Banning Words for Fun and Profit

Posted: Tuesday August 16, 2011 under Lead Myself

I have a deep and abiding affection for well-placed and well-phrased expletives. Certainly, I don’t pepper every conversation with four-letter words (they are surprisingly unwelcome at parent-teacher conferences), but sometimes, nothing else will do (case in point: watching the Sunday morning political news roundup).

Not all four-letter words are created equal

There is, however, one four-letter word that is so evil, so vile, so sinister, and so flat-out destructive that it needs to be removed from our collective vocabulary. That word is can’t.

We use can’t to say that a task or goal is impossible, and we’re wrong. Can’t is often I choose not to, dressed up so we can justify not taking action. You may think I’m wrong, and I understand; I used to be a can’t apologist myself, and like any bad habit, it’s difficult to shake.

You may think, So maybe we overuse ‘can’t.’ But surely there are times when it’s perfectly appropriate.

I maintain that it’s never appropriate. (And, because it can’t be said enough, don’t call me Shirley.)

By now you’re probably wracking your brain for the most outlandish situations you can think of that will help you prove that can’t deserves to live, right? Okay, I’ll play along:

• I can’t be Miss America
• I can’t survive unprotected at the bottom of the Mariana Trench
• I can’t grow to become 6 feet tall
• I can’t live forever
• I can’t quit my job and start a business
• I can’t change the world

Proving that you really can do any of these things is a matter of answering four questions:

1. Why?
2. What if?
3. When?
4. Do I really want it?

Question 1: Why?

The first thing you have to do is figure out why you can’t do the thing you’re so sure you can’t do. Why is that the first step? Because it forces you to think beyond the knee-jerk, “I can’t possibly do that,” so you can clearly state the real (not imagined) obstacles that stand in your way.

• I can’t be Miss America because I’m in my mid-forties and, as my hubby says, pleasingly plump (ok, I’m a fat chick). Miss America has to be young and beautiful.
• I can’t survive unprotected at the bottom of the Mariana Trench because I’m a land-dwelling, air-breathing mammal and would be crushed by 16,000 psi.
• I can’t grow to 6 feet tall because I finished growing at 5′1″.
• I can’t live forever because entropy is a galactic given and we all die.
• I can’t quit my job and start a business because I have bills to pay and a family to help support.
• I can’t change the world because I’m just one person, and the problems of the world are too big.

In Part II, we’ll cover questions 2 and 3. Your homework assignment is to identify something you really want to do, but that you think you can’t do. Write it down, and then write out the reason (or reasons) why you can’t do it.

(Contributed by CYMer, Kathleen Jaffe. Twitter: http://twitter.com/kathleenjaffe)