deeper meaning to language and serves to make it quite
beautiful.

One of the reasons why metaphors are highly preferred is that they create
empathy and harmony.  For instance, standing in someone else’s shoes is a
metaphor that seeks to create harmony in society. The literal meaning is to
try to relate to someone else’s situation. When it comes to metaphors and
language use, there are those that are regarded to be quite common in terms
of usage. Similarly, there are other metaphors that are also not very popular
and it is generally best to avoid them. This article will analyze the role of
metaphors in everyday language use and as well as highlighting the most
commonly used metaphors and those, that should be avoided.

Metaphors in communication and empathy creation

Clear communication is vital when it comes to your capacity to empathize
and understand the situation that another person is going through.
Metaphors make it possible to use linguistic tools to enhance the overall
clarity of communication. By using these tools, one is able to clearly
demonstrate some of the challenges that a person can be going through
because of their status or position in society. For instance, ‘a black sheep’ is
a metaphor that can be sued to denote a person who is alone in terms of
their difference from the rest. The metaphor is quite strong and can be used
to elicit empathy since one can relate to this scenario in which you are in a
group of people but you are singled out for being different.

Foster understanding
Metaphors can also be used to foster understanding and harmony. There
might be various situations that at first glance might seem confusing.
However, a good metaphor might render deeper meaning to them thus
enhancing understanding. For instance, someone might be faced with a
seemingly harsh destiny, for instance, a death row inmate or life sentence
convict. At first glance, it seems quite harsh when one is faced with the
prospect of imminent death or having to spend the rest of their lives in a
confined room. However, an appropriate metaphor such as one who lives by
the sword must die by it. This very strong metaphor simply means choices
have consequences that are related to them.

Metaphors in an expression of emotion

Metaphors can also be used in the expression of human emotion. Human
emotion refers to strong feelings that are times difficult to capture using
mere words. For instance, you can say someone is annoyed but this might
leave one hanging. One might be left asking themselves questions such as
how much annoyed was he? A simple word might, therefore, fail to fully
capture the range or extent of the human emotion in question. For this
reason, metaphors can also come in handy in explaining the extent of
human emotion thus making one to clearly appreciate the nature of the
situation. For instance, a good example would be to say someone is on
cloud nine. In essence, this is not a practical expression since to put
someone in a cloud and specify the number of the cloud is impossible. But
nonetheless, this metaphor does a lot in terms of capturing and conveying
exactly how the person must have felt. To be in cloud number nine refers to
someone being extremely happy and therefore the level of happiness could
be quite high this is why they are literally being compared to someone who
is up there in the highest cloud possible.

Popular Metaphors and Their Usage

Inspirational metaphors
These are metaphors that seek to inspire others. Inspirational metaphors
make one yearn for more in terms of pursuing opportunities and
overcoming challenges in life. A person is considered an inspiration to
others if they are able to do something that is extra-ordinary. This is
because; people will only look up to other people who have been able to
rise above their expectations of society.
He is a shining star
This metaphor refers to someone who has performed exceedingly well in a
certain area.  A star is considered one of the most attractive heavenly bodies
that are capable of standing out from the rest. This is considered a very
popular metaphor in everyday language use. It is an expression that denotes
excellence and it is also used to encourage people to work extra hard in
whatever it is that they do in life. A person who is described as a shining
star is therefore considered someone to be admired by others and looked up
to as a good example to the rest.

The world is a stage and all people are nothing but players
Sometimes, metaphors can be used to enhance understanding of a
phenomenon. These are things that are ordinarily beyond human
understanding but they can be explained away using these unique language
tools. For instance, ‘the world is stage and all people are merely players’ is
a metaphor by renowned writer William Shakespeare. The world or global
society as we know it today is perhaps one of the most complex eco-
systems to ever exist.  No amount of words can effectively define the world,
which comprises of millions of living organisms, physical features, and
synthetic artifacts. To this end, the author used a simple but effective
metaphor to describe the world as a stage which is a description that
adequately covers the world and everything that is in it. In this context, the
metaphor uses a very simple definition to describe a very complex subject
and thus makes it easy for just about anyone to understand what it is being
described.

To be a high flyer
A high flyer is a metaphor that describes a high potential individual. This is
someone who is likely to enjoy an elevated status in society on account of
their academic or corporate achievements. For this reason, a high flyer is
usually seen as someone who can go beyond the skies and realize goals and
objectives that might be out of reach for an otherwise normal person in
society.

Empathy – To be in another person’s shoe

Various metaphors can also be used to relate to the manner in which another
person might be feeling. As earlier stated, metaphors can also be used to
elicit the feelings of empathy and compassion towards others. It is
important for anyone to have a good understanding of some of the issues
that affect other people in order to arrive at a common ground.  To be in
another person’s shoes is a metaphor that enhances empathy and seeks to
encourage people to have an open mind and see things from the perspective
of others.

Lifestyle metaphors
People are unique and this uniqueness extends to the lifestyles they choose
to lead. Lifestyle metaphors appreciate present the uniqueness of other
people while at the same time highlighting some of the challenges that they
might be facing.

Y ou are nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time

Some of the most popular metaphors owe their status to the popularity of
the people who first came up with these figures of speech. Popular culture
is a term that refers to a system of organizing society around icons that act
as trendsetters. Popular culture also lends itself to metaphors whereby some
of the metaphors in use today are considered part and parcel of popular
culture. One such metaphor is ‘nothing the hound dog, crying all the time’.
This metaphor is actually a title to a song by Elvis Presley, considered one
of the most successful musicians of all time. The metaphor is used to
describe a person who comes out as needy and a handful to deal with. Such
a person, therefore, needs a lot of attention and this might a toll on anyone
associated with them.

He is a couch potato
A couch potato is also another metaphor that has a negative connotation.
Generally, this metaphor refers to a person who is regarded as lazy. A couch
is a comfortable seta that is used for resting. Being a couch potato is thus
someone who spends a lot of time sitting down and not doing anything
particularly useful. Laziness is considered a negative attribute and when
you refer to someone as a couch potato, then might take it as an insult.
However, such a metaphor can only be used in you want to evoke a strong
reaction on the part of the individual in question and encourage them to
appropriate adjustments to their lifestyles.
Chaos is a friend of mine
People lead different lifestyles according to their situation. There are people
who might lead peaceful lives while others lead lives that are considered
more conventional. ‘Chaos is a friend of mine’ is a metaphor that was first
used by English Rock Star artist Bob Dylan. Like a Rock Star, he leads a
lifestyle that entailed many activities and this metaphor sought to highlight
this lifestyle. ‘Chaos is a Friend of Mine’ is a metaphor that makes
reference to a person leading such a lifestyle those others might see as
confusing and not in line with the lives of ordinary folks.

Love metaphors
Love is considered a special kind of emotion that can evoke strong
emotions on the part of many people. Some of these emotions might be
positive emotions such as happiness, joy, and contentment. On the other
hand, love can also result in negative emotions on the part of the lovebirds
with some of the negative emotions being sorrow, sadness, and heartbreak.
For these reasons, there are thousands and thousands of metaphors that are
specifically meant to address the issue of love and how it affects the lives of
many people.  Love metaphors serve to bring out the different perspectives
associated with this emotion.
When it comes to love metaphors, most of these metaphors relate to the
romantic kind of love. Romantic love is considered a key area of interest
because it is the kind of love that elicits the strongest response and emotions
on the parties involved. Furthermore, romantic love is considered a mixed
bag in terms of experiences. This is because they are many people who
have had an experience that is deemed positive with respect to romantic
love. Equally, there are as many people who have experienced negative
emotions occasioned by this kind of love.

Love is fire
‘ Love is a fire’ is a good example of a love metaphor that clearly seeks to
adequately describe the emotion that is associated with being in love. A
person who is deeply in love is likely to experience intense feelings and
emotions and it is this intensity that has seen love being compared with fire.

Love is journey
‘Love is a journey’ is also another love metaphor whose usage seeks to
enhance an understanding of the overall experience associated with love. A
journey is an event that takes a considerable amount of time to accomplish.
Furthermore, a journey might involve different stages from the start to the
end. In comparison, true love is seen as something that does not develop in
a spontaneous fashion; instead, it involves different stages at different
points in the lives of those involved. Being in love also entails going
through a myriad of experiences and it is such experiences that make up the
entire journey that is love.

Love is a garden
‘Love is a garden’ is another love metaphor that seeks to capture the
essence of strong emotion. In a practical sense, issues to do with love are
complicated and must be accorded the attention that they deserve. This is
the reason why love is compared to a garden. A garden must be tended to in
order for the flowers in it to flourish. Equally, a relationship between two
people in love should entail; both parties taking their time and attending to
the needs of the other person in order for their relationship to succeed. This
is indeed the reason why love is compared to a garden since, in order for it
to flourish, it must be attended to.

Love is a flower
Love is a flower is deemed to be a pessimistic outlook with respect to the
strong emotion that is love. This is because a flower is most often than not
considering a very delicate plant that flourishes and becomes beautiful over
a short period but then dies off soon afterward. Equally, they are those
people who think that love and romantic love for that matter, is an emotion
that is strongly experienced during the initial stages of a relationship but
fades soon afterward.

Love is a battlefield
The final love metaphor of love is ‘love is a battlefield’. ‘Love is a
battlefield’ is an equally pessimistic metaphor when it comes to its
perspective on the strong emotion that is love. In this context, love is being
compared to a place, scenario or situation that is inherently uncomfortable.
A battlefield is a place in which people are fighting or engaging in one form
of conflict or the other. The metaphor, therefore, sees love as something that
can bring many conflicts in the lives of those involved. The role of the
parties to the relationship is to constantly address such conflicts hence the
comparison to a battlefield.

Unpopular metaphors
There are metaphors that are considered unpopular with respect to their
usage. The reason why such metaphors are unpopular is that they might
offend someone of a specific category of people.  For instance, some of
these linguistic tools might have racist connotations while others are
designed to offend the specific individual that they refer to. The usage of
unpopular metaphors might be very controversial and for this reason, they
are not generally preferred.

Black or grey metaphors versus white or light metaphors

One of the most controversial topics today is racism. Racism refers to the
practice of undermining other people based on their racial heritage. Most
often, their light-skinned counterparts have discriminated against dark skin
people. For instance, African Americans were brought into the United
States as slaves to work in white-owned farms and estates. Furthermore,
colored skinned people such as Mexicans continue to be discriminated
against in predominantly white societies and this is a good example of
present-day racism. A racist mindset is one of the advocates that their own
race is somehow superior as compared to the races of other people.

The issue of racism is also quite evident when it comes to metaphors and
their usage. This is particularly the case when it comes to people's black
metaphors versus white ones. In general, black metaphors are used to depict
something that is bad and negative in society. On the contrary, while
metaphors are meant to depict something that is good or accepted in society.

The black sheep of the family

The black sheep of the family is another metaphor with negative
connotations. Ideally, this metaphor refers to someone or who is uniquely
different from the rest. In the real-life scenario, being different can relate to
both the positive and negative sense.  However, referring to someone as the
‘black sheep of the family’ is mainly meant to portray them in a negative
sense. This, therefore, implies that a person who is referred to in such a
manner is not really a good person in terms of their character. Similarly,
such a person might have deficiencies that make them naturally unattractive
to others hence the connotation ‘black sheep’. The ‘black sheep of the
family’ is, therefore, a metaphor that should not be regularly used unless in
unique situations that call for such reference.

Black market
A ‘black market’ is also another metaphor that might have racist
connotations. This metaphor refers to a marketplace that is unsanctioned. In
many cases, the black-market is described as a market where illegal and
contraband goods are traded. Sometimes, the ‘black-market’ is the market
where people go for products such as hard drugs such as cocaine and
heroin. The racist association can be underscored by the fact that ‘blacks’ is
also a term that is generally used to refer to African American people.

Gray area
‘Gray area’ refers to an area that presents an element of confusion when it
comes to ordinary usage. A gray area is not really meant to be a good thing
since people like to have an understanding of the issue that they are
addressing. As a color, gray is the darker shade that is quite close to black
and some might perceive the metaphor gray area as a metaphor that uses
color to depict an unwanted and unfavorable situation that one might find
themselves in.

Light at the end of the tunnel

On the contrary white or bright metaphors most often than are used to
depict something positive. One such metaphor is ‘light at the end of the
tunnel’. This metaphor represents some degree of hope when it comes to its
normal everyday usage. When someone says that there is ‘light at the end of
the tunnel’ implies that they expect that something positive is going to
happen notwithstanding the difficult situation that they might be currently
facing.

White elephant
A white elephant is also another color-related metaphor that might be
interpreted as racist. However, this metaphor is quite different from the
aforementioned examples since it uses the color white as opposed to black.
This implies that ‘white’ people might also have some sensitivities when it
comes to metaphor usage since a ‘white elephant’ depicts an undertaking
that is negative and one that has no benefit to the society.

Dead metaphors
Dead metaphors also generally fall under the category of unpopular
metaphors. Precisely, these are metaphors that might not have a semantic
rendition within the context of the present-day world since their usage is
considered outdated.

Raining cats and dogs

When it comes to metaphors, one can also make reference to a special
category of metaphors referred to as dead metaphors. As the name suggests,
this is a group of metaphors that are no longer effective in terms of their
capacity to relate to a context that they were originally meant to relate to. 
The existence of dead metaphors implies that as a figure of speech,
metaphors relate to everyday life and experiences. They can only be
effective if they are relatable within the context of the people using them.
Some of the examples that are considered dead metaphors include ‘raining
cats and dogs’ and ‘a heart of gold’. Furthermore, when metaphors have not
been in use for so long, they might end up falling under the category of
dead metaphors.

To kick the bucket

To kick the bucket is another dead metaphor that literally means to die.
When it comes to death, several other metaphors are generally preferred
such as to ‘pass on’ to ‘meet one’s demise.’ The reason why such a
metaphor is not preferred is that many people might not really understand
the connection between kicking a bucket and death thus rendering the
expression unpopular.

Conclusion
To sum it all up, metaphors can be described as figures of speech or
linguistic tools that entail one object that is used to refer to another one or
an activity. There are various reasons why metaphors are considered
essential linguistic tools. They serve to create empathy on the part of the
listener. A metaphor can make you relate to the situation that is being
described. These linguistic tools also play a key role in enhancing
understanding of the issue that is being described. Metaphors also make it
easy to capture human emotion since it might be very difficult to so suing
ordinary words, but unique expressions such as ‘being on cloud nine’ can
help you get the job done.

Several metaphors are used in various expressions and communication.

Some of the metaphors can be described as popular metaphors since they
are mostly preferred over others. Popular metaphors are easily relatable
since they can easily be applied in contemporary life scenarios. Some of the
popular metaphors include: To be a shining star, to be a high flyer, and to be
in another person’s shoe. Some popular metaphors have been used for
hundreds of years but are still considered relevant in the present-day
scenario. Furthermore, love metaphors such as ‘love isa fire’ are also quite
popular.  Similarly, there are also metaphors that are considered unpopular
such as Black sheep of the family, black market and white elephant. Such
metaphors can be deemed to have racist connotations hence their
unpopularity. Finally, dead metaphors that have lost their semantic
connotation also fall under the category of unpopular metaphors. A good
example of a dead metaphor is the expression of raining cats and dogs.
 Chapter 18: Learn To Manage Your Inner
Dialogue

Your inner dialogue refers to that internal voice that seems that seeks to tell
you what to do and when to do it. The inner dialogue affects how people
think and their capacity to differentiate between right and wrong. One of the
key differences between an ordinary dialogue and the inner dialogue is the
fact that the former is open communication with other people, while the
inner dialogue takes place internally either consciously or subconsciously.
Furthermore, the inner dialogue is an endless undertaking where you are
subconscious or inner vice keeps on talking to you in a more or less non-
stop fashion.

There are people who pay a lot of attention to their inner voice while others
do not pay as much attention. Nevertheless, it very is important to know
how to go about managing your inner dialogue. Managing that voice inside
you is very important especially when it comes to ensuring that you have
the capacity to manipulate situations in your favor. Sometimes, going with
your inner voice might be the logical thing to do but at other times, your
inner voice might actually end up guiding you in the wrong direction.
Managing that inner voice is, therefore, a delicate process that should be
mastered and implemented in a cautious manner.

The main difference between human beings and animals is that human
beings are guided by both their primal instinct as well as an inner rational
voice. On the other hand, animals only rely on their primal instinct as the
basis of their reaction to various situations. One of the reasons why it is
important to manage your inner voice is, therefore, to differentiate yourself
from other animals. This simply implies that you should learn to make
rational decisions in each situation.

How Your Inner Dialogue Can Lead To Overall

Happiness
Maintain positive thoughts
Management of your inner dialogue is vital when it comes to determining
the quality of life you are able to lead. A good inner dialogue that
encourages you to see the world in a positive light will translate to higher
levels of satisfaction as well as happiness. In light of this fact, it is very
important to ensure that you are able to maintain positive thoughts and try
and stay away from thoughts and situations that might undermine your
overall well-being. The saying you are what you think is indeed true when
it comes to the management of inner dialogue since negative thoughts
attract negative outcomes in real life. For instance, if you spend too much
time worrying about your financial situation, you might end up in worse
state financially. This is because you will spend more of your time thinking
about how broke you are as opposed to waking up and actually doing
something about it.  In the end, you will end up pilling up more debt and
making less money, which will make you unhappy. On the contrary, you
can opt to think about how your life is going to be like when you eventually
improve your financial situation. This line of thought will compel your
inner voice to come up with instructions and guidelines on what you can do
in order to improve your situation. In turn, you will end up being much
happier and contented with your life.

Focus on the present

Most often than not, your inner voice will tend to focus more on your past
or future at the expense of your present situation. For example, a person
who was doing very well in the past in terms of their social and economic
lives will prefer to ponder about their former glory. Similarly, people will
tend to avoid thinking about the present in case they are currently
experiencing difficult times and unfavorable situations. Such people would
rather spend time focus their inner voice on what they think their future
would be like. The harsh reality in life is that your past is gone and your
present activities will determine your future. This implies that when you
spend too much time thinking about the past, you will be wasting your time
since there is nothing you can do about it. You will thus end up feeling
unhappy and dissatisfied with your situation. In the same breath, when you
spend too much time thinking about your future, you will not have time to
focus on your present. This, therefore, implies that you will not be able to
do all that you are required to do in order to maximize your current
potential. When you fail to attain your full potential in the current sense,
then your potential will equally be undermined.

On the contrary, if you spend much your time focusing your inner voice in
your current situation, you will be in a better position to improve the same.
If you are able to improve your current situation, then you can also
safeguard your future. For instance, you might be able to come up with a
viable business idea that will see you establish a very profitable venture that
will improve your income both in the present and in your future life as well.
Similarly, you might be spending too much time thinking about a failed
relationship in your past instead of focusing on your present. If you instead
spend more time in your present as opposed to your past, you will find a
potential mate and you might end up being much happier than you used to
be.

Focus on what you have

Your inner dialogue can serve to enhance you or destroy you. When you
focus too much time asking yourself many questions about why your
neighbor has something that you lack, then you might end up being
unhappy. It is a fact of life that at any one given time, there will be people
who will be better than you and others worse than you. This implies that if
you want to spend your time thinking about what you do not have but
others have, you will never experience a shortage of things to ponder about.
However, when you look keenly at yourself, you will realize that you are
abundantly blessed in both the material and non-material aspects. For
instance, you might ask yourself questions and look down upon yourself
because you do not drive a fancy car. But if you focus on what you have,
you might realize that you have a lot more than that person you think is
better off because of the make of their cars. Your friends, family members,
and even career are things that you cannot put a price tag but you might
often be tempted to overlook.

Focusing on what you have as opposed to what you think you should have,
eliminates unnecessary worries and negative emotions such as envy and
jealousy. It is also important to note that when you focus on what you have,
you can identify ways in which you can apply the resources at your disposal
to gain that which you do not have. Ultimately, focusing your inner voice
on what you have is the best approach to maintaining a happy life and even
achieving much more in life.

Learn to stop the negative internal dialogue

Sometimes, that inner voice might spiral out of control and go on overdrive
in an attempt to convince you to make a decision that you know you will
end up regretting. This happens occasionally when you come across a
situation that is very tempting but one that will nonetheless translate to dire
consequences. If this happens, then you owe it upon yourself to take the
necessary corrective measures that will ensure that you do not end up
regretting it in the future. In case you experience such a scenario, it is best
to remind yourself to stop whatever it is that you are doing. In some cases,
you might actually have to say this out loud for it to have the desired effect.
By talking to yourself and reminding yourself to stop pursuing a dangerous
course of action, you are likely to end up redeeming yourself from a
situation that would have translated to great sorrow and sadness on your
part.

Learn to forgive yourself

No one is perfect and this is certainly so when it comes to your capacity to
always make the right decisions with respect to your inner dialogue. There
will be times when your inner voice might lead you astray. In such a
situation, one of the most important inner dialogue management measures is
learning to forgive yourself. There is no sense in being too harsh on
yourself on account of a mistake that you made attributed to that inner
voice. You insist on beating yourself too much about it, you might end up
feeling dejected, sad and lonely. It is important to constantly remind
yourself that everyone makes mistakes but the most important thing is to
learn from such mistakes. This implies that in case you realize that you
have been misguided by that inner voice, the best thing to do is to accept
the mistake, forgive yourself and promise yourself to do better next time
around. By doing this, you will avert a situation where you end spending
too much time regretting what you did and forgetting to think about what
you can do in order prevent such an undesirable event occurring in future.

Be aware of the existence of that inner voice

It goes without saying that you cannot manage something that you are not
aware of its existence. In order to effectively manage our inner dialogue,
you must be aware that it does indeed exist. There are those people who
might find it easy to dismiss such an existence and for such people,
management of that inner voice will be an issue. They will invariably end
up being controlled by the voice inside them.

You can learn the existence of your inner dialogue in several ways. One
such method is engaging in a meditation exercise. Meditation is an activity
that relaxes the brain making it easy for you to focus on your inner voice.
Meditation also enhances overall concertation levels and such deep
concentration can be effective in assisting you to make that much-needed
connection with your inner dialogue.
A simple meditation exercise might entail simply sitting in a quiet room,
switching off your phone and any other thing that might distract you and
just allowing your brain to relax without focusing on anything in particular.

Be positive about others

Your inner dialogue is a very important tool when it comes to how you
think about not only yourself but also other people. One of the ways
through which your inner dialogue can improve your overall quality of life
is when you go out of your way to maintain positive thoughts about other
people. This is because the manner in which you think about others will
have a huge impact on how you relate to them in real life. It is therefore
important to keep reminding yourself that most people including your
friends and family members are inherently good despite some of the
disagreements you might have had with them. Try to focus on the good
things that other people did for you and do not spend too much time
thinking about the negative ones.

Sometimes, it might even be helpful if you keep reminding yourself telling

yourself positive things especially when you are tempted to have negative
thoughts about others.  For instance, you can keep reminding yourself that
‘he is a good man’ in case a male friend or colleague of yours has
disappointed you. Similarly, you can keep reminding yourself that ‘she is a
good kid’ whenever you experience some sort of conflict or the other with
your daughter. In both cases, your inner voice will ensure that you are able
to maintain positive relationships with friends, family members, and
significant others despite the myriad of issues that you might experience
with them.

Do not spend too much time thinking about yourself

Many times, your inner dialogue will mainly focus on you as a person.
However, you should avoid the temptation to spend endless hours just
thinking about yourself. In fact, only self-centered people will spend a lot of
time thinking about themselves but very little time thinking about others.
Furthermore, it is often said that after all is said and done, people will
remember you for what you did for them and not for yourself. Some of the
bets celebrated individuals such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and
President Abraham Lincoln of the United States do not owe their status to
what they did for themselves. They are considered exceptional human
beings because of what they did for other people.

Your inner dialogue has the potential to make you an exceptional person or
turn you into someone who is nothing but ordinary. You do not have to
match the achievements of some of the aforementioned global icons, but in
your own little way, you can be very exceptional to those around you. In
order to this, you must encourage your inner voice to focus your attention
on the welfare of others and not just yourself.

The question that you might be asking yourself right about now is, how do I
go about to focus my inner voice on others? Well, a first step could be
asking yourself several questions that touch on the welfare of the people
around you. For instance, in case you notice one of your friends is
increasingly becoming withdrawn, you can keep on asking yourself
questions to this effect such as, ‘why is Adrianna so sad these days or why
does Ryan get easily offended nowadays. By doing this, you will encourage
yourself to start thinking about the overall wellbeing of the people who
matter in your life and even come up with solutions to some of the
problems that they might be facing.

Extend your thinking to include the society

The society in which you live plays an important role in determining not
only your welfare and the welfare of all the people in it. However, not many
people spend a significant amount of time thinking about society. A better
society will translate to better lives for all those in it and even for future
generations that will have the privilege of living in such a society. On the
other hand, a mismanaged society will translate to a myriad of problems for
its current and future generations.

In addition to simply encouraging your inner voice to focus on those around

you, you can also extend this to the society that you live in. There are many
ills taking place in society and the only reason why they keep on persisting
is that people do not spend time to think about them. For instance, you
might notice that there is an increase in incidences in gender-based violence
and exploitation. In such a case, you can focus your inner voice on this
topic by asking yourself some of the reasons behind this trend and are the
potential solutions.  You might end up highlighting the issue and even come
with noble initiatives such as the ‘Me Too’ movement that was probably
occasioned by one person using their inner voice to focus not only on
themselves but on the plight of others as well.

Image: words draws one to others or evoke rejection

One of the issues that are increasingly facing global society is global
warming. Be that as it may, very few people even take time to focus their
inner voices on such issues that are being experienced on a global scale.
You and your inner voice can choose to be the starting point as far as
addressing such global catastrophes is concerned. You can decide to spend
some time each and every time thinking about the phenomenon that is
global warming and what you can do in order to raise awareness and
capture the attention of the powers that be. By doing this, you might even
end up realizing the full potential that can come about when you effectively
manage your inner voice and thoughts. Precisely, focusing on such grand
issues affecting society can make you a global activist and might juts end
being a truly exceptional human being recognized all over the world for
your positive initiatives. This also illustrates that your internal dialogue is a
powerful tool that can change the world.

Have a resolute opinion on issues

As a human being, you have the freedom to think about whatever it is that
interests you. However, this freedom does not mean that are expected to
accept the pre-determined positions of other people on issues that affect
society. Many issues affect the world today including some of the
aforementioned ones such as global warming, gender-based violence,
racism, and hatred. These are very issues that have managed to elicit a lot of
debates on many quarters as people talk sides and try to argue their cases.
These debates should also be extended to your inner dialogue. Your inner
voice should be able to raise such issues, debate on them and eventually
enable you to have a resulted opinion that is informed by your own personal
values and beliefs.

Many people end up confusing themselves because they have failed to

formulate an opinion on an issue that is affecting them. For instance, the
issue of racism continues to be a thorny one in many western nations.
Effective management of your inner dialogue will allow for personal
conservation on the issue, its underlying assumptions and even its historical
underpinnings. By doing this, you will be able to come up with an informed
and resolute opinion. However, if you fail to effectively engage your inner
dialogue, you might end up being easily swayed by the prevailing assertions
that might not necessarily represent the true position as far as these issues
are concerned.

Take your time to learn how to master your internal dialogue

When it comes to mastering your inner dialogue, it is perhaps easier said
than done. In reality, it is not very easy to regularly practice some of the
aforementioned elements of mastering inner dialogue. For instance, it is not
easy to totally avoid thinking about that fancy house or TV that your
neighbor just bought. You might try and avoid thinking about it in your
conscious mind, but your subconscious will always revert to this line of
thought. Similarly, it is very easy to forget and even overlook that which
you already have and instead, spend a lot of time thinking about what others
have.
Ultimately, the art of mastering your inner dialogue is something that takes
time and deliberate effort on your part. During the initial stages of trying to
attain this feat, you are most likely to fail and end up resorting to your old
habits. However, when you keep trying, repeatedly, your failures
notwithstanding, then you will end up mastering the art of managing your
inner dialogue. Furthermore, it is always advisable to constantly remind
yourself of the need and importance of mastering your inner voice and
thoughts. Once you are able to appreciate the fact that you will end up being
much happier and satisfied with your life once you attain this feat, then you
will find it much easier to go out of your way and implement some of the
measures that will make you have greater control of your inner voice.

Conclusion
In summary, it is important to pay great attention to that inner voice that is
inside that is otherwise referred to as your inner dialogue. You should
always engage in inner dialogues that are well managed and ones that will
serve to make you a better person. There are several ways you can go about
managing your inner dialogue. First and foremost, you should strive to be a
positive thinker and always see the glass as half full as opposed to it being
half empty. Try to shun away from negativity and be aware of that inner
voice especially when it is leading you towards negative thoughts and ideas.
Secondly, try to think about what you have while pursuing your other goals
and objectives.  It is very easy to allow your inner voice to focus too much
on what you do not have but this is not a productive undertaking. Managing
of your inner dialogue also entails not being too harsh on yourself since
everyone makes mistakes. In order to be a better person in both your
immediate society and the global one as we, you think about other people as
well as yourself. You must also use your inner dialogue to explore issues
that affect global society and even come up with some of the potential
solutions to address them.  Overall, effective management of your inner
dialogue will make an attractive person to be with, enhance the quality of
relationships you have with other people as well as making you an
exceptional global citizen who will be admired by other people.
 Chapter 19: Love Relationship
The Right Words to Use to Impress and Seduce Your Partner
Gone are the days when ladies fall for men with good looks or rather
physical appearance. Nowadays, for a man to have the full attention of any
lady, he must have a gift of sweet romantic words to convince her. Women
love the world of fantasy and imagination, and that’s why they prefer men
who can drive them crazier with romantic words. 
Sometimes, talking to attractive women is hard. Most men are not trained
the art of talking to women and so, on the trial process, the following things
might happen: they might make their women feel bored, they might be
unable to attract the women of their dream, they might not keep their
women interested in the conversation for a long time, they might fail to
remain true to themselves around their women. Therefore, if you are unable
to seduce women of your dream, then don’t put blame on lack of popularity,
money, power or looks. You must understand that women are not the same
and so the styles of seducing women differ from one woman to another.
Seducing a woman with words of mouth is not a walk in the park, and so
the following tips and tricks can better your seducing power.
Use soft and low tone
As a man, while talking to women with the aim of seducing her, your voice
should remain soft and low. Loud and high voice scares off the women and
generates fear on her. The moment a woman generates fear in you it shows
your attempt failed because the woman will shy off from you. Therefore,
while seducing a woman, it is advisable to use soft and low voice for it
creates a conducive environment for you two and moreover, she might be
flattered by your advance.
Lean as close to her as possible while talking
Leaning close to your woman is the most essential act while talking to her.
It brings you two close and make her feel the words your vibe to her.
Moreover, leaning close to your woman makes her feel cherished and loved
and makes her feel that the seductive words are meant for her. In reality, this
tip works better for many men. Therefore, men should put more emphasis
on this and be more polite and gentle to the lady to be more attractive.
Try as much as possible to be witty and make her laugh always
A seducing man should not be offensive and try as much as possible to be
humorous while talking to the lady. In your conversation, utilize more
humor to always put a smile on her face.  Most women love being taken out
of their real-world to the world of fantasy. They say, this ‘make their day’.
Therefore, men should have a good sense of humor to make the women of
their dream smile and be happy. This will make them absolutely irresistible
to their men.
Always compliment her with simple yet effective words
For a matter of fact, jargon and overtly fancy words make women dull and
angry always. Whenever they are angry, they feel offended so fast. To avoid
this scenario, you should complement your girl with simple yet effective
words to make her feel your presence always. Tell good things about her
appreciate her always and speak positive things whenever you are together. 
For instant, if you like her curve then let her know openly; if you think her
thought process is impressive then compliment her and let her feel that love
you have for her.
Avoid focusing on her physical appearance while talking to her
It’s truly hard not to focus and talk about her attractive physical appearance
while talking to her. For men, their outlook and figure is always on their
visual, but this is not the best thing to talk about when you are with her,
trying to seduce her using words.  The wise move to make at this moment is
to avoid focusing on her physical appearance. Use romantic words relating
to her positive character and personality. Therefore, while seducing your
dream woman, most of your words should focus on praising her rather than
mocking her. This makes her feel safe with you.
Confidence and composure can be really helpful
Most women nowadays go for confident men. Confidence and composure
play a major role while seducing your girl for it makes a man stand out for
himself. You have to keep your composure for the success of your seductive
words. Over excitement spoils it all, and so it should be avoided and
instead, confidence of the highest order should be maintained. Therefore,
you should maintain calmness when you are with your woman. You cannot
expect to impress a girl with just your words without confidence and
calmness.
Smile and always maintain eye contact while talking
Actually, you must emboss this tip in your mind for it is the most significant
point. A smile on the face creates an atmosphere for effective interruption.
It makes your woman feel more absorbed by your actions. Maintaining
continuous eye contact gives her the impression that you are really
interested in her and that you need and care for her more than anyone else
can do. Moreover, as you know, a smiling face is always appealing to
anyone. Therefore, your physical appearance won’t matter. So long as you
try to put a smile on your face, that woman will one way or the other get
attracted to you.
Try to appeal to her emotional side
Women have those emotional sides which make them sensitive and
receptive. In this case, they have to be triggered and your conversation
determines all.  You have to make your conversation sweet and interesting
in such a way that her emotional side gets triggered until it reaches the point
where she starts feeling an attachment towards you.
Therefore, for you to seduce the woman of your dream suitably, you have to
harness your conversation skills instead of freezing up in front of a
beautiful and gorgeous woman. Make the environment around two of you
flirtatious and fun so that you can eventually think of getting intimate with
each other.
 Chapter 20: Develop Humor and Make New
Friends

Friendship happens as a result of connection at heart level. It is founded on

trust. How do you start to build trust with someone you just met? Humor is
one way. Laughter may be a means into the circle of trust. People who
laugh less often earn less trust and it comes late. Laughter influences people
to be more willing to disclose their personal information. When you share
pleasure with people, a sense of intimacy is created and a bond is created
between the two of you.
Humor creates an atmosphere of playfulness in which your counterpart gets
primed to smile and join in the fun. When signs of stress and disagreement
show up humor helps create a connection that provides a buffer against their
effects. If you will make friends, you must first be friendly. The simplest
way to demonstrate your friendliness is to tickle your senses of humor and
make the people laugh with you. The more promptly you make people
laugh the faster you make friends with them.
Meeting New People
Establish the conducive situations in which you are normally relaxed and at
ease with yourself. Strive to strike friendships from there. You want to
come across as naturally exuding humor and this can be achieved in your
favorable environments. Attend local events that you are more involved
with your community. You are more likely to meet people who share your
interests in events that interest you. Besides, such events provide subjects
upon which you can easily share views and interests.
Do join clubs that relate to your interests. The kinds of activities should be
ones you enjoy. Strive to attend regularly to meet more like-minded people.
Converse with them on what makes them join the club and see how
promptly you get along. Volunteering to help with issues you care about
also creates one such opportunity for you to connect with people who share
your values. Are you song-trainer? Find somewhere to offer you skill for
free with the view to connect with singers at heart.
Try out membership in recreational sports teams and in there occupy your
space meaningfully. You cannot play in a team without interactions with
your mates. In the spirit of teamwork, you will get to give and take from
each other and create a mutual relationship that will build into friendships.
Fellowships in religious services or community initiatives also provide
situations where you can meet new people of your kind.
Being in the right surroundings exalts your natural state of ease and
authenticity. When you are there, do not hesitate to reach out for new
associations. You do not have to begin out with a lot of effort. Just be
sensitive to your environment and enjoy along. The others will follow or
welcome you. Be willing to try new circles and see how much fun you can
create or get beyond your comfort zones.
Fun Conversations
Introduce yourself to the people you meet as a conversation starter. Say
your name and then something about yourself and ask them to their turn.
Follow up with a comment on the situation at hand and allow them to react.
Connect at the level of the event, and then dig deeper as the conversation
advances.
Compliment them and keep them smiling for a while. People like it when
you say good things about them. When you do so, they come across you as
a nice person. Teach yourself how and always find a reason to give a
compliment to your counterpart. Ask about the location or about the
weather. It breaks the ice. This especially applies to people you just met.
You need not make a lot of sense or say something important. Look around,
pick on anything, make an observation and let them go on to comment
about it.
Ask questions about them. Show interest in them. People love talking about
themselves. Ask and easily get along with the conversation. What is more,
listen in actively and you will be liked more. People want to be listened to.
Ask open-ended questions and listen to their responses patiently ignoring
any interruptions.
Make fun of yourself so they can laugh. On a light note, give a humorous
reason why you arrived just on time and not slightly earlier or later. People
do not like it when you take yourself too seriously. Go easy on yourself and
they will be easy in return. Any of your quirks, mistakes, and things you
like? Tease yourself on them and laugh along with others. Be mindful
though not to ruin your demeanor.
Practice and learn telling jokes. There must be a few funny things or
instances of your life. Do you remember any of your friends’ or people’s
experiences that can create humor? Practice on them till you can deliver
them naturally. Read and watch comedies and learn. Practice and mind the
timing for the punchline in each joke. Be careful though not to disrespect
yourself or others in the emotions of it.
Social Skills
What are your best qualities? Build your self-esteem on them. What are
your distinguishing values? Evaluate your skills, talents, and interests and
bring yourself out different from the rest. Appreciate your physical
attributes too and play on them. As much as possible, invest in yourself and
keep adding to your assets of personality. Build your confidence in these
things and get into action meeting the world and what it gives.
Learn and always display an open body language. Smile, make eye-contact
and tilt your chin up. Open body language tells others that you are
approachable. It is inviting. Too, keep a good body posture and gesture
along as you converse. Employ your conversation skills and look great at it.
This may be learned over time. So do not judge yourself harshly if you are
not there yet. Be a good listener as well. Avoid distractions and show your
patience and discipline as a listener.
Go for what you want. Despite the laid procedures that we often observe to
get certain things, you can purpose to find faster means there. Understand
that it is not about procedures, but the results. Humor has a way of creating
those shortcuts to peoples’ hearts. Use it. Be yourself. You cannot come
across great friends through acting, nor can you sustaining friendships in
that way. Be honest with who you are and respectful to others.
Ultimately, humor is not about being funny. It is no comedy. It is about
being lighthearted. Know yourself, dwell in the right places, meet the right
people and do a little homework and you will soon realize how interesting
space you occupy already is.
 Chapter 21: Knowing How to Tell Stories

Tactics to Use to Capture Attention and Communicate Effectively

People have got brilliant ideas but they can’t offer them to their prospective
audience unless they have made it look come right first. You have to
capture your target’s attention before you can make her read or know how
wonderful you are. Remember, your reader can’t pay attention to
everything. In order to understand the brain has to focus on specific
information. Reader’s mind is very selective, so you have to give them
reason to pay attention to your content instead of everything else out there.
Below are attention-grabbing strategies you should implement to fully curb
your listener’s or readers attention.
You must have a hook in your opening
In writing, this is called an inciting incident. To hook your listener with the
story, you have to present a problem that encourages them to keep on
listening to you. Once hooked, your audience may seek out more of your
content getting to know you better. Creating a world in which it is taken
away reveals the ultimate importance of this process. For instance, if you
are explaining the concept of photosynthesis, try to bring out your story in a
world in which all flowers didn’t have leaves. This creates a problem that
the story solves. You can always use this tactic in any lesson.
Every part of your story must be essential
When composing your storyline, for instance, fictional to teach a lesson or
non-fictional, always try hard to connect each part of your story to the
ending. Your character, points or principles must also relate the main point
you are trying to bring out. Always listen to yourself and eliminate anything
that affects your story be it directly or indirectly. For example, let us take
the story about the planets. As a teacher you might be trying to help your
students to memorize the order of the planets. Any tale you try to come up
with to illuminate the facts must be related to the planets.
Draw a theme out of your story
It is very hard to write a story with a theme in mind, but a theme brings out
the deep meaning of the story. It is rather advisable to first write the story
elaborating all the points you want to cover. When you are done, stand back
and see if you can draw out the theme of the story. Most probably this is
important when your story relates to incidents in the past. Also apply real-
life experience in your story because history can be boring. Themes always
help to connect past with present and ultimately with the future.
Keep it simple
Complicated stories are always boring and aren’t necessarily better.
Consider your audience age bracket while telling your stories. When your
audience comprises of youths, then just keep it simple. However, even older
audiences can be profoundly impacted when you take a complex idea and
reduce it to a nugget that can be remembered. Using complex vocabularies
and scientific principles might be difficult for young minds. Try to bring out
analogies because it can help for deeper understanding. For example, in
explaining an electric circuit, describe how train can only move along
tracks that are connected to each other.
Use vivid language that kids can understand
Human beings learn better through storytelling, and this has been proved by
some psychologists. For instance, if you are teaching science or maths
concepts, use a word or two that your students are unfamiliar with. Describe
and define it then use it again and again. For example, talking of science,
take the word energy and use it severally during your storytelling session.
By the end of the lesson, your students would have understood the concept
plus some other vocabulary. Most television channels and shows use this
method. Using hard vocabularies unnecessary will reduce the power of your
story. This is similar to reading texts in translation. When you want to have
a deeper understanding of the content, you first learn the original language
it was written in to carefully understand what the writer was trying to
convey. So, if you want to use the right word, first explain it for your
students to follow along.
Use dramatic pauses
Some people talk more quickly than their brain can process. Here pausing
helps. Pausing at the crucial moments of the story helps the audience to
think critically about the content you are delivering to them. A good
storyteller should ease the pressure of tension by pausing. Most popular
television shows use cliffhangers to bring the audience back into the story.
At the moment you feel the problem is still unsolved, pause and give your
audience time to think critically about the solution themselves. After each
pause connect your storyline to the previous sentences and majestically
kick-off.
Change your voice with different characters
Giving your characters different personalities make them more memorable. 
Part of this personality includes changing your voice when it comes to
different characters. Beside visual props, changing of voice for different
characters bring them o life. The best thing is to have different instructors to
act as different characters. Sometimes it is difficult. For instance, let us take
the case when you are re-enacting the civil war, stand tall and speak out as
President Abraham Lincoln but when you are speaking as a Black
American slave change your tone and use the accent.
Make the ending strong with an important takeaway point
The ending is the most crucial part and this is where most of the audience is
up to. Put more effort into this part and whatever point or principle you feel
is most important should be at this endpoint. If in case you already
mentioned it at the content body part, and then just repeat it again to drive
the point home. Most probably, make your ending sentence as short as
possible. Use alliteration, repetitive words or even sing a song to make it
more memorable. For example, if you want your audience to remember the
theme of your story well, then come up with a phrase like “The civil war
taught Americans that everyone is free to live, free to pursue their dreams
and even free to be free.”
Therefore, understand that stories are meant to bring meaning, feelings, and
context to dry concepts. Invite your audience, give them enough to
understand and follow along but not so much for spoon-feeding. Add
drama, props, effects, and set the scene to draw your listeners into the story.
 Chapter 22: Mindset

The Power of Positive Words

Positivity is something that is very essential when it comes to the day to day
lives of human beings. Positivity basically means maintaining a positive
mindset even in the face of adversity. Life will always bring forth a mixed
bag of fortunes with some being positive while others can be described as
negative or unfortunate eventualities. Nevertheless, it is very important to
ensure that whatever situation you find yourself in, you are in a position to
maintain a positive mindset through it all.

One way of ensuring that you are able to maintain a positive mindset is by
appreciating the role and importance of positive words. Positive words are
important when it comes to maintaining a proper relationship with both
yourself and others. When you speak positively to others, there are more
likely to like you and would go out of their way to seek your company.
Similarly, when you use positive words when speaking to yourself, you are
more likely to love yourself more and harness your inner strength in order
to pursue your goals and objectives in life.

Repetitive use of positive words can improve the life of someone

It is often said that the tongue is a powerful tool that can serve to make or
break. This simply means that the manner in which you speak to another
person and the type of words you say to them, can either make or break
them. When you repetitively use positive words such as telling someone
they are good looking or they are important to you, then there will be more
likely to feel very good about their own situations. Such feelings of
enhanced self-importance will, in turn, propel them to reach out for more
and confidently pursue their goals in life. On the contrary, sustained use to
negative words towards another person can have the opposite effect of
breaking them. I keep telling your friend or partner that they are not good
enough or that they are not intelligent enough, you might end up breaking
them. This is because; such negative words will result in feelings of
inadequacy being ingrained in their psyche to the point that they will
actually start believing your words.
Positive words can enhance your own self-esteem
Repetitive use of positive words is not only important when it comes to
other people, but it also matters when you are having a conversation with
yourself. It is very important to keep reminding yourself that you are
important, you matter and that you are beautiful. Such positive sentiments
will go a long way in enhancing your own self-esteem. This is particularly
very important when you are experiencing difficult times since you are
highly susceptible to negative thoughts at such times. Repetitive use of
positive words in times of adversity will ensure that you are in the position
to maintain a positive mindset even in situations that are difficult.

Many people are leading very sad lives because of low self-esteem. Such
people are even afraid to pursue their careers and dreams in life because
they think they are not fit enough to do it. For instance, a young woman
might be very afraid to pursue their dream of being an actor because they
think they are not beautiful enough. However, positive words especially
when used repetitively while having a conversation with your inner self can
change such a scenario. It is often said that self-vindication is perhaps the
most effective form of vindication since it eliminates self-doubt thus
making you a better person. Positive words can make you stop doubting
yourself. You will stop looking for reasons why you should not do
something and instead, focus on why you should do it.

For instance, you will remind yourself that you do not need to be the most
beautiful person in the world in order to pursue your career as in the
entertainment industry. All you need is the right amount of talent,
determination, and zeal to pursue what you want.  Positive words used
repetitively will, therefore, enable you to improve your own self-esteem, go
out, and pursue your dreams.

The role of positive words in enhancing your overall potential

Self-belief is a very powerful tool. Sometimes, you might sit back and
wonder how people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett managed to attain so
much success in their lives. The answer is most often very simple, they
believed in themselves. Such successful people had an idea and they
believed in their own capacity to implement such ideas to the fullest extent.
The role of self-belief when it comes to maximizing your success potential
is, therefore, one that cannot be overstated.

Positive words also play a very important role when it comes to your own
success potential. This is because; such words will improve your capacity to
believe in yourself. For instance, if keep on telling yourself that you are the
best at what you do, you might actually end up being number one. Some of
the most successful athletes have also employed the use of positive words
to propel them to unprecedented success. For instance, Jamaican born
sprinter and global sensation Usain Bolt used to have the slogan ‘Forever
Faster’ as the main source of his motivation. Such positive words of course
along with other motivators ensured that he was able to obliterate world
record and to this day, he is considered the fastest athlete in history. His
achievements underscore the fact that the use of positive words even as
personal slogans will, therefore, go a long way in guiding you towards
attaining your dream.

Positivity rubs off on other people

The thing about positivity is that it generally attracts positivity.  Simply put,
a positive person is more likely to attract the company of other people who
also happen to have a positive mindset. Furthermore, even if you attract
people with a negative mindset, your own positive attitude occasioned by
repeated use of positive words will rub off on them and make you have a
better outlook in life. In light of this fact, it is important to ensure that you
are able to repetitively use positive words both in your personal life and
with others as well. Such sustained usage of words of encouragement and
inspiration will ensure that you maintain yourself as a positive person and at
the same time attract people with similar mindsets.

A pool of positively inclined individuals can be a very powerful force.

When you are positive and are surrounded by positively inclined people,
you are more likely to become with very good ideas on how to improve
your personal lives. You will also benefit from enhanced synergy from
people who would be more than willing to go out of their way to work hard
towards the attainment of a common objective. Furthermore, you and the
people around you will be in a better position to even go a step further to
improve the society around you by making it a much better place filled with
positive people.

Alternatively, one can argue that if you do not use positive words with
yourself and with those around you, you are likely to end up attracting a
pool of people with a negative mindset. A prevailing negative mindset will
do a lot in terms of undermining your group dynamics and overall
productivity.

Positive words can improve your physical and mental well-being

Everyday life can be too stressful. Getting up each and every morning,
going to work, dealing with a rude boss and some of these everyday life
issues might take a toll on many people. But the truth of the matter is, life is
never and will never be a bed of roses. You will always be faced with
situations in life that might seemingly be too difficult to handle. It can be
very easy for one to decide to throw in the towel and decide that they will
not take it anymore. In real life, this might see someone quit their job thus
putting a significant dent in their careers. Others might decide to quit on a
relationship that might have otherwise ended up being the best thing that
ever happened to them. In some extreme cases, some people might even
end up taking their own lives.

Positive words can go a long way in ensuring that you are able to come on
top despite the day-to-day challenges associated with your life. You can
wake up every morning and remind yourself that it is going to be a lovely
day no matter what. In case you are faced in a difficult situation and one
that you cannot immediately untangle from, such positive words like
‘tomorrow will be a better day’ will give you the strength and the zeal to go
on hoping for a brighter future.

In all the aforementioned examples, the repetitive use of positive words will
ensure that you do not fall into depression or lead an overly stressful life.
This is because both depression and stress can result in other more serious
health complications that can undermine your mental and physical well-
being. By staying positive through repetitive use of positive words, you thus
lead a much healthier life.
How to Use Positive Words in Your Day To Day
Life
Complement those around you
Compliments are very powerful when it comes to improving the way other
people feel. Compliments are basically positive words and expressions that
are meant to point out something that is good about someone else. A
compliment such as ‘you have really improved in your performance this
time around’ is something that can encourage others to do even more. This
is because the person will feel that whatever effort they have put in place
has been recognized and appreciated.

When giving out compliments, it is important to remember to always issue

genuine compliments. Genuine compliments highlight something that is
actually positive regarding the other person. On the contrary, a compliment
that is not genuinely such as telling someone that they have improved while
this is not actually the case can pass for a lie. Once this person learns that
you were lying to them, they might end up never believing what you say in
the future as well as end up feeling bad about themselves. Secondly, you
should always try and avoid the temptation to undermine the compliment by
including a ‘but’ clause. For instance, telling someone ‘you look good but
not as good as the other guests’. Such compliments actually take away the
intended positive message instead; it leaves the person feeling inadequate
about their own lives.

Be aware of how you talk to yourself

It is very important to be wary of how you talk to yourself. The manner in
which you talk to yourself will determine whether or not you are able to
encourage yourself to reach out for more. As an individual, you should be
able to appreciate the power of positive self-talk which is basically talking
to yourself using positive words and phrases. For instance, whenever you
realize that you have fallen below your personal expectations in a specific
undertaking, you should tell yourself you can do better next time instead of
saying ‘that was very bad’.

Positive self-talk will ensure that you are in a position to dust yourself up
and try again whenever you fail to meet your expectations. Moreover,
positive self-talk can also go a long way in enabling you to convert your
weaknesses into strengths. This is because you encourage yourself to no
longer see perceive your weaknesses as impediments but as opportunities
that can be explored for the benefit of both yourself and those around you.
For instance, if some form of disability has afflicted you, you can use this as
an opportunity to be champion for the rights of people affected with similar
disabilities this benefiting yourself and others.
Come up with specific positive words that you will use
It might be virtually impossible to exhaust the vocabulary of positive
words. There are many positive words that are out there but not all of them
might be applicable to your specific situation. In light of this fact, you
should be able to know those words that can work effectively with you and
those that might not be applicable to your specific situation. By using
positive words that specifically relate to your situation, you will find much
easier to realize and appreciate the positive effects of such words. 

Learn to think before you speak

One of the reasons why you might use harsh words on yourself and on other
people as well is because you are in a hurry to respond. Sometimes, it is not
always a good idea to always insist to respond to issues, questions, and
queries in a hurry. Instead, you should exercise thinking before you speak.
For instance, someone might ask you questions that might initially seem
stupid. Your obvious and immediate reaction would be to respond in kind
by issuing out a rather harsh response. However, if you are able to think
before you speak, then you will be in a better position to find the right
words to respond with. You will be more likely to use kind words and avoid
a scenario where you offer an emotional response. A thoughtful response
full of kind words such as ‘may I suggest’, ‘may I refer you to’ and other
such words will ensure that your response attracts the attention of other
people.

You could be wondering how long you should wait before offering your
response. There is no rule of thumb when it comes to the duration of time
that you should wait before responding to a question r query. Ultimately, the
duration must be reasonable and one that allows for meaningful
conversation. In essence, you can choose to wait for at least five seconds
before responding. This is a typical duration that can allow you adequate
time to come up with a good response and one that is full of positive words.
However, the exact duration could be a little bit shorter or longer depending
on the question and your understanding of the same.

One of the reasons why it is important to think before you speak is because
people are different and unique. This uniqueness also extends to their
individual sensitivities. Positive words and their usage play a very
significant role when it comes to addressing some of the sensitivities that
other people could be having. A word might seem simple in everyday usage
but I might be considered very offensive to a specific category of people.
For instance, the word midget can be very offensive when referring to little
people. Positive words can enable you to select the proper word of
vocabulary you can use instead of such offensive ones. Being able to think
before you speak will enable you to identify the proper word to use in light
of potential sensitivities that some of your audience members might have.
IN this case, you might what to say little people instead.

Make regular use of kind words

Positive words go hand in hand with kind words. In fact, there are many
kind words that are also regarded to be positive in nature. For this reason,
you should always remember to use kind words in conjunction with positive
ones. Words such a kindly, sorry, may I and please can go a long way in
enhancing the overall quality of conversation that you may be having with
someone else or even yourself. For instance, you can say ‘that was very
delicious, can I please have some more?’ In this instance, you might
congratulate the chef using positive words but the additional use of kind
words makes the congratulatory message sound more sincere.

The use of kind words especially on a regular basis will also make you an
attractive person. Kind words convey a feeling of warmth and
approachability. For instance, whenever you use the word ‘kindly’ when
requesting something, the other person is more likely to honor the request.
This is because; your usage of such words will make them feel like they are
dealing with a nice person who is approachable. Everybody wants to be
around nice people even do things for them. To this end, people will always
receive you much more positively and they will be willing to do things for
you or with you hence making you an attractive person.
Learn to be thankful
Developing a habit of expressing gratitude for each and every good thing
another person does to you is very important. When expressing gratitude to
others, you will most often than not find yourself using positive words of
encouragement. For instance, whenever someone offers your assistance
with something small or big, you can say ‘thank you so much, you were
very helpful’. This is an expression of gratitude while at the same time, it
employs the use of positive words such as you were very helpful to
encourage and enhance the self-esteem of the other party.

You might often find yourself showing gratitude for the big things done t
you but overlook the small ones. However, learning to express gratitude
even for the seemingly small things will ensure that you develop a natural
capacity to use kind words with others without even knowing it. This
natural ability will make you an attractive person and at the same time.
Furthermore, people feel much better about themselves whenever they are
appreciated especially for small things. You will, therefore, be able to have
a significant impact on the lives of many people without even knowing.

Many people might not know this but being thankful for the small things
and favors you get is likely to open doors for bigger ones. For instance, you
might ask someone for some small money in order to invest in a simple
startup company. While returning the money, you end up expressing a lot of
gratitude for the assistance they gave you. In case you ever need similar
assistance in the future, they might be willing to give you even more. The
enhanced generosity can be attributed to two things. First is because you
obviously honored your promise to repay the money. Secondly and perhaps
most important, is the fact that you were indeed very thankful when
returning the money. On the other side, if you had just simply returned the
money and offered a simple thank you, you might not enjoy the enhanced
generosity next time.  In this example, the power of positive words in
expressing gratitude can improve your chances of success through access to
more opportunities.

Learning how to use positive words

Repetitive use of positive words is undoubtedly a very important skill.
However, in order to be good at it, you should take time this vital social
skill. One of the steps that you can take in order to learn how to repetitively
use positive words on others and on yourself is by listening to reading or
listening to literature that is inspiring. There are many books out there and
even audio files featuring an array of inspirational speakers. Such
productions are always full of information about how you can go about
marinating a positives lifestyle. Most of them emphasize the role of positive
words and how repeated use of such words can result in an overall positive
lifestyle. By reading or listening to such books, you will be in a better
position to appreciate the role of such words and even learn many examples
of positive words, which you can use in your everyday interaction.
 Conclusion
Briefly, it is very important to stay positive at all times. Life can and will
present you with challenges and difficulties that might be seemingly
overwhelming. However, maintaining a positive mindset will ensure that
you are able to overcome anything. Positive words go a long in enabling
you to maintain a positive lifestyle.

Positive words are mainly words of encouragement such as you are strong,
you can do it or even you are beautiful. Such words are very powerful in
enabling you to improve your self-esteem as a person. Improved self-
esteem will make you stop doubting yourself and instead, you will be able
to things that you thought you would never do. Positive words can also
improve your capacity to attain your dream by reminding yourself that you
are better than they are and that you have what it takes. You thus are able to
attain your full potential.

Positivity is an attribute that easily rubs off on other people. By maintaining

a positive lifestyle through repeated use of positive words, you will be able
to make those around you to be positive about life as well. You will also be
able to attract other people with a positive mindset. When you have a pool
of positively minded individuals, your overall group dynamics will be
enhanced thus improved productivity.

Your physical and mental well-being can also be improved through

sustained use of positive words. Such words will ensure that you are not
overwhelmed by whatever situation you might be facing. This will avert
potential health complications occasioned by depression and stress. Finally,
there are several ways through which you use to ensure that you are able to
integrate positive words in your day-to-day life. They include
complimenting other people, thinking before you speak, coming up with a
list of specific positive words to guide you in your day-to-day activities,
being thankful for others and being aware of how you talk to yourself.