Five dumb things people say

There's a lot you can change about your presentation to make yourself seem smarter (and, hey, if you want to go for substance over style, plenty of ways to actually be smarter), but few have a bigger impact than eliminating bad speech habits.

You're an educated person, however, who knows to stay away from "ain't," avoids the valley girl staple "like," and steers clear of fillers like "ummm." Does that mean your speech is as polished as it could be? Chances are that no matter how clever and careful you are, you're still making at least a few inadvertent errors that lower others' opinion of your intelligence.

Extracted from http://www.wisebread.com/9-dumb-little-things-you-need-to-stop-saying-today

1. "I know, right?"

Popular among eager-to-please 20-somethings, this phrase sounds innocuous but is actually pretty awkward. "It asks a question that the other person may not know whether or not to answer. Since you're asking them to affirm something they just said, using this can make the other person in the conversation confused, and it can make you look like you don't know what to say," explains Winfrey. Opt for a simple "Oh, yeah" or just receptive silence instead, she advises.

2. "You'll be fine."

Maybe the person you say this to really will be fine, but chances are he or she will think you're a bonehead. "When something bad happens to someone we care about, we want to make them feel better. We want to make the situation better, so we tell them, 'You'll be fine.' Unfortunately, this is dismissive and sends a clear message that you aren't interested in listening to them. Even if this isn't at all what you want to say, this is your message when you use these words," argues Winfrey. According to her, saying nothing is better than using this aggravating phrase.

3. "I think you should..."

What could be wrong with a little well-meant advice? Plenty, contends Winfrey. "If someone comes to you and asks, 'What do you think I should do about this?' it's fine to give them advice. Otherwise, just don't. Offering advice when it wasn't requested makes you sound pompous, or at least like you enjoy appearing to be clever," she warns, suggesting guilty parties listen harder and ask better questions instead.

4. "I'm not judging you, but..."

Yes you are. As soon as you say this you're being doubly annoying. It's clear to anyone even half awake that you are, in fact, being judgmental and, to add insult to injury, you're pretending that you're not. Quit it!

"The very fact that you are thinking in terms of judging means that you are making some sort of judgment about them in your own head. And this isn't good for you or for them," writes Winfrey. If you're guilty of saying this regularly, you might be guilty of being a little too judgmental of others. Try to tame that tendency "by thinking up reasons why the other person's actions might make sense, and speak to them from that place of understanding," suggests Winfrey.

5. Big words   [Couple that with industry or culture jargon]

Here's a bonus fifth mistake that doesn't come from WiseBread but definitely bears repeating in this context. If you're a fan of using big words to demonstrate the breadth of your vocabulary and the brilliance of your thinking, be warned: Studies show that using fancy words when simple ones will do is a sure-fire way to end up looking dumb. So before you get out the thesaurus in an attempt to impress, remember that simplicity and clarity are generally a better signal of mastery than flowery language.

Michael D Lawrence - Slippery Slope

Michael posted this on Facebook. Excellent, must be preserved.

OK friends, I’m digging back to some things I learned years ago in one of my favorite courses “Introduction to Logic”. Any of you that are writers or in the legal profession are probably much more familiar with this subject that I will ever be.

One of the interesting things about the expansion of the internet and social media, I think, is that FACT is being replaced by OPINION. Sure, this has always been an issue in any type of mass media, but now anyone can be "published" and our writing can be immediately shared with thousands or more. Someone writes an article/blog and populates it with opinion, falsehoods, slanted statistics, half-truths, and emotionally-loaded words/phrases presented as facts. We read these invalid arguments and share them on FB and other social media outlets. Someone else shares our post and soon other people may accept these opinions and lies as fact, without any real evidence or sound argument.

Reading these articles with a critical eye, one may find fallacies of logic over and over. One of my favorites is "The Slippery Slope". That is, a conclusion based on the premise that if A happens, then eventually through a series of small steps, through B, C,..., X, and Y, then Z will happen too. So, if we don't want Z to occur, A must not be allowed to occur either. "One thing inevitably leads to another." Such as, "If you two hang out together, one thing will lead to another, and soon enough you'll be pregnant and end up spending your life on welfare living in the projects," or "If we cut and run in Afghanistan, pretty soon all of southwest Asia will be run by Al-Qaeda." This may sound good, but is not a sound argument in and of itself. Another of my favorite logical fallacies I see in social media is “Name Calling”, which is a variety of the "Ad Hominem" argument (attacking a person’s character). Perhaps when one cannot effectively present their ideas and support them with sound evidence, their only choice is to start the name-calling. What a way to try and convince people that you are correct and others are wrong!

Some of my friends have talked about the "dumbing down of America", suggesting that we believe almost anything. I think they are correct, in that we read some of these ridiculous claims and "conspiracy theories", accept them as fact, and then encourage others to do so as well.

Here's a novel idea: go to the source, read all the facts (and even opposing opinions), look for logical fallacies in an author's arguments, test what people say to see if it is indeed truth or not, look for verifiable evidence, and then make a decision on the issue. Ah, but this takes time and effort. It’s easier to just pass on these opinions-presented-as-fact that agree with our own positions. The danger here, as I see it, is that some of these people vote. Scary. At least, that’s my opinion.

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Crime prevention/protection of various sorts
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Being a tourist among Old Testament culture

This was extracted from the web, and I think it's very valuable; therefore, I am preserving it here for my use and easy reference. I do not know the original URL at this moment.

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Elder Holzapfel's perspective changed when Italian food and sightseeing replaced burgers and basketball. The young Mormon missionary planned to spend preparation day shooting hoops and eating at Wimpy's Burger, but his senior companion had other ideas. We can do that in America, he was told. And with that, Richard Neitzel Holzapfel began to understand the people he was serving in Italy.

"I was interested in their world," he said. "When you understand their world, you actually end up appreciating them more."

Years later, Holzapfel applied that experience to his study of a vastly different place. The Old Testament is full of complex language, jarring stories and cultural unfamiliarties...

It's a world unto itself, and not an easy one to comprehend. But it is possible to understand and even love the Old Testament, and those who dismiss it deny themselves a gospel perspective unique to this ancient text.

"The Old Testament is a foreign country, and to go there you have to know a few things," Holzapfel said.

Being a polite tourist means understanding the people and the world they live in, Hozapfel says. And for the people of the Old Testament, life wasn't easy. They lived under totalitarian rule and labored from morning to night six days a week. There were roaming wild beasts, famine and drought. They lacked basic medical care and experienced high infant mortality rates. Slavery was widespread.

Holzapfel describes these hardships in a book he recently co-authored, "Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament.

"The book also details another aspect of Old Testament life that is foreign to modern North Americans — worship through blood sacrifice. For people who buy their hamburger at a grocery store, it's difficult to imagine a temple looking like a slaughterhouse, Holzapfel says.

But sacrifice is under the surface of every line of the Old Testament. "It's a completely different sense of how you worship God," said Holzapfel, a professor of church history and doctrine at BYU...

But ancient history and culture provide context for understanding the events and the God of the Old Testament, says author Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. "The more I've learned and really understood the culture and the history of that period of time, the more it's come home to me that this is the same God and the same Jesus Christ that's acting in the New Testament," said Bradshaw, who wrote a 1,000-page commentary on the Book of Moses called "In God's Image and Likeness."

It's also important to remember that "ancient Israelites and their contemporaries were real individuals," Holzapfel's book reads. "They had similar emotions, hopes, dreams, romantic desires and concerns as modern people here."

As different as the two worlds are, we can relate to the people of the Old Testament. "It's not just stories about grand landscapes of peoples and events, but really stories of families and how they managed the problems that came up in their lives," Bradshaw. said. "We ought not to dismiss these stories as being simplistic and naive. There is a true literary and spiritual power to the scriptures."

James Ferrell understands why some people neglect the Old Testament. It's complicated, technical and full of old words. The organization isn't always chronological.

And the book's thickness doesn't translate well to the texting age. He once felt the same way. "I think I was afraid of the book or intimidated by it," Ferrell said. But a simple church calling changed all that. Not only does he now love the Old Testament, Ferrell is a bestselling author of books inspired by the ancient text.

In December 1997, Ferrell was asked to be a gospel doctrine teacher for the upcoming year. The course of study was the Old Testament. "In a way, it forced me into a book that I had too long avoided, and it transformed me," he said.

Ferrell immersed himself in Old Testament study and discovered that the text was brimming with similitudes of Christ — Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Melchizedek, Joseph, Moses and all the way down the line. He saw the Savior's story foretold through the entirety of the text. By asking the right questions, he uncovered new layers of meaning.

"(It) lit my soul on fire," he said. "I've never really been the same since in terms of my passion for the gospel." Ferrell would study, teach every other Sunday, then go home to his computer and type up everything that "captured" him. His writings eventually inspired "The Peacegiver," a Deseret Book best-seller, and the recently released "The Hidden Christ."

The Old Testament gave him a gospel foundation. "That experience transformed my understanding of the gospel at the deepest levels," he said. "It's like someone lifted up that house and put a foundation beneath it while I was in it. And it was a foundation I didn't realize I was missing. (It) strengthened every board in the house, every joint in the house, and then it sort of rebuilt the house in all kinds of amazing ways."

"I'd never understood how much I was missing." If we dismiss the Old Testament, we miss a lot. The ancient text teaches about the Creation, Fall, Atonement, covenants, patriarchal order, temple ordinances, priesthood lineage and the origin of the law that defines modern Western democracies.

Early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were swimming in the Old Testament, but modern Mormons sometimes don't get near the water, Holzapfel says. "We have moved away from that, and it's not necessarily good news," he said. "We are biblically illiterate."

Both the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants are "saturated with Old Testament phrases," Holzapfel says.

Readers can miss nuances in those scriptures if they're not familiar with the Old Testament. In the Book of Mormon, Nephi references the Exodus. The Savior chastens the Nephites for not reading Isaiah. Book of Mormon authors wrote as if readers were familiar with the Old Testament record, Holzapfel says. "The Lord assumes that you have been part of this dialogue," he said. "I think it's a dangerous proposition to say the Book of Mormon is all I need when the Book of Mormon assumes you're reading the Old Testament."

Holzapfel calls the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt the "quintessential story from the past that shows how God can intervene in our lives." He also says the Old Testament concept of everyone being equal before the law is among ancient texts. Even kings were criticized for unrighteousness. "That's the gift that the Israelites gave the world," he said.

In ancient times, a scroll of scripture would have cost between two and six months salary for the average laborer. Owning one would have "never entered their minds," Holzapfel's book reads. For us, a copy of the Bible is inexpensive and available — about $8.

Holzapfel recommends stepping away from the distractions of this world on occasion and acquainting ourselves with the "amazing treasure of stories" in the Old Testament. "With so many competing voices ... a chance for us to stop for a few moments, unplug the headset and contemplate these timely but timeless stories that have been preserved, gives us a chance to get our bearings again."

7 Success Habits of Navy SEALs - good for all of us

From an article on:  http://www.inc.com/brent-gleeson/7-secret-habits-of-navy-seals.html?cid=ps01902ros

The term habit generally has a negative connotation, but if you form the right habits that drive you toward success, you can't lose. To be an effective team member, people usually need to break old habits and develop new ones by letting selfishness fall by the wayside. The SEAL community forces you to break habits that don't positively contribute to mission success. If you can't make that happen, you're done.  If you want to be part of an elite team and are going to shed old habits, make sure to keep these!

1. Be loyal. Team loyalty to the corporate environment seems to be a dying philosophy. Loyalty to the team starts at the top. If it's lacking at the senior executive level, how can anyone else in the organization embrace it? Loyalty is about leading by example, providing your team unconditional support, and never throwing a team member under the bus.
2. Put others before yourself. Get up every day and ask yourself what you will do to add value to your team, such as simply offering your assistance with a project. The challenge is overcoming the fear that your team member might say: "Yes, I really need your help with this project…tonight."
3. Be reflective. Reflective people often spend too much time analyzing their actions. But imagine if you could harness this talent into something highly valuable? Reflecting on your mistakes, such as mine in Iraq, ensures you never repeat them.
4. Be obsessively organized. Some of us innately have this ability, often to a fault, and some have to work at it a bit more. You have to find a process that works for you. I've known people who will put something on their to-do list after they did it and then cross it off to feel a greater sense of accomplishment! Whatever your system is, make it work for you.
5. Assume you don't know enough. Because you don't. Any effective team member understands that training is never complete. It's true in the SEAL teams, and it's true in any elite team. Those who assume they know everything should be eliminated. Those who spend time inside and outside of the workplace developing their knowledge and skills will provide the momentum for their team's forward progress.
6. Be detail-oriented. Attention to detail is one of our company's values. Do we get it right all the time? Of course not. Imagine, though, if all members of a team are obsessed with detail in their delivery? My lack of attention to detail in the incident in Iraq could have had catastrophic results. Don't ask yourself what you are going to do today to be successful; ask how you are going to do it.
7. Never get comfortable. Always push yourself outside of your comfort zone. If you do this continually with every task you take on, that boundary will continue to widen. This process will ensure that you are continually maximizing your potential, which will positively impact your team.

You may be wondering how you could ever have a relaxed life if you maintain all of these habits. But that's the beauty of it. If you enjoy what you do and form good habits, it all becomes second nature. Maintain these habits, and encourage your team members to do the same.