Today's good life project rift is entitled lose the Jargon.
So we all want to feel respected, you know, kind of like we're doing important work, like we're worthy of people's attention or maybe even investment and love.
But at the same time, there's often this deeper voice that says, if we're just us, you know, if we simply stand in our truths, simply, purely, gracefully, that that won't be enough.
So we start to heap on all sorts of fanciness in the quest to feel more important, like we've done things that make people take us seriously, you know, complicated things, big things, things that allow us to, oh, make up words that nobody understands, but that sound so important, nobody is going to actually ask us what they mean for fear of being, you know, the quote, dumb one in the room.
And trust me here, folks, I am as guilty of this as the next person.
I have made up a metric ton of jargon in my day.
And the funny thing is, we see in other people this use of jargon all the time, and we call them on it.
You know, I can't, I can't tell you how many times I've said to somebody, excuse me, but that phrase or word sounds like it's totally made up or designed to make you sound really important, but it really is just confusing the heck out of me.
But when it comes to us, we somehow feel like other people's jargon is offensive, but somehow our fancy pants terms of art, well, they're brilliant.
Until somebody really smart walks up to you, past all the others who've been nodding and pretending that they have some clue what you're actually talking about, and says to you.
What exactly does exponential growth, hacking and story architecture and social dynamics mean, by the way?
I chose those three terms because I just discovered myself using them in a recent webinar that I taught and I realized midway through, literally almost like, as I'm using these terms and I've seen myself now use them in copy that, I'm pretty sure nobody has any clue what I'm talking about when I use them.
I literally did a palm slap to my head in the middle of actually doing this.
It's a good thing that the webinar was just showing slides and not live video, so I'm constantly finding myself and stopping myself and trying to actually back my way out of jargon.
So next time you want to be taken seriously, here's a thought.
Kill the jargon.
Destroy any word or phrase that requires explanation beyond a simple sentence.
Better yet, just explain it really simply to start with, like you would to a fifth grader.
Because the moment you make somebody work to understand why what you know is so important or awesome, you've already pretty much lost their attention along with the ability to help them, let alone impress them with your complex worditunosity.
Come on.