#9 Dirty four letter word? I say use it. (In front of kids even.)
Hey Rock Stars! I'm Dana with Clipboard Confidence. Today we're going to be talking about a dirty four-letter word that has me (ugh) in a quandary quite honestly. I have been a little bit losing sleep over this, and this scandalous, dirty, four-letter word is the word “JUST”. Over the past year or so, there’ve been several articles that have come out on blogs, in my Facebook feed, especially coming from women. I believe it was, I want to say, the CEO of Google or somebody in Google that was real big, came out with an article about women and using the word “just”, and how it softens our message and men don't often use the word just, so why should we? And so, if you're like me (which I hope you are because I'm really cool), but if you're like me, you take one little thing and “just” roll with it. So I was super hyper vigilant about removing the word just from my vocabulary, and then just maybe a couple weeks ago, I read a blog post or an article from a guy that was talking about being passive-aggressive, and ways that he could stop being passive-aggressive, and one of the ways was removing the word just from his vocabulary. And I could kind of see where both of these people are coming from because as a CEO you don't also want to demean yourself, no matter if you're a woman or a man, and I can kind of see where this guy was coming from in the passive-aggressive sense of someone saying like hey, I just have a quick favor I need to ask you, and then leaving it all to the imagination.
A: Never do that. If you ask someone, “hey I have a quick favor I need to ask you…”, fill them in on that favor before they even have an opportunity to answer because that is passive-aggressive and that's kind of manipulative. Well, it's not kind of manipulative, it is manipulative. Another thing is though, for me being in sales for most of my life, using the word just I think is just okay. It softens the message, and I don't think there's anything wrong with softening the message. I have business owners that I work with and people that have been very high up in business and in politics and in life, who use the word just with me, and they were just way above me as far as levels. But something about it, when they would say, “hey, just wanted to make sure you got my email,” or “just checking in with you”, I felt respected. I think it's okay to say the word just. I don't think it's okay to be manipulative and I don't think it's okay if you're doing it to be passive-aggressive but many of us could really benefit from utilizing just. So, I'm just going to say that you guys are rock stars in my book. Thank you for listening. Just keep it real and subscribe to my blog if you would like some more information on how to be amazing, and how to be a rock star, and how to develop Clipboard Confidence. So, go to clipboardconfidence.com, enter your email, click subscribe, and then if you get sick of me you can always unsubscribe, but hopefully you won't. So, until we meet again, keep it real.
