Happy New Vernacular

Happy New Year.

Happy New Vernacular.

Hope you find new ways to communicate next year.

As Paul J Meyer said – Communication - the human connection - is the key to personal and career success.

And this series of posts which includes (Happy New Here, Happy New Seer, Happy New Cheer, Happy New Dear, Happy New Career and Happy New Peer), is dedicated to wishing you both.

May this be the year when you become better at the things you both say and do.

Because communication is often the source of our biggest joys and our biggest sorrows.

An interest in psychology will serve you well.

Not just the psychology of other people.

But also your own physiological and mental make-up.

Speaking when you are tired, when you are preoccupied, when you are busy, when you are stressed, when you are hungry, when you are angry is rarely productive and rarely produces positive outcomes.

I have written about this before.   If you want to read what I had to say, you can do so here.

Here’s Ambrose Bierce on why you should never speak in anger: “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

So become a student of yourself.

Be super conscious of yourself especially at critical moments.

Because knowing when to speak is just as important as knowing how to speak.

Speech of course is uniquely human and we can’t even wait to form understandable words to begin . Here’s Annie Dillard on that: “There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.”

Those of you with young children will relate.

As we gain in years and understanding, we become more and more conscious of the differences in speech.

Here’s Zhuang Zi on the differences between speech that emanates from great minds and speech that emanates from small minds:  “Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.”

We also become more and more self-conscious.

Eager to sound brilliant and wise, we often become nervous and tongue-tied.

This is especially if we feel we are on the outside looking in.

Here’s Stephen Spielberg on the awkwardness of not belonging: “I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives. ”

And here’s Winston Churchill on the challenges of making an after dinner speech: “There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.”

Thank heavens for Toastmasters.

Where you can conquer that crippling nervousness and acquire the tools to speak confidently and well.

One of the many positive outcomes that Toastmasters delivers is teaching you how to be brief.

Learning to give short speeches takes practice.

If you ever need a line to shut up a long-winded speaker, here’s one from Muriel Humphrey, the wife of former Vice President Herbert Humphrey : “Hubert, a speech doesn't have to be eternal to be immortal.”

One of the things I was surprised to discover at Toastmasters, was if I scripted and memorized a speech, it not only helped me to stick to the time limit, but I was also able to deliver it better.

Mark Twain came to this realization over a century ago when he declared: “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”

Speech that leads to laughter is of course the most wonderful of all.

Here’s Max Eastman on the importance of laughter: “Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.” And here’s Audrey Hepburn on laughter “I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.”

Walt Disney went so far as to say America’s chief business is laughter.

And he took that to heart by making Disneyland and Disneyworld the happiest places on earth.

Speaking of happiness, you have a better chance of making your day going well if you begin the day with happy thoughts and happy words.

Here’s Norman Vincent Peale on that: “Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.”

A love for words should inevitably lead you to a study of the great speeches of our time.

Speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, or Steve Jobs’s commencement speech at Stanford.

We can’t help but come away from these speeches with impassioned hearts and minds.

Hope you too become a speaker who can stir people’s hearts and minds.

A love for words might also lead you to other languages.

Like Dr.Carlos do Amaral Freire, who holds the record for knowing 115 languages, and has discovered that the most unique of them is Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America.

If you had to learn a new language, which would you choose?  And what’s your most recently discovered word from another language? Mine is schadenfreude from German.

Of course words, though they may be the chief tools of human communication, are not the only ones.

The beautiful thing about the language of love, for instance, is that you don’t need words.

Here’s Ingrid Bergman: “A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. ”

The wag of a dog’s tail, excited barks and jumps; a nuzzle from your pet cat or horse …..all say “I love you” without words.

Sighs are a form of speech, so are hand gestures, body postures, grunts.

Even tears and silence.

Here’s Ovid on tears, “Tears at times have the weight of speech “and here's Susan Sontag on silence, “Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech. ”

Can you think of situations where someone’s tears or silence said more to you than they ever could  have with words?

Finally our lives matter more than anything we can say with our mouths and pens.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “we do not need to proselytize either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.”

Happy New Year.

Happy New Vernacular.

Thanks for reading and have a great week. …..M

P.S. I would like to recognize BrainyQuote for the quotes in this post.  BrainyQuote and Good Reads are my go to sources for quotes, and have provided a lot of food for thought for this blog.