Thus far I have covered preferring to be alone, not being good with people and not being able to communicate effectively which are some of the dimensions behind a typical silent type character. Today I am going to write about speaking.
I have never been able to use words effectively to express myself. I could not say how I felt, because the words simply did not come to me in way that can explain it exactly. So I decided to not speak allot, because I felt it was a waste of time. What I did not realize back then is that the reason why the words did not come was because I did not have the words – I did not have the vocabulary. It is fascinating how such a decision greatly affected my life. If I realized the importance of vocabulary in my school days I would have done better at school. Instead I compromised myself and developed a personality and defined myself as being the strong silent type. A wonderful justification and excuse.
Looking at this whole situation I see now that being the silent type was not “just who I am”, it was a choice I made based on my fears and not having the tools to communicate effectively. I was not born this way – it was a choice and now I choose to rather be effective with communication. Now to go venture forth on my journey. Without an effective vocabulary I cannot be specific with words. I did not understand the importance of vocabulary back then. In School they say it is important to read – good advice I ignored.
The first step in effective communication is developing your vocabulary in order to use words effectively so that is what I am going to do – learn, understand and apply new words. Interesting point here is with me being a musician and writing songs I always had great difficulty writing lyrics for my music and that is because I did not have an effective vocabulary. If I had an effective vocabulary writing would be easier.
A very useful phrase I have learnt is that knowledge is useless without application. The next step is to place myself in situations where I use words and speak to explain things. This will assist me to communicate effectively and support me to get over that uncomfortable/nervousness I have whenever I explain things. A simple thing to do here would be to start doing Vlogs so that is what I will do – push through the resistances and make videos until speaking effectively is as natural as breathing.
Speak, king, quest, journey, video, vlog, support, DIY, directive, practical, loner, silent type, personality, Desteni
Cool Fidelis.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting with vocabulary because I grew up the exact opposite of you. I was introduced to words already as a baby, my mom read to me a lot and I started reading early as well reading book after book. But even with a developed vocabulary and the ability to speak a lot - it still was primarily bullshit coming out of my mouth in many instances. So it's interesting that yes, developing a vocabulary is important - but it is also important to purify one's vocabulary and redefine who one is within speaking. So it's kind of like facing the same issue but from the opposite end of the polarity - where we want to end up with an equalized and common vocabulary that everyone is comfortable expressing themselves through. So I'd say that there's advantages and disadvantages with both polarities. Because having a massive fucked up vocabulary means that you first have to deconstruct everything you've learned and valued - letting go of all the bullshit. And with not having a developed vocabulary you have the advantage that you don't necessarily have to go through all the bullshit to get to a real vocabulary based on common sense and self-expression.
I definitely recommend reading and writing to develop one's vocabulary. For example reading a book and then writing out one's own perspectives on it or writing a summary can be a cool way to expand one's vocabulary. Something else I've done is to when I see/read/hear a word I don't know, I go look it up and then start integrating it into my vocabulary by deliberately using it so it 'sticks'.
Thanks for sharing!