Tuesday, October 02, 2007
One Word that Can Change Your Reality and Really Piss Off Other People
Self Made Chick: "The concept was simple, and only involved removing one word from my vocabulary and replacing it with another. But actually removing this one word from my vocabulary was more difficult than I imagined and led me to discover all kinds of things that I was hiding from my own self."
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5 comments:
Reading this article was a little bit of an 'aha moment' for me, as well as the author. By replacing the 'cant' with 'wont' you empower yourself with making a formal descision to do something, as opposed to being limited by surroundings. When saying that, the persons actual meaning may be different, but using 'wont' gives the impression that a careful thought process led to a very specific answer.
yeah, but if you tell a designer or director that you won't do something rather than you can't will likely get you fired.
either way, you end up explaining what makes something undoable, its just that "can't" seems to imply a more firm decision, backed by some underlying logical reasoning, while "won't" only implies a sense of stubborness
In nearly all cases you aren't supposed to be saying "I can't do that."
As a department head your job is to say "If we do that then..." and explain the ramifications.
If you fall back on "can't" you probably are being stubborn and maybe lazy.
Um, not all uses of can't can be replaced with won't. Sometimes you are completely incapable of doing something. Empowerment is all very well and good, but common sense needs to enter into things.
Though I agree that using the word "won't" does give some more empowerment to yourself, I feel like it only works when speaking to yourself. In the world of theater using the word won't seems to be like a quick way to burn bridges and be labeled as "unwilling to work well with others." Granted I agree with Dave that "can't" also doesn't convey the right messsage either. It seems more important to find an alternative to either.
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