Speak Easy Note #4 - Accentuate the Positive

There is a fond memory I have of being on jury duty and waiting to be called for jury selection. I had finished paying the bills I had lugged with me and had updated my address book; I wanted to continue to use the waiting time productively. The previous week, all of the consultants in the firm where I then worked had been asked to write an article on any topic of their choosing. The one requirement was that they have great passion for their chosen subject. For a long time, I had carried a dream in my heart that one day I would write a book on communication. And so it was a natural choice to write about good communication for this assignment. I had come up with the title: "Accentuate the Positive" and was writing away when I realized that the words I had just written were in opposition to the solid advice I was recommending.

I looked down at these words and started laughing:

"Don't use negative sentence formation to express your thoughts and feelings."

For some reason, I felt totally stuck and unable to express the advice in any other way. By an odd twist of fate, the person sitting next to me was an editor for a publishing company. I turned to him and quietly asked, "How can I express this without committing the very mistake I am recommending that people avoid?" He looked at me in astonishment that I was struggling with something so obvious and simple, and replied,

"Use affirmative sentence formation to express your thoughts and feelings."

I quickly experienced my second good laugh of the morning which was certainly welcome during that tedious extended downtime that tends to fill the greater part of jury duty.

That was long ago. The article turned out to be four pages long. When I got to the end of it, it felt like I had written all that I had to say about good communication. I said to myself, with a sad sense of having lost an important dream, "Well, maybe you won't be writing a book on communication after all if this is all you have to say on this topic."

How sweet it feels to have written SPEAK EASY, The Communication Guide for Career and Life Success which has been completed and ready for purchase through Word Craft Press for the past three weeks. SPEAK EASY is 231 pages long with a six-page introduction, by the way.

In a future blog post, I will fill you in on the conception of SPEAK EASY long after that jury duty experience and on the five-year gestation and labor period that it took me to bring SPEAK EASY to the marketplace. What a wonderful sense of accomplishment I get when I look back over these recent years and especially when I remember what the disappointment of my lost book dream felt like when I wrote “Accentuate the Positive” so many years in the past.

The word for this week’s Speak Easy Note is “NOT”. It is laughable that I found it impossible to identify an alternative way to express my recommendation in the affirmative way back then. Here's an excerpt from SPEAK EASY on this important topic:

SAY IT WITHOUT THE “NOT”

For every comment that has the word “not” in it or is constructed in the negative, there’s an affirmative way of saying exactly the same thought. Many people have a natural tendency to use the negative formation of sentences rather than the affirmative.

They prefer to say,
“It isn’t necessary to wash the dishes tonight.”
rather than say,
“It’s okay to leave the dirty dishes until tomorrow.”

They choose to say,
“No problem, I don’t mind at all.”
rather than say,
“Absolutely, I’d be delighted to do that.”

Their first inclination is often to say,
“That will never work.”
rather than say,
“Here’s what will make that really successful.”

They start their sentences with
“I don’t think that …”
rather than say,
“My opinion is …”

It’s an extremely beneficial exercise to become acutely aware of how often you use the negative form in communication and to find a way to express exactly what you want to say using an affirmative form instead.  Obviously, saying the words, “not” or “never” in your communications will be appropriate and acceptable in many instances.  If, though, you can get yourself to be aware and challenge your use of negative expression, you will find that it’s easy to switch to the affirmative and the value of making this switch is vast.  It’s always better to be thought of as a positive person rather than a negative one.

To begin to appreciate this value, reflect on the fact that one of the most common ways of expressing agreement is the response, “no problem” which is comprised of two negative words, one of which indicates difficulty.  Rather than introduce such negative wording into a positive expression of agreement, it’s certainly preferable to use affirmative words like “definitely”, “with pleasure”, “sure”, or “absolutely” than to reply, “no problem” when you want to give an affirmative response.

Compare the following pairs of sentences:

AVOID: “I don’t want to relocate to London.”
BETTER: “I want to live and work in San Francisco.”

AVOID: “I don’t want to join the product team.”
BETTER: “I want to remain in the private banking group.”

AVOID: “No problem...”
BETTER: “Absolutely, tell me more about it.”

AVOID: “I don’t like it that you never include me in the planning meetings.”
BETTER: “I want you to know how much I’d like to participate in the planning meetings.”

AVOID: “Since I didn’t have enough time this week, I won’t be able to finish my report until next Friday. ”
BETTER: “Since I had unexpected commitments this week, I shifted priorities and will be able to finish my report by next Friday.”

AVOID: “I didn’t realize how long it had been since we saw each other.”
BETTER: “How wonderful to spend time with you after all these years.”

Establish good language patterns by using affirmative sentence formation whenever possible. Avoid negative sentence construction and stay away from negative or confrontational language, even in the subtlest ways. So often people describe what they don’t like or don’t want to do rather than focus on what they like and do want to do. Describe what you want to move toward rather than what you want to move away from.

Next week we'll look at the needy syndrome and how certain word patterns can infiltrate our communications, becoming crutches to relinquish responsibility. 

Until Friday,
The Wordsmith