improving your self-image

October 14, 2018

Are You Boring? Words You Should and Shouldn’t Say

I am about to make you self-conscious about what you say. Or, to improve your social stature. Following these guidelines might even make you a more engaging person. I hope the latter. After all, I am a therapist.

Counselors meet many with personal insecurity and low self-esteem. How often do we hear, “I’m so boring.” These oft times timid souls are self-effacing and therefore believed by others either uninteresting or conceited. Those who withdraw from the crowd risk the opinion that they think themselves “too good” to join in.

If you want to compel attention, first think about what you say. Many of us find a new person physically attractive from a distance. Since light travels faster than sound, he may appear bright until you hear him. Fresh ideas help you retain the outer magic.

I do not want to listen to the echo of past conversations. My brain needs dusting, along with scintillating talk as a cleanser.

Here are some words and sounds you ought not to make if you desire to enthrall:

  • Choose adverbs with care. Words like frankly, honestly, and very lose their strength with each additional use.
  • Say less rather than more. If your utterances intrigue, the other might follow-up with a question. This is called conversation.
  • Beware of the following lesson. The 20th-century composer John Cage created a piece entitled 4’33” consisting of a performer coming on stage, sitting down, and timing-out just over four-and-a-half minutes before taking his bows. As Cage wrote in a poem, “I have nothing to say and I’m saying it.”
  • Avoid overuse of superlatives: stunning, awesome, shattering .
  • Common words such as good or bad need explanation. What was good and in what way?
  • Such adjectives as unfair are overused. Another’s unfairness is your fairness. Explain yourself, but avoid whining.
  • The word hypocrite presents the same dilemma. All of us are hypocrites at some time in our lives. Maybe at any time.
  • Try to overcome beginning sentences with so or um or uh. Speaking is not a race. Your vocalization will stand in relief against the backdrop of stillness. Conceive of your voice as the foreground in a painting where silence serves as background.

  • Some phrases are empty of distinction. “At the end of the day,” comes to mind; “bottom line” is another. I attended a six-hour seminar in which the speaker, otherwise an intelligent and competent woman, used “bottom line” a few dozen times. Had she repeated those words once more I might have rushed the podium.
  • “You guys” is a frequent reference made to mixed gender groups. “You guys” might include women. “Ladies” or “ladies and gentlemen” will get you some notice and show respect. You may dislike the formality I’m suggesting. Remember, I want you to stand out.
  • Pronoun problems occur when using he, she, they, and so on. The listener might not realize to whom you are referring lest you specify the person.
  • Skip the uptalk or upspeak : try not to transform your declarative statements into questions by raising your voice at a sentence’s end. You succeed only in sounding insecure when you uptalk regularly.
  • If you believe something, say so. Feeling is not believing. One is an emotional state, the other intellectual.
  • When you don’t know a word, consult the dictionary and write the meaning down.
  • What words might you substitute for the ordinary ones? Instead of great, consider considerable, significant, notable, important, valuable or major, among others.
  • Listen to recordings of famous orators for guidance. I’m thinking of people like Martin Luther King Jr., Churchill, and Adlai Stevenson II.
  • For shock value, be honest. Unless you are a counselor, you might not recognize how much we humans hide.

As noted up top, much as I wish you more security, excessive concentration on what you are saying is a symptom of ill-confidence. Rehearse alone. Consult a thesaurus, too. Both will make real-time socialization easier.

Once you employ a few of the suggestions above, you’ll be better able to put your focus where it belongs: on the words of the other.

Consume works of the finest authors. Mark Twain, one such writer, said: “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

Twain’s implicit suggestion to read is essential. Unless the people you wish to associate with haven’t a thought in their heads, you need to have a few and a knowledge base they lack.

All this will take effort. Courage, too. Speech is the oral gift of portraiture, like a brush placed in the hand of a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh. Think of your voice as the voice of one who sings art-songs. If you do, you will already have become more worthy of respect — both understood and remembered.

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Both of the pictures above are called Triple Self Portrait. The first is by Norman Rockwell, the second by Egon Schiele. They were sourced from Wikiart.org.

November 15, 2015

Why We Compete and What We Compete For

Jose_Luis_Nunez_bouldering_in_Ton_Sai_Beach

Much as you might wish to, you cannot avoid competition. But why do we compete? For what do we compete? Here are some answers:

  • The Simplest Answer: We’ve been programmed — hard-wired — by evolution. Those who survived times of limited resources and danger out-foxed the ones who didn’t. The law of the jungle is still evident even among baseball fans grappling for a batted-ball hit into the stands  — a thing, after all, of little real value. Our ancestors were the fittest in the battle for survival, at least if their survival led them to seed the next generation.
  • Glory (Kleos): The ancient Greeks wanted to be recalled in story and song. This was a time before a desirable afterlife had been conceived. Then, as now, the idea of living forever was attractive. Put your name on a tall building, write a book, win the World Cup — they are all the same. Of course, eternity is a long time to last.
  • Desirable Mates: If you triumph in competition you have a wider choice of sexual companions. Again, this was hard-wired in our ancestors long ago, but still drives us. Appearance motivates men more than women. Surprise! The evolutionary explanation is that the proper array of physical features gave prehistoric man the signal of a female’s capacity to give birth and nurse children. Man was driven to produce hardy little ones who would carry his genetic material forward. Thus, he needed a healthy mate.
  • Money, Status, and Power: These are tied to the previous three. We also think (wrongly) that large amounts of such items will make us much happier than the next person. Materialism per se doesn’t, but having the capacity to win those material things registers on the female radar screen more than a man’s good looks. Women are inclined by evolution and instinct to be drawn to those men who can fend for them and future children; not the guy who is passive, weak, deferential, and unaccomplished. In part this is thought due to the prehistoric woman’s physical disadvantage in protecting herself and her children, as well as finding adequate food and shelter when the children were small. The bodily cost and vulnerability of pushing out the next generation is greater for the fair sex than for her mate. No wonder she has been programmed to attend to different things than he does.
  • Triumph Over Aging and Death: Men, in particular, try to keep proving they are strong and virile, the better to keep decrepitude and demise at bay.
  • To Give Yourself Purpose: Striving is compelling. Competition is one of the answers to the question of what to do with your life.
  • Distraction: Games are a way of entertaining oneself — pouring excitement into the vessel of passing time. The joy of the contest is well-known. The male’s achievement of public notice in winning a game, excelling at the guitar, or writing a best-seller is also like the peacock’s spread of his feathers during the mating season, giving him added allure.
  • The Perks of Victory: To the winner go the spoils: a gorgeous home, the latest technical innovation, attractive clothes, etc.
  • Enhanced Self-image: Who dislikes applause? Victory boosts your self-esteem. Only if you place high enough in the race, of course.

512px-BW_2012-08-26_Anna_Stoehr_AUS_0601

  • To Win Friends: Have you ever witnessed what happens when a third child joins two who are playing well together? One of them is frequently the loser in the game of attaining primacy. Feelings are hurt. The value of friends is also based on the survival instinct. Those ancestors who lived “solo” had a more limited chance of survival against aggressive animals, drought, injury, and famine. We observe such team participation in business, sports, defense of your country, and raising your family.
  • Tradition: Some of us carry on practices encouraged by our forebears. Responsibility to those caretakers and ancestors, as well as their encouragement, contributes to continuing a parent’s business, joining the military as did a father and grandfather, or simply playing touch football as was the family’s habit.
  • Personal Growth: One way to feel better about yourself is to meet a challenge. Overcoming insecurities is a kind of contest between you and your fears. Mother Nature is your fearsome opponent when climbing a mountain. There is no trophy for reaching the top, but your sense of achievement doesn’t require one.
  • Caring for Your Children: The offspring need food, clothes, education, and a safe neighborhood in which to live. Moreover, the kids represent your posterity if they seed the future with your genes by having little ones themselves.
  • To Defy the Appearance of Age: Well, we try, don’t we? In effect, we are competing with our younger selves. Our tools? Comb-overs, hair-pieces, hair styles, body-building, cosmetic surgery, and the like. Our duds attempt to disguise the increase of natural defects as the body declines. We even fool ourselves with names: the grandmother who requires that she be called “Nana,” not grandma, for example.* “All is vanity,” says Ecclesiastes.
  • The Race Against Time: Here is an opponent we cannot beat, yet we make the effort. Most of us do our best to cram as much “life” into the unforgiving minute as possible.

As I hope is evident, some of the motives instigating our yen for competition and achievement continue to work on us well beyond the point they are useful. Seventy-year-olds getting cosmetic surgery — really? Acceptance of the inevitable is not popular in the West. We listen to our genes and, as a result, buy the jeans 15-year-olds think are hot.

You might argue with the reasons I’ve given. There are certainly others and many of us try to fight our programming. Nonetheless, evolutionary psychology research points in the direction I’ve indicated. We have many motives and are often quite unaware of them. All that said, if you stay on the surface of things in your attempt to understand yourself, you will miss a lot. Most people do.

Inevitably, though not for everyone, competitive activities are scaled down; at least if we are paying a little attention to what the clock, our bodies, and the world are telling us. And yet, as Dylan Thomas declaimed, “do not go gentle into that good night.” Competition is almost inescapable even to the last.

Maureen O’Hara, the late Irish-American actress of the mid-twentieth century, said this about herself:

“There have been crushing disappointments. But when that happens, I say, ‘Find another hill to climb.’”

Good advice, even if the hill is a small one.

maureen-oharaMaureen O’Hara

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*I am reminded by my wife that some “Nanas” do not want to be associated with their mother-in-laws. Thus, there will never be more than one “Grandma Stein” in my family, namely my late mother. 😉

The top image is Jose Luis Nunez bouldering in Ton Sai Beach, Krabi, Thailand. The picture was taken by Mr. Nunez. The second photo is of Anna Stoehr, AUS, competing in the Boulder Worldcup 2012. It is the work of Henning Schlottmann. Both images come from Wikimedia Commons.