Keen to get ahead? These are five words to remove from your vocabulary, according to Collective Ambition head Ashleigh Tyszkiewicz.
1. CRITICISM. Noun. the expression of disapproval of someone or something the basis of perceived faults or mistakes.
This word evokes a negative, warning feeling in the pit of your stomach when someone feels obliged or motivated to express disapproval or rejection of something about you. And of course, that someone is often you, criticising yourself.
Even “constructive criticism” is a form of being judged (perhaps for your own good, and perhaps simply as a buffer from the reluctant critic).
By substituting the words feedback or suggestion, we regain freedom and choice, if and how to respond, rather than react because we feel attacked.
2. SHOULD. Verb. used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticising someone’s actions.
Should is almost always a moral judgement.
It implies you’ve made the wrong decision to do, or not do something.
Delete it, and substitute could, might, may, consider and see how much more at ease you can feel.
3. PERFECT. Adjective. having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.
Origin: from Latin perfectus ‘completed’.
How do we get this word so very wrong? To derive from ‘completed’, to the modern ‘as good as it is possible to be’ – still, are we not, even on our most ‘ordinary’ of days, “as good as we can possibly be”, for that particular day in that particular situation? In which case we’re all perfect far more often than we allow ourselves credit.
If you are your own worst critic constantly striving for perfection, you miss the opportunity to be complete as you are, to be enough, every day, no matter the outcome. Enough, can easily be swamped by perfect. Good and great can easily be swamped by perfect!
“Statistics show that men apply for promotions when they met only 60% of the recommended qualifications whereas women wait until they fulfil 100% of them.”
Our ambition for perfection is costing us more than a good night’s sleep!
Be determined to your best self, on any day. Because to be as good as you can possibly be is, to be perfect.
4. JUST. Adjective 1. based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair Adverb. 1. exactly. 2. very recently; in the immediate past.
Despite its definition, more often than not when we use “just”, it’s as a qualifier. “I just have a quick question”, “It’s just me”.
Delete it in this context – it immediately demeans and reduces what you want to say.
5. SORRY. Adjective. 1. feeling sad or distressed through sympathy with someone else’s misfortune. 2. feeling regret or penitence.
It IS too late now to say sorry!
Ok don’t delete this one completely but I want everyone to start to notice how often you’re using it.
Studies indicate that “women have a lower threshold for what constitutes offensive behaviour” – ie. we’re apologising too often and often for things that aren’t actually our fault.
We’re a society and particularly a gender that have turned any sign of potential discomfort in to an opportunity to absorb blame.
How often do other people bump into you and you automatically apologise to them?
Using sorry as your default response greatly devalues its meaning, and devalues yourself as a confident communicator.