Optimizing Your Articulation:
In this blog I go over some important components of great articulations in living the most optimal life...
Alright, welcome back to the optimized blog and in this blog I am going to over something that has recently been rising in my consciousness. I hear the same critiques from what I would describe as common people. “You can be too passionate. You can be too forward. You can be to this blablabla”. I have observed that people like to give observational feedbacks at personality quirks of others when we all have fallible characteristics that inevitably come short I would say. In this context, I’ve never understood the problems with passion, forwardness or being overt in communication. Arguably, the typical commoner operates on delusions and cannot face the hard truths of life. I have consistently observed this trend time and time again. They seem to want to insulate themselves from their failures and the places where they fall short. The reality, is that we all fall short in some form or another. Yet, I am always interested in the obsession with what I say. I’ve heard it numerous times people will say that people don’t like what other people say. I’ve observed this pattern of intolerant(mostly dumb people) weaponize and use words against tolerant individuals and to use it as a mechanism against their destruction simply because they are more covert rather than overt in their communications. For the longest time, I never understood why people didn’t indicate their intentions clearly and objectively. Yet, the older I got the more petty and egotistical many people are in their objective to impose their plans on others… Is my point to complain about the condition of human nature? The answer is obviously not otherwise that is not a solution based mindset.
However, I would like to indicate that such individuals who attempt to use fragments of flaws in a person and use articulations against you towards your detriment must be controlled. For the longest time, I have largely operated under the assumption that as long as one operates from a degree of respectability and integrity then everything will be right. Increasingly, to get what you want in the world I’ve increasingly realized that people no matter how well intentioned no matter how good or helpful you are will seek to use your own words and actions against you to suit their agenda. On some level, this is not really that revolutionary. We as people have plans competing against other people’s plans and the person who wins out gets the most benefit while the persons plan who does not win out inevitably loses. In this given context, their must be definite winners and losers. The simplest mechanism I’ve seen people use against others is what is said when we communicate a piece of information to another person. The interpretation of this given information, tonality of voice and the way it’s conveyed is far more important than how good you are, how great your hobbies or anything of actual character. Why? Simple, people are resentful of other people’s success and seek to tear you down you grow to higher levels.
In this given context, we must always be in the state of initiative to remove initiative from others whenever and wherever possible. It is akin to doing everything so thoroughly and so articulated that their is nothing that they can weaponize against you. What do I mean by this? It means being able to design and cultivate sentences and words that are so well put together that their is nothing any negative detractor can do to damage your reputation, your goals or objectives. The reality is as the further you progress into yourself and your way of life, their will be people who wish to detract, negate and bring you down to a level of their own low level life. The typical strategy I have always employed is to eliminate them entirely.
Remove them from your life and simply focus on only cultivating people who are supportive of your endeavor. For example, I have a simple rule if you tend to be a very argumentative combative person who has meaningless digression’s I typically eliminate said individuals from life. Through this elimination process I remove friction and can then focus on the things that truly matter to me not meaningless debate. However, if it is the case that we cannot do said actions then we must focus on speaking so specifically and articulately that no one can weaponize their intentions against us or even slander us without them being harshly punished.
It’s actually quite baffling me that this revelation only came to me while I was in the army, it was easily one simple thing that I’ve never worked on that could improve my life quality by 100% and increase my ability to acquire my goals. The reality is that most of us have never considered that maybe we are not that great at articulating are words in such a way that always serves are benefit. The common thing I’ve heard is that “Oh, I’m just being honest and telling the truth, they simply cannot handle it.” This is just a garbage excuse to not improve your communication capacities to suit your advantage. You may have told the truth but did that person want to hear the truth? Was that the appropriate situation to tell the truth? Did you articulate that given truth in such a way that the given person can receive those words in such a way that they don’t get emotional or defensive? Did you have the proper tone of voice and capacity to assure that transmitting that given information to X person serves towards your benefit rather than your detriment? The reality is probably not. It’s very difficult to do this constantly and to be socially aware to be capable of being able to applicate your words defuse, disarm, negate, redirect, amplify, discredit and amplify. If you could only optimize your language capabilities and articulate your words so well and so specified then their is literally nothing someone could do to you other than downright physically harming you to impose that plan upon you. The reality is that we need plan for when people are petty. You need to plan for when people will be petty. You need to plan when someone is going to attempt to stab you. The one constant of homo-sapiens is that we are loving, giving but also conniving backstabbers if we can take advantage of the situation. When you operate on the notion that everyone is going to be good to you you leave yourself vulnerable. So how can we articulate ourselves? How can we actively improve our speech patterns and to word our way towards conveying ourselves and disarming others?
The task is not something I pretend to fully understand and it is not something I pretend to fully comprehend but I believe I have a good hunch. In general, I think articulating your words well is based on a foundation of how a wide and a very very expansive vocabulary. With a wide and expansive vocabulary you have a great capability of expressing yourself on a higher level of abstraction and nuance that requires the other person to be able to deconstruct what your saying at a higher level, lest they look like fools themselves. The objective is not to necessarily sound smart but to use words that lends towards flexible and concrete definitional statements. Next, by articulating our words in specific contexts in ambiguity, acknowledgement and avoiding statements that can allow assumptions of character without an understanding of having met that given person assures that is becomes difficult or near impossible to slander you.
Another important mechanism of articulating and being a well-spoken individual is being able to be contextually ambiguous and not speak in unnecessary personal specifics that can be weaponized against you. This means do not be too forward about your plans, what you intend to do, your personal life or anything that is considered your private life. This does not necessarily mean you cannot talk about components of your personal life but is important to not give unnecessarily personal info without being absolutely sure it serves your benefit rather than your detriment. Next, the notion of people asking you questions of what you know and don’t know need to be done in a calculated manner. From my perspective from observing Tom Brady and people of high achievement you can almost never go wrong by saying that you are unsure of yourself and that you still have alot to work on.
It is better to say you don’t know and claim ignorance than to make claims of unknowability. I’ve had days where people ask me opinions on things and attempt to figure me out or where I stand. I often leave them guessing by not conveying my real position or rather I choose to not convey it unless theirs good reason to do so. I generally discuss that I am not fully educated on the given subject but will give a rough sketched out answer. The answer says a general statement of acceptability of neutrality that affords no misrepresentations but assumes my own ignorance in the subject which means by being at a lower level than the person asking me the question. In doing so, they become ungrounded and can get egotistical in their own knowledge and typically dismiss your knowledge which means you can use this to your advantage by winning the favor of others by being as unassuming as possible. By asserting that you have minimal knowledge of a given subject or it is not your field of expertise your afford yourself the freedom to opt out of a conversation that can rankle you into an unnecessary debate or cause a stupid moronic argument over something that is an absolute waste of time. In general people who claim to not know and are still improving are well liked, respected and given higher consideration on average. Next, when you accomplish a given task or objective give others the credit and take credit last. Do not be in a rush to show others everything you did. It is unnecessary and unimportant. It’s better to not unnecessarily allow these petty people to resent you if you don’t need it. If your a multi-millionaire and making a great deal of money, it is not necessary to share what is your doing with others.
You need to be specific and particular with how you articulate yourself and be aware of the condition for when it makes sense to implicate what your plans and intentions ours. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is operate under the given assumption that everyone is interested or cares to hear about your goals, passions and dreams. The reality is that this is simply not the case. It is simply not the case that they care nor even necessarily want to see you accomplish your objectives. Remember, that the less you generally share the better you generally can expect your day to go. This mistake can also make you appear to be an adversary to other people who may have similar objectives thus you are competition that must be eliminated. Thus, optimizing our capacity to express ourselves and to understand the appropriate context for when it makes sense to indicate something or in other situations where it does not.
The expression of our aspirations and intentions in reality I do not believe is something that should be overtly implicated in absolute detail. A simple example is the following, someone or your boss asks you, “So what did you do over the weekend…? You never seem to do anything exciting what do you do all day?”. “Well, I typically go wake up around 5-6 am, work on my business in clothing line by working on different types of marketing concepts, then I typically workout for a few hours and you continue on and on in excruciating detail.” In this given context, this answer is unacceptable, you have provided unnecessary specifics to your boss who is someone you maintain a professional relationship with. You have provided ideas, thoughts and intentions that could be misconstrued, asserted that you are very ambitious or could potentially render a degree of avoidable resentment.
You do not owe anyone an explanation of what you are going to do and they are not entitled to any explanation to the intimacy of your given private life other than maybe your significant other or even your kids. By realizing that you have definite boundaries of what you can and cannot share you create a boundary that constrains the reality of what they can use against you, you make yourself unassuming and you afford yourself the freedom to carry on your goals without making unnecessary enemies. Remember enemies, is an inevitability as you get closer and closer to your dream reality but it is key we remove any ammo that people can use from your words to slander you, misconstrue what you say, twist, distort or would seek to misinform. By being able to articulate and optimize our own self-expression we take active initiative to suit our objectives and assure that our words represent our goals, desires and expressions to the most accurate possible. Control specifically what you express, provide details only when necessary but otherwise only provide general answers and assure confidentiality in intentions unless the situation absolutely justifies it accordingly.
When crafting our sentences, propositions and reframing of our words, we need to speak ambiguously, freely and in a capacity that suits our intentions, that cannot be misconstrued or weaponized against us. You should speak in a manner that is considerate of a given perspective, provides impartiality, gives a balanced view point but assures a definite boundary that shows well thought out and descriptive words. For example let us suppose someone asks me the following: “What do you think of the coming 2024 debate?". This is a very loaded and charged question that could be used against us to categorize us as either a trumper or democrat when we may not necessarily want to pick sides. By giving an honest non-interpretative flexible answer it allows the question-asker to construe and use that response to label us easily and to control our message to self-identify negative characteristics with either party if we cannot answer in an effective manner. This is not say that identification with either party is necessarily bad but rater we may want flexibility in our self-identification rather than opting for any single political position. If you said, “"Well the republicans can be corrupt people who are constantly saying things that suit the rich..” or if you said “the democrats foreign policy objectives are incredibly predictable and their progressivism is boundaries without limits…” Both of these statements have heavy boas to a given perspective and do provide flexibility or a balanced tightness of words that have multi-definitions or singular definitions in their usage.
The other issue is that these given statements do not expound on the given position nor provides propositional logic that builds on the position to self-justify itself. A better way to have articulated the given above sentence would have been “Well I would say that from the long history of the republican party it has been a significant precedent that republicans tend to be biased towards low-taxation policies which is not something I support in all given circumstances but their are areas I would say I agree upon. Traditional conservatism is something that I have often aligned with myself with based on traditional family values that I believe are integral to a strong American society but as of late I have observed a slippery slope of intense polarization in the right and the on the left that makes it hard for me to align with the aggressive rhetoric. I don believe that both sides have alot to offer I tend to be a bit on the right but I am not sure which side I am tending toward I will come-back to you with an answer once I know it…” The brilliance of this givens statement is that it justifies it’s challenge with the current political climate, it provides considerations that are positives rather than extremist viewpoints and it affords credit considerations but yet does not give the question asker any definition as to where he lies on the given issue. The question akser is not entitled a given position nor do you have to respond. Yet, you also point out that their is a huge issue with polarization which makes it difficult to answer the question directly which shows to the question asker that you are thoughtful and considerate of the challenges and you are unsure of yourself. This statement is difficult to weaponize because it does not make extremist claims. It does not concern itself with emotionalist arguments or seeks to prove any particular point. It indicates a non-significant amount of personal info but affords reasonable credit to the question while withholding information until it makes sense to answer the given question. It also affords you credibility and value since you acknowledge your limits of understanding and propose you are working on attempting to understand the issue better. An individual who would seek to take or quote this given statement out of context would look like a complete idiot and would face a lawsuit for slander if they were attempt to transmit a statement half iterated without the full context. Obviously, this happens all the time but by consistently wording what we say we remove all ammunition for adversaries to use against and in doing so navigating the world in a more optimized capacity.
By being able to navigate and articulate your words well, you can diffuse bad situations, navigate toxic situations, protect your reputation, communicate effectively with your spouse, sustain and end conflicts in amicable ways and more. By being able to articulate your words well you take initiative against people who may resent you for your success and you afford yourself the ability to navigate unseen and in a state of representing yourself in the most accurate and most effective way possible. You will be able to navigate any situation on no matter how political and challenging the situation may be. My question to you, is what do you have to lose? Are you really the most articulate and eloquent word smith? Are you really a person that can communicate and convey your intention in any situation to serve your advantage rather than disadvantage ? Why or why not? What are simple ways to improve this ability? 1. Make flashcards with a new vocabulary word everyday 2. Read dense books. 3. Do toastmasters 4. Work on rewording things or focus on saying things in many different ways in your before you say them. In doing so you will afford yourself the capability to get closer to the most optimal life.