Shi:
Alrighty. Welcome to the Kay & Shi Show. We are so glad that you are here with us as we dive into something that we would consider ourselves pretty well experienced in, and that is everything language.
Kay:
Language really does matter. What comes out of your mouth, what you think inside your head. When it comes to language, it can actually literally shape your entire existence.
Shi:
We think that it is such an important thing. We’re going to talk about it in all four segments of the Kay & Shi Show this week and first, we want to start out with talking about just language in general, and especially the difference between communication and connection.
Kay:
Now you can simply communicate a message to someone, or you can connect a message through their intellect and into their heart. And when we’re just communicating, that’s that kind of talking back and forth, but connection comes when someone is not only connecting emotionally to what you’re saying but they’re making that intellectual connection within themselves to the communication that’s happening.
Shi:
Right. I like to think of communication as that transaction of words and language and connection is really that dimension of relationship and emotional connection and bonding. So, you get this deeper all connection has communication, but not all communication has a connection. And John Maxwell–as you know, we are on his faculty for his leadership team–is the number one leadership expert in the world, named ‘Leadership Guru’ by Inc. Magazine six years running. The guy’s a big deal. He is written over a hundred books, but he talks a lot about:
(a) the importance of communication in general and language and how we frame what we say and
(b) how important it is for us to communicate with connection especially when it comes to leadership and leadership is really all about influence as John tells us.
When we all look around our lives, we have influence we want to make on the people around us, on the situations and the circumstances and the experiences. So, we’re all leading all the time already which means we’re all seeking to communicate all the time and if we’re doing that wisely, we’re trying to do that through connection. So, understanding that difference is important, but then it’s like, okay, I get it now, how do I actually apply that? And we’ve got a couple of great tips we want to share with you here.
Kay:
Sometimes we do our very, very best to communicate and connect with somebody, but it doesn’t seem to land, and I know oftentimes I’ve gotten confused around why didn’t somebody pick up what I was putting down. My intent was much more noble than they received from the communication that I gave and one of the first tips that we have for you here is to understand that your message and your delivery are two things that play off of each other. You can say all the right words in the world, your words can be really right, but if your body language is tight, if your voice is elevated, if your eyebrows are raised, that message can get totally, totally lost in the bungled delivery of the communication. So, understanding that message and delivery are two different things that are both very important and play a role in communication and connection can really help you when you’re looking to get your point across.
Shi:
It’s nuanced and many of us can get caught up on the message being right. I’m sure you can think of situations where your point of view was the “right” point of view, or the triumphant point of view or the message was the right decision for the business or the family, but the way it was delivered it didn’t allow that message to be received in the way that you would’ve desired to get the outcome you were looking for. And that can be hard for us and many of us will fall back on, but I was right, but it was the right timing, but it was the right move, but it was the right decision. Yes, and delivery matters a lot and it’s in those situations that we can see in particular how much delivery is important.
This is very in alignment with what our coach and mentor Barry Banther talks about which is the difference and idea of content and context and content is really that message, that core, that middle piece, that piece of communication being articulated but the context is everything around that content. It’s the delivery. It’s how we set up that message, that content so that it is received in the way that we’re intending or hoped for and so this understanding can help us bring forward, I think more intelligence as we craft our messages, as we think about our delivery because understanding that how important that delivery is means that it should get just as much attention as the message itself.
Kay:
One of the most helpful things that I’ve heard in regard to content versus context is in relation to fighting within a partnership or within a couple. Oftentimes a fight isn’t really about the content of the fight, but more so about the context and maybe it’s not a fight. It could just be an argument. But when we think about context versus content, think about someone getting really mad that the partner in the relationship didn’t take out the trash. You didn’t take out the trash and I’m just so angry at you for not taking out that trash. Now, that’s the content of the conversation, but the context of that conversation could be, “I’ve asked you to take out the trash three days in a row and you haven’t done it.” The context of that could be, “I’ve taken out the trash the last three times that we’ve done this and now I asked you, and I’ve asked you three days and you haven’t done it.” So, the context of the conversation, the argument isn’t really about the trash itself, the content being taken out. It’s about the context of feeling disrespected and unheard and so the context versus the content can be especially helpful maybe when you’re in the midst of an argument to help you take a step back and get more of a bird’s eye view.
Shi:
And, you know, the context is so many tiny threads around the content. Kay, you gave such a great visual there of this trash example but think about–even as you continue to zoom out on the content of that message and more of the context–did your partner sleep well last night? Is there something else going on at work? Have they been distracted by something? Is there something going on with the kids in the house? Is there something going on with their parents? All of this context gets woven in so that the delivery of the content, if given in a way that is ignoring the context can absolutely make even the most “right” message wrong and so keeping that context in mind is so important. Okay, I know we just love this subject. I love talking everything about language. We both kind of obsess over words and crafting and all of these distinctions and I look forward to bringing forward next even a little more focus on words in our next segment.
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Kay:
Okay, next up we’re going to talk about the power of words. You heard us talk a little bit about communication and connection and some of the ways that things can get lost in translation. But next up, let’s talk about the power of words. I mean, look, language is a sound. When you speak you emit vibrations out of your mouth, and what do we know when we get down to the very, very base of what our universe is, it is energy vibrating at different levels to create matter. And so, when we utilize language, we have sound coming out of our mouths. We have vibrations coming out of our body and into a vibrational universe and that really kind of helps us understand that language can literally shape our reality.
Shi:
Oh my gosh. I mean, talk about catching a vibe. That’s what our words are doing all of the time and once we start going down the rabbit hole–and we know this will spark for you as well–you start hearing the words that we speak, and you start thinking about every word that comes out of your mouth and analyzing this. If our words from a scientific standpoint are literally shaping our reality, not solely we’re not asking you to come to believe that whatever you speak comes into existence right now, but understanding that on that scientific level, these vibrations are going out into a vibrational universe and that they’re resonating with other things that are on that frequency. Then we start to think, okay, well, the power of our words then really is deep, and you think about, well, what are your thoughts formed of? They’re formed of words. Usually, most of us have that narration that, quite frankly, doesn’t shut up most of the time in our head and if you’ve been around the Kay & Shi blog you definitely know we talk about that voice in the head. But the words that it says up there, thoughts, also have a measurable frequency and so language and how we articulate and what words we choose matter a whole lot to how we shape and see our reality and once we start to understand or at least grasp that power, I think we start to bring a lot more intentionality and focus to the words that we use.
Kay:
In 2016 this really hit us big time as we started to understand the power that words had to shape our reality. And as we were taking a bit of stock into the words that we used on a regular basis, one of the things for me personally that came up that was extremely destructive was my pressing play on the pattern of “a lot.” Now, whenever someone would ask me, “How are things going or what’s happening in your world?” I would say, “A lot is going on.” Or if I was expressing frustration, I would say, “Well, it’s just a lot right now,” or “There’s a lot that’s happening.” Or “Man, I love this, but it’s a lot.” So, as those words were heading out into the vibrational universe and finding other things that would attract back to them by the end of 2017, mid-2017 end of 2017, you can bet your buttons we had a lot going on and it was freaking painful. There wasn’t a whole lot of fun or of levity in that second half of 2017. And not saying that 100% of that is due to the fact that I used that language, but once I had the conscious shift of taking away the phrase a lot from my vocabulary in response to when people would ask, how are things going or what’s happening in your world? I found a lot more power, ha-ha, a lot more power coming from myself because I wasn’t leaning on this idea or perpetuating the idea that things were too much for me to handle.
Shi:
What a great example to bring forward and personal just evolution and I’m so glad that you shared that Kay and thinking too, about how in our last segment, we really talked about this idea of the nuance of message and delivery. I truly believe that any message can be delivered in a positive way if we get that delivery right and can be received in a positive way if we get that delivery right. So then understanding this power of words means that if we can choose the right words and give them in the right way that even the hard message can be received positively and in as much as you can hope saving relationships when that’s desired for you. But thinking about these words in particular, a recent swap that Kay and I have made is bringing a lot more intentionality to the phrase “I can’t wait for that.” Because we don’t want to tell the universe or put the vibration out there or even tell ourselves and our own subconscious is that you literally cannot wait. Well, then what does that mean? That you’re gone, that it goes away, that somehow you skip through all of your life in between there and we don’t want that either. So, thinking we’ve flipped from, “I can’t wait for that” to “I’m so excited for that,” “I’m really looking forward to that,” “I look forward to savoring that,” and just changing that from “I can’t wait” to “I look forward to” has been a really neat, I think, personal experience of getting to make a word swap like this that makes me feel better about it and be more intentional with the message I’m trying to deliver.
Kay:
Well, it’s allowed us to stay more open and patient and present in between things that we are truly looking forward to because the power of words, it has the power to shape your reality, but really the words that you think and the words that you say have the power to shape your emotions. And what we know about our emotions is that they are also vibrations and that they also fuel our reality. And so, when we say, “I can’t wait,” the emotion that we are fostering within our own selves is the emotion of impatience. When we say, “I’m looking forward to,” the emotion that we’re fostering is that of anticipation. Now, if you have two weeks until your vacation and you can’t wait, would you rather feel impatient in those two weeks or feel anticipatory toward the fun thing ahead? So, understanding the power of words here on Word Week is incredibly important because remember they truly shape your reality. Now, next up, we’re going to talk about some word flips that are going to help you as you’re looking to shake the reality of your dreams.
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One of the ways that we have learned the things that we’re teaching in this episode is through listening to some of our greatest mentors.
Shi:
In fact, mentorship and the idea of mentorship are something that we’ve cherished for a long time. Fun fact, pulling it out of the vault our old podcast was called The Mentorship Quest, and before that, it was called Millennial Mentorship. So, you’re actually listening to what is now the fourth iteration of this podcast, but we’ve always incorporated a level of mentorship because that’s something we love and now we have something really exciting to share with you.
Kay:
We have compiled an interview series with some of our absolute favorite mentors. Mentors like John Maxwell, Dr. Bruce Lipton, and Joseph McClendon III. We would encourage you to go to kayandshi.com and go get our celebrity interview series because we’ve brought some of our favorite mentors to you.
Shi:
Alright. Now let’s get back to the show and make sure you get over to kayandshi.com to grab your access to the celebrity interview series.
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Shi:
Alright, up next on Word Week, we are talking some of our best pocket tools so make sure you get ready to remember these. We’re talking our best language flips today.
Kay:
Now language flips are a great thing that you can put in your pocket like Shila said because when you catch yourself using one of the well.. I just want to call them canceled. We’re just going to cancel a couple of words today. When you catch yourself using a canceled word, we’ve given you a flip that you can replace it for that might help you be a little more constructive in your communication.
Shi:
Alright up first on the cancel list, if you are a personal growth and development person, you’ve probably heard this one before, canceling the word but. Anytime we use that word, we negate whatever was said before it, and folks that tend to not listen or give any validity to statements coming before it only hearing what’s after. So, instead of saying but, we are challenging/encouraging you to use the word and instead.
Kay:
And is way more inclusive. And gives you an opportunity to find more in, in what you are saying, and let’s take this down to the practical level. Now, one of the examples Shila and I love to use from more of a corporate setting. You all know we’re business owners, we’re entrepreneurs. So, oftentimes the word but can get really sneaky when you’re coming into feedback sessions, especially with an associate that you’re looking to reprimand. So, let’s say someone’s been coming in late and you want to reprimand them for that, and you also want to tell them that they’re a good employee because they are a good employee every other time, but they’re showing up late. So, you might say to them, “You’re a really good employee and we’re really proud to have you on our team, but you keep showing up late and it’s really affecting everyone else.” Now, if you have that but, in the sentence, all of the compliments that you gave right before that are completely gone from their mind. But if you just use the word and in the middle there it makes it more inclusive. Think about, “You’re a really good employee and you’re a wonderful asset to our team and you’ve been late the last few days in a row, and we really need you to start showing up on time.” Now you didn’t negate what you just said, and you got to be more inclusive in the process.
Shi:
You can see how it just helps open it up. More than one statement can be true, but when we hear the word but, you can hear even there, your mind tends to cut out and cut down because now it’s going through a process of this or that. The but means this or that kind of thing. When we use the word and we’re saying two true statements at once and allowing our person to receive the communication better, which has been one of our major themes here on Word Week has been all about. Now, next up on the canceled list of words is the word problem.
Kay:
Now, the word problem shows up quite a bit especially since we live in a world that delivers us challenges at every corner in order to help us grow. Now, many of us can look at a challenge and say, “Well, this is a real big problem.” But when we can attack a problem or a challenge and say, “You know what? This is an opportunity,” and have that view of it not being a problem, but an opportunity we open ourselves up to more solutions-oriented thinking.
Shi:
All of the great tell us that problems really are our opportunities and if we just start off in the beginning, identifying anything that is as Kay used the synonym, we like to use the most, challenge, because there isn’t all of this negative connotation with it. The word problem means that it’s out of the ordinary and needs to be solved. Challenge is in the ordinary and gets to be conquered and you can see the different energy that you come forward with even just making a small shift like that. Take it one step further and call it an opportunity when something comes along and now an opportunity is something to take advantage of. A problem is something to be solved. An opportunity is something to be taken advantage of and within every problem or misdeed or misfortune is that seed of equal or greater opportunity or positive effects. So, that is a really important one and the more you use it, the better you’ll get and the more you’ll see the result in your life start to make a difference for your internal experience which is really that game we’re all playing
Kay:
In fact, Shi I remember when you and I first started this one, we would come to each other and kind of with a laughing face on, we would say, “Hey, I’ve got an opportunity for you.” And it would just create levity around the challenge or the problem that we were facing at the time, and it helped us to attack it with more clarity. So, okay, next up on the cancellation list. Ooh, Shi, this one’s a good one. We are canceling all absolutes.
Shi:
That’s right. Always, never, everyone, no one, always, nothing. These are all words that are absolutes, and they don’t allow for the level of gray that is existent in pretty much every interaction, especially when it comes to language. You’ve got two subjective people communicating subjective points of view from different perspectives. The ability to get lost in translation is vast when we communicate with each other. Using absolutes does not allow our partner to understand that context around the content of the message. If you say to someone, “You always lie to me,” you’re not recognizing maybe the 75% of the time that they tell the truth. Is it really always? “Well, they never take out the trash.” If we just want to run with that example from earlier in the week. Really never? They’ve never not one time ever taken it out? And when we do that to someone, including ourselves, that really hurts the mentality, and it hurts the relationship, and it hurts our chances of being able to continue in a way that’s constructive.
Kay:
When we use absolutes, we kind of lay down our gavel, if you will, on how things are, and we open ourselves up for a lot of room for somebody to poke holes in the things that we are saying. So, if you’re looking to be taken seriously both by the universe and whoever it is that you’re communicating with, get those absolutes out of your vocabulary. Think about something even out of a relationship, in relation to the context of a conversation, an absolute for your thinking patterns can be really, really devastating. A thinking pattern like, “Things never work out for me,” or “People just don’t ever seem to see me,” or “They are always like this,” or “This group of people is always like that.” This can really, really hurt you in the long run because it doesn’t create any wiggle room for maybe an alternative point of view.
Shi:
You know, next, up on the canceled list, we want to talk about words that connotate extreme emotional states. And when we use these words to talk about our everyday experiences, it doesn’t help us again, create that internal experience that we enjoy, and certainly doesn’t give us the kind of context around the content that we’re looking for in order to communicate our messages in a way that’s connection worthy and positive. So, words like, “I’m devastated,” “It’s driving me crazy up the wall,” “I’m out of my mind about something,” “I’m dead tired,” and we’ve got a whole next section about words that are kind of more macabre like that. But thinking about these extreme emotional words that often we use. “I’m crushed by something.” Are you literally crushed? Are you absolutely devastated? I mean, that’s a word I would use after a deep tragedy. Are we really devastated about missing the flight, even something like that, or missing an email or misspeaking on something or making a mistake, or are you frustrated? Are you annoyed? So, thinking about how we describe things in extreme emotional states we would encourage you not to do that anymore.
Kay:
Well, if you think back to earlier in the week, talking about the power of words and how that language is a vibration and that we live in a world that bows to the law of attraction, and when we send out those vibrations, we get those vibrations back. So, when we use words like devastated, crushed, over my head, “I’m underwater”, those kinds of things we’re literally emitting a vibration that is attracting devastation. Crushed, crushed-ness, being underwater, you’re tracking that stuff back to you when you use it, even if you’re using it casually. And this isn’t the only place where we use some pretty extreme words on a pretty casual level.
Shi:
Well, if you are here in the US like we are then there is a particular obsession with violent words. Certainly, our headlines demonstrate there’s also obsession with violent deeds and acts, but we’re not going to talk about that today. We’re going to talk about words and the language. Think about all of the ways that we reference killing and war and violence in our everyday language. “Slay!” “I’m dead.” When you think something’s funny, we say, we’re dead about it. “That’s the bomb!” “You killed it!” “You nailed it!” Think about what those vibrational frequencies are and definitely understand that that is not the intention behind those words when we say them in those contexts and that context and that energetic signature matters. But that word has been spoken in the other context so often it can’t help but resonate with all of the other times that people have talked about being killed or dead or slayed or knifed. Once you start to hear them, it’s really a trip. You will all start to understand how often and how prevalent these kinds of words are, and we would say it’s better to bring a little bit of intention around that and maybe choose some different words.
Kay:
Well, let’s just take slay for example. That’s a very popular example for somebody to say, “Oh, you slayed it.” “Oh, you really slayed your presentation today.” Now, if you say that to somebody, is it more powerful to maybe switch to something more empowering. Maybe saying something along the lines of, instead of “You slayed that presentation,” something like “You delivered a really powerful presentation today.” Now, which of those two compliments has more oomph to it? Now, one of them even has that reference to killing and it might be a laughable thing that we use on a casual basis, but we can bring more intention and more power to our positivity when we use more positive words.
Shi:
Well, we’ve gone a little long on this one, but we can’t help but get passionate and excited. Make sure you tune into the final installment here. We are going to talk about some of our best tricks about how to make something catchy and memorable coming up next on the Kay & Shi Show.
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Kay:
Welcome back. Today we are talking a little bit about how to make things catchy.
Shi:
I feel like we could go on and on about what we’ve gotten to cover in this series here on the Kay & Shi Show. Communication and connection, the power of specific words, how to flip our language to be more empowering and more intentional. And now we want to talk a little bit from our marketing background here about how to make your message more catchy, or if we want to use Malcolm Gladwell’s words, we’ll say how to make it more sticky.
Kay:
Ooh, I love that you brought Malcolm Gladwell into this one. Let’s bring another one of our very favorite authors into this, Dr. Robert Cialdini for our very first tip today. He says, “If you want to make it climb, a.k.a. make it popular, you’ve got to make it rhyme.” So, if you’re looking to make something catchy, try rhyming.
Shi:
Simple, easy, effective. It’s been working on humans for hundreds of years. Rhymes are an excellent way to deliver a message, make it sticky, make it memorable and it’s more fun than you might think and not as hard as you might think either. So, if you’re looking to make something sticky or more memorable, rhyming is a great way to do it. In fact, after reading his book “Influence.” Literally, Dr. Robert Cialdini wrote the book “Influence.” It’s got tens of millions of copies sold. He’s a professor, talks about this subject at length. It’s probably one of the most well-referenced books on the topic of influence. Yeah, and he says, “If you want to make a climb, make it rhyme.” So, when we got the honor of introducing Dr. Robert Cialdini at an event where he gave a keynote, we did it in rhyme and he said it was the most unforgettable introduction he’s ever heard. And yes, if you’re wondering, what did we rhyme with Dr. Cialdini? It was influence genie.
Kay:
Well, what a clever and fun introduction indeed and we were able to delight the audience with that and Dr. Cialdini even asked for a copy of the rhyme afterward, because he was just so delighted by the rhyme itself. So, that’s our first tip on how to make it catchy. Now, second tip Shi, I think this is one of your favorites, and I love how expertly you apply this, especially in the writing that you do. This is known as the zoom-out approach.
Shi:
Well, you’ll love this, and you’ll start to recognize it in speeches, in writing, in blogs or articles, and books even. Starting in on a very specific moment with a character in a book or in whoever the character is, oftentimes it’s ourselves. Starting in a very specific moment and then zooming out to whatever the lesson is that you want, but really giving our reader or our listener, our audience member, something very tangible to hang on to. If you want to talk about the power of gratitude, you could just start off with the emotion of gratitude that is scientifically proven to benefit your life and make you enjoy your experience more. Or you can say, “Yesterday morning as I was sipping my cup of coffee, as the sun came up and I saw the steam dancing in the sunlight, I was reflecting on the power of gratitude. Did you know that gratitude is scientifically proven blah di, blah di, blah,” and you go on with it? But see how much more effective giving a visual was, a moment to give our reader something to imagine, to tap into before delivering the message. Again, coming back to that message and delivery content and context. The zoom-out approach allows somebody to get that emotional connection first so that we can communicate a message more effectively.
Kay:
Such a good approach for making something catchy and you can even hear the power in Shila’s example there. So, thank you so much Shi for bringing forward your gratitude example. Such a great way of showing just how somebody can use a zoom-out approach to make their communication more powerful. Now, the next thing we want to talk about is using numbers with your words to help them be more sticky. Now, we see this a lot in the blogging realm, in the world of online content creation. This idea of the three tips to do that. The five ways you improve your skin, the seven things you didn’t know about Princess Diana, or whatever, but we also like to use counting in the way of counting down. Four things in this, three things in this, two things in this lead to one of this. So, there are a few ways that you can use numbers to create language structures that help you in your writing and make things more catchy.
Shi:
What I love about doing a countdown as you just kind of demonstrated Kay is that ability to end with the number one gives you so much creative flexibility. You can say four kids, three days, two nights, one unforgettable vacation. Four dogs, three birds, two cats at the zoo, one memorable time with my kids this afternoon. You have so many options with the 4, 3, 2, 1. One sensational marriage, one happy anniversary, one never-ending couple. There are so many cool ways that you can do a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Kay and I like to see how crazy we can get especially in our travel recaps. It’s like a ten-day trip, nine trips to the grocery store, eight different dinners out those kinds of things. But anytime that you do this the reader’s mind or the audience’s mind wants to follow those numbers. So, you have this desire to see the completion of it. As soon as you see a countdown, you’re triggering someone’s brain structure to want to know how that ends and so it’s a really good way to bring somebody into that story that’s a little bit different than the zoom-out approach.
Kay:
We hope that you’ve enjoyed some of these influence tips, some of these connection tips here on Word Week on the Kay & Shi Show. What we really want you to take away from this week is that language matters, what you say and what you think really matters. When you bring a little bit of attention to it, you can literally shape your entire life. We hope you’ve had fun with us this week and remember, we’re always in your corner and we’re rooting for you.
Shi:
Thanks, everybody.
