Listen to the language you use.
What you love gives you perspective.
And the language you use reflects that perspective.
It works for people. And it works for business.
What you love can add passion and colour to everything you do.
And everything you say.
My dad was a pediatric surgeon. Every solution usually involved cutting something away. Ruptured appendices. An unfruiting peach tree. Complicated arguments. Find the right place to put the right knife and the problem would be solved.
My uncle is a scientist. Logic and method hold his life together.
The language is the giveaway.
In moments of stress, or contemplation, or passion, the language they chose reflected the things that drove them.
It made them interesting to listen to. Every analogy creating synaptic links in my brain, new memories carved from fresh perspectives, entendre countered with entendre as the talk careened around the table.
Their love for what they did helped me appreciate their point of view.
One example.
I’ve just spent a weekend away with 15 other golf tragics at Barnbougle Dunes and Lost Farm.
Over dinner one night, one of the guys was talking about how some people develop a sense of entitlement by not having to deal with failure. Their parents shield them from consequence. Or they manage to deflect responsibility. Or they have enough money to make bad things just go away.
Whatever.
It was about how failure and shame matter – because dealing with failure builds character, which helps people build a meaningful life.
One of the guys – four glasses of shiraz into the evening – said, “You’ve got to miss a few putts to know you’re alive.”
And, for a moment, every guy who heard him felt like Ghandi had just walked into the room.
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