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Showing results for tags 'language'.
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Nov22Post.mp4 Most people are not very articulate. And this is very frustrating. We all love the ideas in our own brain. But when we try to express them, they usually don't sound NEARLY as good as they do inside our head. This is a very common movie and TV trope. From both angles. The speaker has a good idea, they try to express it, and fail. Then they say: "I'm not explaining this very well," while their friends wonder what the heck they are talking about. On the other side, the listener is watching them expla
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Sept25Post.mp4 Magic tricks are cool. I've been fortunate enough to know two guys who were professional, up close, sleight of hand magicians. Up close meaning they would perform at places like this club in Hollywood called the "Magic Castle." And they wouldn't be up on stage. The rooms were set up like rooms at big, Hollywood Hills style house parties. And the guy would be sitting behind a table, and they would have very small, kind of "bleachers" set up. So you could have a straight line of sight from where you were to the d
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Aug29Post.mp4 A short hand version of a common question to ask somebody new is, "What's your story?" This sounds very intuitive. We all have a "story" about who we are, where we are going, the things we want, the obstacles we'll face, etc. There's a TV show about way back in the day before ladies were allowed to be full fledged reporters. It's based on a true story that happened at Newsweek magazine back in the sixties. They made an HBO show about it, and in one episode a lady was being taught how to be a reporter by her boyfriend
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Aug28Post.mp4 How you use your words is an indication of the thoughts in your mind. This is hard to think about. Since most of our thoughts our private, and mostly unconscious, we tend to think our words are a separate entity. But consider that with regards to thought and language, there are three basic skills you can improve. One is the quality of your thoughts. Most people think the same tired out thoughts, day after day. The same excuses, complaints and projections. The second is how accurately you describe those thou
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Aug27Post.mp4 Most have heard the truism, "The map is not the territory." This sounds pretty simple, and pretty self evidence. You have a bunch of mountains in front of you. And you've got a map of the same mountains. The map is a 3'x 5' piece of paper. The mountains are miles and miles of dirt and trees and water and infinitely complex life forms. Obviously, the map is not the territory. Or if you're standing in a fast food place, trying to decide what to order. There are the descriptions, and there is the food.
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Aug26Post.mp4 Voltaire famously said he only needed ten minutes to talk away his ugly face, and he'd bed the queen of France. Maybe he was being truthful. Maybe was really just bragging to his buddies. But the idea is very, very compelling. In one episode if "The Last Kingdom," a serial drama that takes place when the Vikings were running around creating havoc in pre-united England, one character gave another some very good advice. The character giving the advice was leaving. The character receiving advice was going to hang a
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/July23Post.mp4 There are a lot of reasons we like somebody. Not just guys liking girls or girls liking guys. But how we subconsciously choose our friends. The people we end up hanging around at school and work. The subconscious things they project that we subconsciously pick up on. The way we kind of "sniff each other out" when we first meet them. Some new guy or gal is hired at work. They're introduced around, and we quickly form an opinion. Then as we continue to work with them, our opinion is either proved correc
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/May02Post.mp4 What do women want? Nobody knows, not even women. Of course, for men it's pretty much the same thing. A bigger and more accurate question would be what do us humans want? Nobody knows, not even us humans. There are many reasons for this. One of them is there are too many choices. Kind of like being super hungry and standing at a MASSIVE buffet. You're hungry, but you can ONLY eat a couple plates. Without even knowing what it's called, we commonly deal with what economists call "opportunity costs."
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Apr03Post.mp4 A very common trope in romantic movies is the guy or gal who "gets" the other guy or gal. This is the opposite of another common romantic movie trope. That when two people are getting closer and closer, one of them is TERRIFIED that the other person will find out who they REALLY are. And when this happens, it's over. These are two sides of the same coin. The coin of who we really are on the inside. The fear side is us being TERRIFIED of being "found out" and forever rejected. The best-case-scenario side
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Mar27Post.mp4 Structure is everywhere. Joseph Campbell found that most myths from around the world have the same structure. One he called the "monomyth." Commonly called the "hero's journey." Same basic structure, over and over. Similarly, most popular music has the same basic chord progressions. Once you tune your mind to hear these common chord progressions, you'll see them everywhere. Structure is something that we need to choose to see. It's not something we normally see. Even if you've studied music or
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Mar06Post.mp4 A lot of things are acquired tastes. Like coffee and alcohol, for example. When I was a kid, my parents would make coffee in the morning. I'd never tasted it, so all I knew was the smell. I imagined it would be delicious. But once I took a sip, it kind of ruined it. I had an imagination of what it MIGHT taste like, but that was shattered by the awful taste. But then, I grew up and got the world famous coffee buzz. That's when I associated the taste with the effect. Now, it tastes good. Really
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Mar03Post.mp4 A lot of inventions have come in dreams. The guy who figured out the structure of Benzene had a dream of a snake eating his tail. The guy who invented the sewing machine had a dream of being chased in a jungle with the natives throwing spears with holes in the tips. A common, and very useful piece of advice is to think of a problem while falling asleep. Not in terms of, "poor me, this problem is going to kill me." But in terms of, "I wonder how I can solve this..." Somehow, while sleeping, your subconscious
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Feb25Post.mp4 A lot of people are worried about AI robots taking over our jobs. That's partially true. If you have a job that's pretty monotonous, chances are a robot is going to be doing it. Flipping burgers, making pizzas, putting together stuff on the assembly line, even surgery. What WON'T ever be taken over by robots? Anything that requires in-the-moment human interaction. This requires something robots will never do. Look at while people while you are talking and they are talking. Read their emotions and adjus
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Feb24Post.mp4 When I was in Boy Scouts, many, many years ago, we'd go on these weeklong backpacking trips once a year. We would each be assigned something to carry for the group. Stoves, food, tents, etc. But we'd also be assigned things for ourselves. Waterproof match containers, compass, first aid kid, etc. We each had a list we'd have to check off before we were allowed to leave. This a useful training exercise. To take a bunch of kids up in the hills for a week. And to train them to check and carry their own stu
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Jan31Post.mp4 Many things are a mix between form and function. One leads the other, and vice versa. Sometimes it goes more in one way than the other. Smiling is a good example. If you're happy, you smile. But if you're in a bad mood, and you FORCE yourself to smile, you'll start to giggle. It's not like our brain is different from our body. Our lip and face muscles are attached to our brain. And these are two way electrical circuits. It's not like our brain is some metaphorical energy center that controls us
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Jan28Post.mp4 One way to think about our conscious awareness is as a "new instinct" generator. Whenever we learn something to the point of unconscious competence, it's essentially a new instinct. Imagine you were relaxing at home, watching TV with half eaten pizza on the coffee table in front of you. And imagine a mouse ran across the pizza. You'd jump and suddenly wake up. This reaction is a programmed instinct. Or imagine you were walking down the street, your mind on auto pilot. Then suddenly you looked up and a super
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Nov28Post.mp4 Most of us love movies with an unexpected twist. Like when the "Sixth Sense" first came out, people couldn't stop talking about it. Whether it was done deliberately is anybody's guess, but this kind of thing is a fantastic marketing strategy. One, because it's a great way to create word of mouth, free, advertising. Two, it induces people to watch this again and again. The first time, you see the twist and you're: "Whuhhh????" The second time you watch it through trying to see all the things that SEEM obviou
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Nov24Post.mp4 One major paradox of human thinking is the difference between cause and effect. Everybody and their sister has heard or said the phrase, "correlation doesn't mean causation." This means we all are both fooled by this and skeptical of this. Evolutionary psychologists believe this is a function of survival. Our brains evolved to be quick, but not accurate. Everything cost something, and our brains aren't any different. The cost of having a very fast brain is that many of our assumptions are incorrect. Turn
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Oct27Post.mp4 Plenty of movies have magic mixed in with martial arts. Ideas like wearing blindfolds and blocking tennis balls. Plenty of movie characters are blind, but are very skilled fighters. Daredevil is one popular character. Another is the guy named "Hundred Eyes" which is the Kung Fu super genius from the Marco Polo series on Netflix. When Luke Skywalker was training, part of it was to use his lightsaber, along with the Force, while blindfolded. The leap from martial arts to being a blind assassin is not a big leap.
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Sept07Post.mp4 One interesting aspect of our language is the metaphors we use. The problem with MOST of these metaphors, is that we really have NO idea why they were chosen. For example, a common expressions is "raining cats and dogs." Everybody knows this means it's raining pretty hard. But nobody really knows why. Sure, there's a few theories, but it's impossible to know. Because who knows how long people used them BEFORE writing them down. Way back in the day, there wasn't much stuff being written. Books and news
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Aug29Post.mp4 One time I was hanging out in my friend's back yard. I was talking to her husband about something. Something related to gardening. I don't know how this particular noun phrase came up, but I said, "worm poop." Something about fishing or fertilizing. But since I was trying to crack a joke, I paused just before the phrase, and said it with a little bit of emphasis. "blah blah blah.....WORM POOP!" My joke worked, and my friend laughed. But their kid, who was running around, stopped and smiled. She lo
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https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Aug19Post.mp4 Once upon a time there was an anthropologist named Brown. He wanted to find a set of Human Universals. Characteristics that all humans share. Kind of like Noam Chomsky's idea of Universal Grammar. Most linguists and historians will tell you that there are plenty of different languages on Earth. But Chomsky believed we really only have ONE language. His theory was very technical, and he had a lot of supporting ideas. One of his reasons was that all languages have nouns and verbs and adjectives etc. And
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No matter what form of persuasion you are using, it must conform to human nature. Specifically, nobody will do anything unless they believe, consciously or unconsciously, it is in their best interests. This can seem confusing when we are on the outside looking in. We see people doing CRAZY things. Seemingly self-destructive things. Why would somebody do something that is so blatantly self destructive? This question is IMPOSSIBLE to answer. Even for the person doing the thing. From inside our own heads, there are costs and benefits to everything we do.
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There's a powerful technique in the Milton Model. Of course, there are many, and this is but one. It's called the, "I'm not going to tell you..." pattern. It works because as soon as you utter those words, people's brains kind of turn down their defensive shields slightly. So if you say something like, "I'm not going to tell you to buy this product." It is a sneaky way to slip in the "buy this product" command. But it's very useful if you add on a bunch of stuff after. And that it seems like the stuff you add on after is the main part of the sentence. It
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There's a very powerful way to respond to insults. And when you can do this correctly, the insulter will be absolutely speechless. Everybody watching will think you are super hero of language. It requires that you have an idea of the type of insult. The linguistic structure. It's very similar to the idea of agreeing and amplifying. This is very useful when done playfully. Say you are wearing a particularly bright shirt. And your friend sees you and makes a joke. "Dude, you should have told me, I would have brought my sunglasses" The structure o
