Imagine growing up without words. You live in a typical industrialized household, but you are somehow unable to learn the language of your parents. That means that you do not have access to education; you cannot properly communicate with your family other than through a set of idiosyncratic gestures; you never get properly exposed to abstract ideas such as “justice” or “global warming.” All you know comes from direct experience with the world.

What Lack Of Language Practically Means

It might seem that this scenario is purely hypothetical. There aren’t any cases of language deprivation in modern industrialized societies, right? It turns out there are. Many deaf children born into hearing families face exactly this issue. They cannot hear and, as a result, do not have access to their linguistic environment. Unless the parents learn sign language, the child’s language access will be delayed and, in some cases, missing completely.

Lack Of Language Is Not A Scenario. It’s Some People’s Reality. 

Does our mind develop normally under such circumstances? Of course not. Language enables us to receive vast amounts of information we would have never acquired otherwise. The details of your parents’ wedding. The Declaration of Independence. The entrée section of the dinner menu. The entire richness of human experience condensed into a linear sequence of words. Take language away, and the amount of information you can acquire decreases dramatically.

Language And The Mind

The lack of language affects even functions that do not seem to be intrinsically “linguistic,” such as math. Developmental research shows that keeping track of exact numbers above four requires knowing the words for these numbers. Imagine trying to tell the difference between seven apples and eight apples. The task becomes almost impossible if you can’t count them—and you can’t count them if you never learn that “seven” is followed by “eight.” As a result of this language-number interdependency, many deaf children fall behind in math, precisely because they did not learn to count early on.

Language And Number Interdepedency

Another part of your mind that needs language to develop properly is social cognition. Think about your interactions with your family and friends. Why is your mom upset? Why did your friend go inside the house just now? Understanding social situations requires inferring what the people around you are thinking.

Language And Social Cognition

Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”; So far, the evidence does suggest that the limits of our language mean the limits of our world. However, what happens if language disappears once the mind is fully developed? Will we then lose the ability to use math and understand others?

What If Language Is There And Then It Disappears? 

Imagine you are a typical adult; let’s say you’re 40. You wake up one day, and suddenly, you realize that your language is gone. You look around the room, but no words come to mind to describe the objects you see. You’re starting to plan out your day, but no half-formed phrases rush through your mind. You unlock your smartphone, but, instead of text, you see a sea of squiggles. Desperate, you cry out for help, and someone rushes up to you—but, instead of speech, all you hear is meaningless murmur.

Nightmare Scenario: You Wake Up And Your Language Is Gone

The condition described above is known as global aphasia. It arises from severe damage to the brain, often as a result of a massive stroke. While some aphasias are temporary, in some cases the damage is irreparable, and the person may lose language for life. In your case, let’s say that a dozen doctors examined you and said (or, you think they said) that nothing can be done. If the limits of your language mean the limits of your world, should you conclude that the way you experience the world is now fundamentally limited? Do you even have a mind?

Again, Not A Scenario. It’s A Reality, Called Global Aphasia. 

Research on adult individuals with aphasia has demonstrated that math, theory of mind, and many other cognitive abilities are independent from language. Patients with severe language impairments perform comparably to the rest of us when asked to complete arithmetic tasks, reason about people’s intentions, determine physical causes of actions, or decide whether a drawing depicts a real-life event. Some of them play chess in their spare time. Some even engage in creative tasks. Soviet composer Vissarion Shebalin continued to write music even after a stroke that left him severely aphasic.

Loss Of Language Doesn’t Equal Loss Of Mind

In recent years, neuroscientists have isolated a network of brain regions (typically in the left hemisphere) that react almost exclusively to linguistic input. They respond to written sentences, spoken narratives, words, monologues, conversations, but will not activate in response to memory tasks, spatial reasoning, music, math, or social situations that do not involve dialogue. No wonder many patients with aphasia do not have impairments in other cognitive domains—language and other functions are housed in separate chunks of brain matter.

Language Is Separate From The Rest Of Cognition

Many great thinkers have drawn a strong connection between language and the mind. Oscar Wilde called language “the parent, and not the child, of thought”; Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”; and Bertrand Russell stated that the role of language is “to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.”

Language And The Mind - The Writers’ Perspective

Not all writers support Wittgenstein’s and Russell’s idea that language and thought are inseparable. Tom Lubbock, a British writer and illustrator whose language system gradually deteriorated because of a brain tumor, wrote in his memoir shortly before his death in 2011:““My language to describe things in the world is very small, limited. My thoughts when I look at the world are vast, limitless and normal, same as they ever were. My experience of the world is not made less by lack of language but is essentially unchanged.”

Language And The Mind - A Language-less Writer’s Perspective

So, what can we say about the role language plays in shaping our minds? Well, pick a mind that is still developing, and you will find that removing language will alter it for life. However, pick a mind that is fully formed and take all words away, and you will discover that the rest of cognition remains mostly intact. Our language is but a scaffold for our minds: indispensable during construction but not necessary for the building to remain in place.

Once We Acquire Language, We Can Live Without It

Language is the dress of thought.

Language is what makes us human, what lies at the root of our awareness, our intellect, our sense of self. Without it, we cannot plan, cannot communicate, cannot think. Or can we?

Once we acquire language, we can live without it.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mindfulness

Mindfulness

communication

Communication

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Language Is the Scaffold of the Mind

Silence may be golden, but it’s also awkward. In our noisy world, long quiet pauses prompt many of us to jump in and fill the void.Awkward silence is a real issue for people.When you’re face-to-face with another person or with a group of people, you face what Nietzsche called the horror of the vacuum of space with nothing to say.

An Unheard Of Thing: Silence

A pristine forest doesn’t count as anything for GDP, unless you chop it down and sell the wood for lumber at Home Depot. You can say the same thing about human attention. Moments of quiet, pristine awareness, such as a walk in the woods or time with your kids making or appreciating art doesn’t count as a positive for GDP. Our society and our communal lives are wired for as much noise as possible.

Silence Isn't Good For The Economy

We as a society have used silence and honoured silence in ceremonies, milestones, and cultural events. We want to welcome that back into the foreground of our way of being together.Ironically, finding comfort with silence in the workplace starts with more conversation.

The Experience Of Silence 

Ma means empty, negative space.Ma also means pure potentiality. On the job, that would mean having reverence for open spaces, honouring them and building them in.Ma can be physical, such as having empty spaces in buildings that provide a sense of calm and clarity. And Ma can mean adding space into your day, such as leaving free time between meetings instead of scheduling things back-to-back. Or it can be blocking off time for deep, thoughtful work.

An Ancient Japanese Aesthetic Principle Called Ma

While brainstorming sessions are usually filled with noise, they also offer a perfect opportunity to introduce silence. We could add a minute or two of quiet during the meeting, allowing employees to think before sharing ideas.Or create a silent brainstorming session with a Post-it note gallery where people write down their ideas and post them on a wall. Then, participants can slowly peruse ideas and vote for the best one.Silent brainstorming sessions offer new opportunities for intelligence to arrive or be uncovered, which can be especially beneficial to employees who are more introverted.

Use Silence in Meetings

Silence is also a force that can equilibrate anger or tension at work. If people are getting agitated during a meeting, the authors suggest asking for a period of collective silence. The silent pause can help people centre and calm themselves before proceeding.Silence isn’t forcing a resolution before the group is ready. It’s simply ensuring that people are present and listening. The group silence forces everyone into a place where they have to drop their verbalized positions and arguments and connect to the underlying energy of the shared space.

Silence During Conflict

Whether it’s during a meeting, a disagreement, or a deep work session, sitting in silence can take courage because it’s uncomfortable.We need to be able to be quiet together. The experience and power of silence is magnified when it’s shared.

Quiet Together

Many find silence anxiety-inducing. But getting used to the quiet at work can give you a real advantage.

How to become more comfortable with awkward silence at work

Many of us find ourselves wanting to change other people in our lives. It might be a partner, a family member, a friend, or even a coworker.We have judgement around what is going on with them and believe that they should behave in accordance with our thoughts of what’s good for them.We believe this person has a problem and we want to solve what we see as the issue.But the truth is, we cannot change another person, and attempting to do so actually harms the relationship. This is another important part of minding our own business and allowing others to mind theirs.

Mind Your Own Business: Why You Can’t Change Other People

As a substitute for working on ourselvesWhen we’re trying to change other people, it’s often because we have our own healing to do. We might think it’s easier to change another person than to change ourselves. Trying to help another person is not a substitute for doing our own work. Our reactivity to that person’s behavior is likely our own unconscious issues coming up. It may feel easier to project onto another person and distract ourselves than face our own problems.

Why We Want To Change Other People

We may also want to feel like a hero for helping someone else to boost our own self-image.We might be attracted to someone because we believe that person is wounded and we can help them. We might believe we can love someone out of their issues and that this will heal us or help us feel better about ourselves. We also believe that that person will love us for saving them.This can also happen the other way around, where you have a wound and someone comes into your life to rescue you. Unfortunately, we can’t heal others, others can’t heal us.

To feel like a helper

Sometimes, people expect others to be able to heal them when they don’t want to take responsibility for healing themselves.Another person’s dysfunction is not about love or a lack of love. It’s about their woundedness; perhaps past traumas, addictions, or other factors.You can’t love someone out of their problems, and trying to do so is a recipe for disappointment. It’s inflating your own self-importance in a setup for more problems. We can think we’re being selfless, but we often have a hidden agenda. We want to be the one they’re leaning on and have an excuse not to do our own work.

Because others expect us to

Ultimately, one has to heal oneself. No one can do this work for another person.Let’s take a broken leg: A doctor can set the bone, prescribe medication, and guide the healing process. Other people can support that person while they heal by taking care of driving, shopping, and other tasks, but ultimately, the person is responsible for doing things that will help their leg heal like keeping their weight off of it, physical therapy, and following medical advice.It is the same with mental or emotional wounds. A person has to heal themselves, and they have to choose to heal. And this is not easy.

Why You Can’t Change Other People

Ultimately it is up to the other person to decide if they believe there is a problem, and if they want to do anything about it. If they do want to change, we can support them in their decision, but they must do the actual work.You can’t change other people, so do yourself a favor and stop expecting yourself to be able to. It’s hard enough for us to change ourselves. No one else can change us, and we can’t change anyone else.

Unreasonable Expectations

While we can’t heal someone, we can support them as they heal. Support verses EnablingSupport means that you care about the person and can offer love while they’re in the process of changing. For example, if you want to support a spouse in their recovery from alcoholism, support may include offering to watch the kids while they go to therapy or AA meetings (that they have chosen to attend) and listening to them on their healing journey.On the other hand, enabling means that you take responsibility, make excuses, or cover up for their behavior.

The Difference Between Supporting and Enabling

As always, the first step is noticing. Notice if you are trying to change or control someone. Are you more invested in their healing than they are in healing themselves? Are you using manipulation, anger, or other forms of control?Are you relying on someone else to heal you? Are you looking for a knight in shining armor to rescue you from your problems?The first step is always awareness and consciousness. Once you’re aware and conscious, you can ask yourself why this is a problem in your life? Until then, it’s hard to focus on changing your own behavior to promote your own growth.

Are you minding your own business or trying to force your agenda on someone else?

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”-Leo Tolstoy “If you do not change direction, you might end up where you are heading.”-Lao Tzu “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”-Rumi

Quotes on Change

We cannot change other people, and attempting to do so actually does far more harm than good in the relationship and for our own selves.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

health

Health

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

Mind Your Own Business: Why You Can’t Change Other People - The Art of Living Consciously

Give honest, sincere appreciation. Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise, and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime - repeat them years after you have forgotten them.

• Be warm and radiate high energy(especially when making introductions and goodbyes)• Give positive and honest feedback. People are most likely to improve when encouraged.• Sincere appreciation can only be displayed if you are genuinely interested in the other person. Be interested in learning from the other person.• Shift your mental awareness away from yourself (ego) to the other person (true appreciation)

Genuine Appreciation

Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don't

Listening is a skill we can all work on.Be an active listener to truly learn from others and find out the other person's perspective.• Put yourself in the other person's shoes, look at things from the other person's perspective • Show that you are actively engaging in listening to what is said, one way to achieve this is " back-channeling".

The Art of Listening 

• Back channeling is providing short and encouraging responses to the speaker to show that you are actively listening to what is said, this also encourages the speaker to continue • Examples include: "mm-hmm", "totally", "yeah", nodding or shaking of the head, etc.• Ask questions about the given information

Back-Channeling

Everyone you meet feels they are special in some way and we all have insecurities.Rather than always telling stories of your highlights also share your mistakes to be relatable. Nobody is perfect and people are more receptive to those who aren't afraid to point to their shortcomings. • It's okay to be vulnerable.• Be honest as this will free you and other people from any shame of who you are.

Be human 

LAW 46Never Appear Too Perfect Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

• We usually remember the first and last parts of interaction this is why it's important to have high energy when you introduce yourself and as you end an interaction.• Assume that you will see the other person again Credit:Brielle (ga_brielle)

Ending on a good note 

Credit:Brielle (ga_brielle) Tips on how to connect with your fellow humans

A GOOD CONVERSATION

“Power dwells with cheerfulness,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though we often think of cheerfulness as the opposite of power, as an insincere urge to liven things up, Emerson knew it to be a resource of the self, a tool for shaping our emotional lives that can help to relocate us in the social world and link us to community. At the present time, as we confront wave after wave of bad news sweeping the planet, cheerfulness is worth our consideration.

Power Dwells With Cheerfulness

With cheerfulness, we see a rise in emotional energy, a sudden uptick in mood. It is fleeting or ephemeral, in that it comes and goes. But we can control it. We can “cheer up”, just as we can “calm down”. As the English philosopher Robert Burton put it in The Anatomy Of Melancholy (1621): “expect a little … Cheer up.” Burton’s advice to “expect a little” reminds us that cheerfulness is a modest power. But, as Emerson knew, it is a power all the same.

Cheerfulness Is A Modest Power, But A Power All The Same. 

Perhaps it is because of the modesty of cheerfulness that philosophers have largely overlooked it. They tend to focus on more dramatic emotions such as anger and melancholy, viewing human emotional life as a battleground of unconscious drives or overwhelming passions. The classic example of the man ruled by passion is the Greek hero Achilles. Overcome by his wrath toward Agamemnon, Achilles refused to join his fellow Greeks in the war against Troy, thereby betraying his own duty as Greece’s greatest warrior. Unlike wrath, cheerfulness is largely elective. We can manage it.

Cheerfulness Is Largely Elective: We Choose It; We Can Manage It

It is no accident that the English philosopher Robert Burton mentions cheerfulness in a book about melancholy. In much writing about emotion, cheerfulness is presented as the antidote to the dark emotions of the melancholic. Medical thinkers up into the 19th century assumed that the human body was governed by the circulation of fluids, or humours. Melancholy, for example, arose from an excess of black bile, while certain stimulants were understood to counter melancholy and generate cheerfulness. Other doctors argued that it was possible to stimulate cheer chemically.

The Relationship Of Cheerfulness And Melancholy

Medical thought and practice aside, it is clear that cheerfulness is deeply linked to the body, and, in particular, the face. Indeed, it begins in the face and moves inward. As the French writer Germaine de Staël pointed out at the beginning of the 19th century, when you take on a cheerful expression, no matter what the state of your soul, your cheerfulness moves into the self: “the facial expression penetrates, bit by bit, what one experiences.” The interior of the self is changed by the power of cheer.

The Relationship Of Cheerfulness And The Body

This trajectory of cheerfulness through the self is linked to the history of the word “cheer” itself. “Cheer” comes from an Old French word that means, simply, “face”. The term comes into English and spreads through medieval culture in the 14th century. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), for example, people are depicted as having a “piteous cheer” or a “sober cheer”. “Cheer” is an expression, but also a body part. It lies at the intersection of our emotions and physiognomy.

The Relationship Of “Cheer” And Face

In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation sparked intense debate over the meaning of spiritual community. At the same moment, when the Bible begins to be widely translated into vernacular languages, the simple noun “cheer” expands to encompass the adjective “cheerful”and, eventually, around 1530, includes the more abstract idea of “cheerful-ness”. which turns the local expression of the face into an abstract noun, something that can circulate as an emotional quality of the self.

From Face To Expression, To Mood, To Emotional Quality

In the Geneva Bible (1560), from Saint Paul’s “Second Letter to the Corinthians” we learn that to participate in the Christian community you must practise caritas , or love. “As every man wisheth in his heart,” says Paul, “so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.” God loveth a cheerful giver. These words resonated widely across the early modern world, linking cheer – and the face – to the practice of caritas, a social and religious activity.

God Loves The Cheerful Giver (ἱλαρὸν γὰρ δότην ἀγαπᾷ ὁ Θεός)

Commentators on the Bible struggled to grasp the meaning of Saint Paul’s famous phrase. Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest intellectual of the day, linked the cheerful body to community, saying: ‘let thy thankful gift be increased and doubled with a merry look and cheerfulness.’ Giving is good. But giving cheerfully is even better, and your intentions may be seen through your ‘merry look’. Conversely, if you are not cheerful (with no merry look), you may not be a true Christian.

Do You Have A Cheerful Self If You Have A Cheerless Face?

The suspicion that to be cheerless maybe meant to be unchristian was held by John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer. He suggested that stingy or reluctant participation in the charitable Christian community is the mark of Catholics, whom he saw as decadent and fearful of papal authority, whereas good Christians give cheerfully, with a glad visage. A bit later, the poet and preacher John Donne extended this idea, noting in a sermon that God gives his holy word to us, “not in a sour, and sullen, and angry, and unacceptable way, but cheerfully”.

Cheerfulness, True Faith And True Face

Modern readers might be struck in these early accounts by the extent to which cheerfulness is much more than the superficial performance of the upbeat colleague or the annoying salesman. A social quality, it shapes and defines a particular moral community. It emerges between people, binding them together. No wonder doctors sought to generate cheerfulness through chemical means.

Cheerfulness (Re)Locates Us Socially And (Re)Links Us Communally

During the European Enlightenment, as the great religious debates of the early modern period begin to wane in Europe, the theological dimension of cheerfulness falls away. Yet its essential social dimension remains, as the characteristic of enlightened gatherings. The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume notes that cheerfulness is a force that is larger than the individual. The individual doesn’t perform cheer, as Calvin had suggested; instead, it envelops him.

Cheerfulness Envelops

Anyone who has ever passed an evening with “serious melancholy people”, Hume points out, can surely acknowledge that, when a good-humoured or gay person enters the room, “cheerfulness carries great merit with it, and naturally conciliates the good will of mankind … others enter into the same humour, and catch the sentiment, by a contagion or natural sympathy.” Cheerfulness is now a “contagion”. Elsewhere, Hume uses the metaphor of the flame to describe how cheerfulness might set a company alight.

Cheerfulness Sets Alight

If cheerfulness is healthy and social, even morally upright, we can understand why the philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson understands it as a kind of power. Cheerfulness can condition our mood, but it also inflects our social being. It is essential to a healthy society. Whoever can control and harness it will possess a rare resource for shaping her emotional life and those of her fellows. For Emerson, the first great moral philosopher of the Americas, cheerfulness informs a well-lived life.

Cheerfulness Informs A Well-Lived Life

In his essay “Shakespeare, or the Poet”, Emerson asserts that poetic genius requires two things. First, the ability of the poet to see natural phenomena as moral phenomena – that is, to turn things in the world into metaphors of our inner lives. The poet turns things into signs that convey “a certain mute commentary on human life”. No less important is a second trait: the poet’s “cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet – for beauty is his aim.” The poet’s cheerfulness involves his ability to see the beauty of the world, to see things “for the lovely light that sparkles from them”.

“Without Cheerfulness No Man Can Be A Poet”

Emerson’s celebration of the cheerful sensibility brings the social vision of the moralist together with the creativity of the poet. He suggests not only that cheerfulness links people together in communities, but that he who controls cheerfulness can remake the world. Cheerfulness is a psychological and emotional force, originating in vision and sensibility.

Cheerfulness: Vision And Creativity

The turn of the 20th century saw a proliferation of what the philosopher William James called “mind-cure” movements – that is, approaches to living that assumed the influence of mental states on everyday productivity and social interaction. These movements swept cheerfulness along with them. The turn of the century “inspirational” writer Orison Swett Marden, who founded SUCCESS magazine, placed cheerfulness at the centre of his thought. Being upbeat, he claimed in his many titles, has advantages that are both personal and professional. It will make you happy – and it will make you money.

Cheerfulness: Happiness And Money

About the same time as Marden, the Boy Scouts of America published its first handbook, combining advice about such practical skills as how to build a fire in the woods, with moral encouragement toward a better life. The development of the self is governed by a “Scout Law”, consisting of 12 virtues. The 8th of these is cheerfulness. Here is how the Scouts define it: “Another scout virtue is cheerfulness. As the scout law intimates, he must never go about with a sulky air. He must always be bright and smiling… A bright face and a cheery word spread like sunshine from one to another.”

Cheerfulness: A Bright Face And A Cheery Word

Actions seem to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.

A cheery mood, we might think, is a terribly self-absorbed response to serious times. But history tells us otherwise.

A cheery mood, you might think, is a terribly self-absorbed response to serious times. But history tells us otherwise

philosophy

Philosophy

problemsolving

Problem Solving

On The Surprising History Of Cheerfulness And Its Subtle Power

Branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Startups who prioritise branding are putting the cart before the horse. Focus should be on product and business first - the real work to prove product-market-fit.Branding comes after PMF. "You don’t need a brand before you have PMF."Even when branding makes sense, a startup usually focuses on the wrong elements, eg: the logo instead of the targeting. Targeting matters, the value prop matters, positioning matters. The visual identity and brand values not so much.

The Branding Mirage for Startups

Do want to build a brand? Go sell some software. Want to improve your brand perception? Go sell some software. Want to have a distinctive brand visual territory? Go sell some software.

Branding may seem a hairy topic but it can be broken down into: <ul><li>Brand targeting: Who Do We Sell To?</li><li>Brand promise: Why Do They Buy From Our Company?</li><li>Brand positioning: Why Do They Buy Our Product?</li><li>Brand identity: Do We Look Like Us?</li><li>Brand values: What Do We Stand For?</li><li>Brand voice: Do We Sound Like Us?</li></ul>

6 elements of Branding

This is brandspeak for figuring out who you’re selling to.  Think STP (segment, target, position).<ul><li>Figure out a mechanism to segment the market — e.g., by company size, by vertical industry, by adjacent systems</li><li>Target one or more of those segments. For startups, fewer is better.</li><li>Position your product to those target segments.</li></ul>

Brand Targeting for Startups

The high-level expression of why someone should buy from your company, often more simply known as the value proposition. For tech startups they tend to fall into a few patterns:<ul><li>We are you (e.g., Mosaic, we built it for ourselves at Palantir).</li><li>We fixed it. We took the last-generation leader and made it better (e.g., Cube to Adaptive, Pigment to Anaplan)</li><li>We rebuilt it.  We run on the modern stack with modern technology (e.g., OnPlan to Vena)</li><li>We verticalized it (e.g., Plannuh for marketing, Place for SaaS)</li></ul>

Brand promises for Startups

Positioning comes down to answering one of two questions:<ol><li>Why buy one? (Benefit oriented)</li><li>Why buy yours? (Differentiation oriented)</li></ol>Startups who are alone in defining their category need to focus on the first question. Those in crowded categories (either a new market with several nascent entrants or a more developed category with the usual suspects), the emphasis needs to be on why buy mine.

Brand Positioning for Startups

Focusing on the logo and brand values before having a business is like putting the cart before the horse.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

startup

Startups

product

Product & Design

Dave Kellog on Startup Branding

I have invested countless hours becoming an expert in my field. This is essential because nearly all public speaking gigs include time for questions. Many speakers aren’t prepared for the random, wide-ranging questions they get and so Q&A can be awkward. I make sure that I know my subject so well I can answer almost every question. If I don’t know the answer, I say, “I don’t know” instead of guessing or estimating.

Become an expert.

My logistical skills are lacking, so two brilliant women cross every T and dot every I for me, and I’m atrocious at salary negotiation, so I have a savvy manager who handles that part with grace and professionalism. Don’t assume that you can do an hour of reading on the internet and suddenly become as good at social media as someone with years of experience. Find an expert and treat them well. Also, once you hire an expert, let them do their job. If you hire a PR professional and you get an email asking you to do a podcast interview, forward it to your PR rep. Don’t interfere with their work.

Hire experts. 

Your slide presentation should be mostly pictures, no complicated graphs or charts, and easily read from the back of a ballroom.

Keep it simple.

Talk about the mistakes that have led you to insight. Otherwise, your talk can come across as 45 minutes of unsolicited advice and, take it from a conversational expert, no one likes unsolicited advice.

Be humble.

Be on time or early, deliver what you promised, and ask lots of questions to make sure you understand what’s needed. Dress professionally and be kind to everyone you meet. That’s good advice for life, I think, but especially for situations in which you might be at a conference in Tampa and not realize that the person in flip flops getting lemonade is actually the president of the company.

Be reliable.  

No matter what your subject matter, your talk should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Human beings learn best through stories and most of our history was passed on verbally. Reading is a recent innovation. So, write a script that is meant to be heard and not read. No long sentences with subordinate clauses; no excessive adjectives and technical terms. That’s not how people talk and it shouldn’t be how you speak.

Tell a story.

Fly in the night before. I used to try to arrive in the morning if I had an evening engagement, so that I could keep the trip as short as possible. That strategy quickly becomes disastrous though, because of bad weather, late planes, and missed connections. Just fly in the night before and get a full night’s sleep. You want to be rested and relaxed when you’re speaking to large groups of people. On the same note, don’t check bags. No need to take unnecessary chances like that.

Get there early.

If you are being hired as an expert, you’re expected to stay current on the newest research on your subject, as well as cultural trends. Keep notebooks (digital or otherwise) where you collect notes from articles, books, and studies. Update your content constantly. You may give a great speech to an organization, but if you don’t write new material, you can only work for them once.

Keep reading.

There's no simple formula for becoming a paid, successful public speaker. My road involves radio hosting, a TEDx talk & book writing. My other tips inside.

career

Career

Becoming A Public Speaker Is Your Journey To Make - Celeste Headlee

Each of us has someone or several someones whom we would like to change. We may really like or love them to pieces, but there are some habits or traits we wish were otherwise. Sometimes the changes are relatively minor. We’d love it if they broke some annoying habits such as being late to everything, or finishing our sentences for us. In other cases, we want to make deeper or more fundamental changes to who they are. We want to change what American philosopher and psychologist William James identified as their “habitual center of personal energy.” That can never be changed by another.

“I Wouldn’t Change A Thing About You. Maybe A Thousand Things.”

William James claimed that each person has some central organizing interests, commitments, principles, or ways of being that orient us in the world. These define us in many important ways and function as our centers of personal energy. These centers can change over time, sometimes very intentionally and other times as a consequence of neglect or passivity. It is particularly painful when we see people whom we like, respect, and love suffer because of their personal centers of energy.

The Habitual Center Of Personal Energy

Consider a professional athlete in pursuit of a championship. Relationships, education, and social involvement, for example, are all secondary to that one goal. Their habitual center of personal energy is that goal and all that needs to be done to meet it. People or commitments that hinder that pursuit are often dropped. Reaching that goal may make that center burn more brightly.

Center Of Personal Energy Example: The Professional Athlete

People who do reach their center may set a higher but related goal or may see the result as inevitable and proof that they are exactly who they believe themselves to be. Not reaching that goal on their own timetable may provide incentive for redoubling their efforts and commitments. Others may not fare so well. When a person’s life has had such a singular focus but the goal remains unmet, an existential crisis may follow. Who is a person when their center is lost? Athletes who are injured in their prime face this question and will need to figure out ways to live its answer.

Out Of Center, Out Of Place

Consider another case of people who begin to struggle with addictive substances and behaviors. Alcohol, drugs, and certain behaviors are at the center of a person’s life in the worst throes of addiction. Relationships have been ruined, careers trashed, opportunities lost, and dreams shattered. No one sets out to become an addict, but over time, the need or want of substances and behaviors suffocates other parts of a person. What is left as a center of personal energy is a combination of self-recrimination, loathing, and grief.

Center Of Personal Energy Example: The Addict

In the cases of the athlete and the addict, the usual tactics of pleading, cajoling, shaming, and manipulating are not effective methods to change another’s habitual center of personal energy. One person cannot make another person change no matter how hard we try. Our efforts may have the opposite effect of what we intend. The motivation must be the person’s own. What are effective ways to change that center and to create a new one? William James is helpful in this regard though he is always clear the compelling force must be a willingness to act differently.

We Cannot Will Another’s Will

To begin to cultivate that willingness to change, James says people need to have two things in their minds. The first is a clear sense of how the present ways of living are incomplete, harmful, or not good enough and even wrong for them. Athletes who can no longer compete may feel lost in the world. The usual sorts of things that orient and ground people—family, friends, meaningful work and social engagement—may be missing. Perhaps the people who surrounded them during good times are suddenly gone in the wind.

Where There Was Light, Now There Is Darkness

On the other hand, most people who struggle with addiction become experts at listing all the ways they have messed up their lives, lost important relationships and goods, and perhaps most importantly, lost themselves or the plans for their lives. This recognition of their losses is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for change.

Where There Was Me, Now There Is Another

The second thing William James says people must have in mind to make genuine change is a positive ideal that they long to compass or set as their points of orientation in the world. These ideals or visions of a good life may seem completely inaccessible or even impossible to people who have become trapped in that loop of wrongness and incompleteness.

A Polaris, Or North Star, Of Change And To Change

Athletes who have been largely sequestered from everything but their sport are at a disadvantage, starting nearly from scratch. They lack fundamental skills that many others take for granted. They may need to look to others who have made the transition successfully. They may need to use those stories as a starter or catalyst for beginning to craft their own positive ideal.

When There’s Nothing: A Starter And A Catalyst

Those who struggle with addiction and voluntarily seek help in some form may have positive visions from earlier in their own lives. They can accept the incompleteness of their present lives but take motivation from it to shape how they will act differently moving forward. They see what they can get back when they become willing to act in different ways. Others who have no ideals from their own histories may need to look to others who have made the sorts of changes they wish to make. Early in recovery, many of us hitchhiked on the stories of others.

When There’s Something: A Past And A Story

“You must want to be different before you can change.” - Neville Lancelot Goddard

No matter how hard we try to change who a person is, we will fail.

One Person Cannot Make Another Change

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