One of the assignments in the SSY Course is to write an essay. The essay is about a world in your dreams. But, there's a rider. It cannot have any negative words. Even now, I chose a negative term to tell the precondition for the essay writing. It is, therefore, a really challenging task to write the essay using only positive-terms. Sentences like - No child is deprived of education gets rejected because it has a NO in it. There are no potholes in the road is also not accepted. The essay needs several edits, and yet some negative words still slip in.
I realized that we use 50% negative words to convey even the good things in our life! More importantly, we use only 20-30% positive words. Rest are merely neutral words. Research has proven that positivity has a much profound impact on behavior as compared to negativity. We, therefore, need to train ourselves to communicate positively.
As a starting point, we should work on the neutral words. They are easy to be changed to positive. Click this link to find 100 positive words that can be used in our communication. We think in images and not words. Therefore, when we describe a good thing using negative terms, we first see an image we don't want to see and then see it replaced with a positive one.
Metrics:
Pick an email or a report you have recently written.
Mark the negative words used in them.
Re-write them using positive words. This is our rehearsal for real-time communication.
Now, before you rattle an email or a speech, think beforehand. Check yourself for the terms you are using in it.
Measure the impact of this change.
Subodh
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