Friday, October 15, 2021
Mind Your Language
SoundGirls.org: I’m a big fan of cognitive behavioural therapy. I think everyone should learn about it, whether they’re in need of therapy or not because it explains so much about how we think and how to control our mindset. One of the main insights I have taken away from it is that when we’re tired, stressed out, or even bored our brains revisit the same thoughts and memories that we already think about the most.
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While I do agree that non-negative mindset is important and makes people more enjoyable to work with, some of these phrase suggestions feel a little unnecessary and confusing to me. Like saying "there was an air gap" if something isn't plugged in? I think I'd just get confused stares and questions if I said that to someone. While it may sound less stupid them telling your superior I forgot to plug something in it seems like a not so clever cover up of a relatable mistake. I also disagree with the idea of changing your view from I'm stressed to I'm excited because those are very different emotions that are not always substitutes for one another. If your stress is being caused by something that needs to change rather than something you aren't handling particularly well it's important to recognize those issues and solve them rather than try and convince yourself that the stress is normal. I do agree with their rephrasing of things like i don't know and it's not my job, however. Those responses can come off rude or unhelpful and showing you care enough to find them an answer even when it isn't your responsibility makes a good impression, especially if it's a first time encounter. I also like their reframing of your boss as your client. Remembering that you chose to work with/for the person in charge of you can be really helpful when you're frustrated. It reminds you that you did this for a reason and you should trust your goals and logic in taking the job enough to stick with it and talk through your concerns with the client.
The language we use, even just small tweaks, can affect our mood, tone, and meaning, and I appreciate the changes offered in the article. Whenever I’m chatting with someone while working and they’re using really negative language, it makes it more difficult to enjoy my work or just get through it. A small language change that I’ve adopted after reading it years ago is changing apologies to gratitude; for example, I ask someone doing paperwork for help moving a heavy object, and instead of saying “sorry to bother you!” I say “thank you for taking time to help me!” As a woman it can be my first instinct to apologize even when it doesn’t make sense to, and changing my phrasing like this makes me feel more confident and open to asking for help when I need it. I really like the example in the article about changing “I hated that set” to focus more on the audience liking it. While it’s okay to not like a design, saying you HATE something can hurt feelings, especially when you’re all working together.
I don’t know how much I agree with this article’s ideas about turning anger into a positive statement. I think that sometimes this idea can be great but for larger issues, it seems like it would be very dismissive of your own feelings. As a woman in the theatre industry, I have been told to keep my head down and say nice things even if something is bothering me. My high school director basically fights for the exact opposite of that. Speak your mind, own the room, stop putting exclamation points in your emails, never let someone talk down to you, and let yourself be angry. Throughout history, a lot of change has happened. A lot of this change has only occurred because people got angry. The theatre industry is currently under a lot of scrutiny for its actions of systematic oppression. In order to fight this, we have to get angry otherwise no one will listen. Having a positive outlook on things can be helpful but you also have to acknowledge your anger.
This article is kind of messed up... The first couple are ridiculous, and using big words doesn't make you more professional, it just makes you an asshole. If you're talking to another sound person in a problem solving situation, yeah, maybe using more precise terminology is appropriate and more efficient (power cycling). If you're talking to your director, using terminology they may not be familiar with is just gumming up the process. That's unprofessional. And euphemistic things like 'percussive maintenance' and 'PICNIC situation' may be funny, again, if you're talking to your colleague and making a joke, but in a situation where the 'wrong' sentence is unprofessional (like if you're insulting someone), being passive aggressive isn't better. The ones that are actually just reframing something more positively are maybe worth thinking about, if you find yourself getting down and or if you're so negative that people around you are suffering for it. Other than that, this article is ridiculous.
I get that this article is trying to help people replace speaking poorly about themselves to speaking positively, but it just feels a little bit like one of those blurby Buzzfeed lists. Like, all of the examples they gave to replace statements with their alternatives were ridiculous! I don't think anyone has any business saying any of these things seriously, we all know we're saying this in a facetious way, it doesn't matter. It kind of takes away from like another conversation we're having about removing harmful language from our lives every day. "It's a picnic situation - Problem In Chair Not In Console". Who says that? Most of the alternatives also just feel like the author is annoyed with what people say sometimes and want to rant about it. Genuinely, this article is just all over the place and the initial introduction sentence about cognitive behavioral therapy rubbed me the wrong way.
I think cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is extremely beneficial and comes with a way of framing situations. I am unclear on the author’s definition of CBT, but for me, the core of CBT is metacognition, or thinking about thinking. When I have a negative response to an event, I try to identify the source of my emotional response in order to logically break it down and to prevent my brain from falling into negative thought patterns. Some of the rewordings don’t make sense to me, but the ideas it’s representing and trying to convey are a start--we should be more conscious about the language we use. Keeping in mind that everyone is an individual with individual feelings and reactions will limit oneself from inadvertently ruining someone’s day. Another point is using language that respects yourself, as you cannot be present and engaged in a space without respecting yourself. Self-depreciation will only encourage imposter syndrome and may affect how others view you too. Ultimately, I may disagree with the specific examples given in this text, but language is very important, and thinking about how one thinks about language is key in framing one’s work.
This article didn’t turn out how I thought it would turn out, and while I agree with the first part of it, I really don’t agree or like the phrases section. Some of these phrases are similar to self depreciation and just changing the phrase isn’t going to help with that and could make the situation worse depending on who these get said to. While I do agree that some of these changes will take the blame away from others, it also sets up that person saying these to get yelled at or wrongly accused of being the problem, which only creates more stress. The change of phrase I disagree with the most is ““I’m so stressed out” = “I’m so excited””. That is not always the case. If I am excited for something, more than likely it’s not massively stressing me out. Personally, things that stress me out are things that make me angry or cause negative emotions, never positive. Overall, there’s a lot of these that just feel like they are sugar coating the situation and overall just feel fake. ““This is an organic, flexible production”” is probably one of the most sugar coated phrases that is listed, and being stressed out about that isn’t going to always mean excitement.
This article feels sort of all over the place. It seems rather odd to me to tell people how to verbally react to certain situations. This seems like something that should be cultivated naturally, or at least not as explicitly as this. Some of the terminology was kinda cool (I didn't know there was a technical term for turning off and back on again), but the article could've just been about introducing new terms, without bringing a script along with it. The phrase that felt the weirdest to me was the final one: replacing "I'm so stressed out" with "I'm so excited." Those are just two entirely different sentiments. You could be both or you could be neither, but it just seems unrealistic and unproductive to imply that people cannot admit to stress when it's often an expected part of the process. One instance that I do believe words matter differently is during tech when one needs to keep up morale, but it could still be more personalized.
Y'know, I only half-agree with this article. I pretty much agree that positive thinking helps to maintain a good space within this industry (my time in other positions and at my old university basically proves that) but honestly that can only carry you so far. I'm al for tact when speaking to upper management and higher levels of a production, but eventually you just have to spit out what's wrong. Now in general tech, using positive jargon makes sense when its easy to get caught up in what's wrong, and especially on long calls it's important to stay positive, but I believe a frank sense of positivity is required on any job, especially entertainment to accurately gauge the work done.
I am heading into a really busy week (as most of us are) and honestly I am feeling very very overwhelmed. I have spent more time worrying about getting my work done rather than working on it (which is just a negative loop) Im trying to reshape my mindset when it comes to the work that we are given at CMU. I liked the end “I’m so stressed out” = “I’m so excited” I don’t think that we need to negate the presence of stress but I am excited and passionate about the work, it is just daunting at times to think about how much work I have rather than just getting into it and learning. I’ve had a lot of distractions and made a lot of excuses over the past semester about why I haven’t focused on my classes and homework (job, life, missing my family, still coping with COVID and its restrictions) I keep making excuses instead of just putting my head in the work. Did Andrew Carnegie say “my heart is in the work”? IDK I feel like my heart is in the work but my head is not. I have to work on shifting my mindset a little more to get back into the work
Honestly I think this article is a little silly. While we should all strive to use more professional language and be more positive in the things that we do, I think it's acceptable to use "it wasn't plugged in" in the context of trouble shooting. Someone that's not trained in sound or electrics might not be familiar with the term "air gap" and while it may seem self-explanatory, if the technician using this language is the only one that knows what it is they are saying that ultimately they are just talking in order to hear themselves talk and they aren't contributing to the overall knowledge level in the room which feels very gatekeepy to me. We shouldn't be trying to hoard knowledge of processes.
Honestly, this article feels like whoever wrote it had to pump out an article and we ended up with this mess. There's some bits of good advice in here such as working towards a solution when there is a problem rather than laying blame, but ultimately the advice here seems really insubstantive.
I went into this article thinking it would just be about empty positivity, and was surprised to find how amusing it was. What really worked for me about this article was not just the idea that grumpiness, pessimism, and rude behavior feed into themselves, making us more grumpy, pessimistic and rude, but the fact that they're not fun! Having a frown on your face all the time is simply put, not very exciting. But saying that you "performed percussive maintenance" after you got frustrated with a light and started having a go at it with your wrench until it suddenly came on is utterly delightful. Not all of their proposed language swaps are funny, but they all involve some sort of positive spin, mostly centered on placing you in control of your actions and your environment. A show isn't out of control, it's "organic", and we're not terrible at things we don't know how to do, we're just "learning". If you reconsider the lens of language that you use to view a situation, you can change the situation.
Will not lie to you, when I got to "percussive maintenance" I thought this was a joke article, like the Onion or something. I do agree with some things said in this article, like owning up to your mistakes by outright saying "I messed up," or saying "I'm still learning" or "I'm working on it" instead of saying "I'm crap at this," but the rest of it feels like the phrase equivalent of unnecessarily adding Xs to words that are already gender neutral (though an argument could be made about Xs signaling a safe space for so-and-so community). There is something to be said about trying to be positive when you could go negative, but there is also something to be said about replacing your own stress and negativity with positive terms that you may not genuinely mean, like saying "I'm excited" instead of "I'm so stressed." All in all, this article has some hits and has some misses, so take what you will from it.
This is definitely an… interesting article to read. I don’t really know if I liked it to be honest. I agree with the general premise of how much our word choice affects our daily lives. But some of the suggested phrase swaps were too weird and unnatural to me. Additionally, not every situation can be met with positive language. It is great to be mindful of your language, because to do so is to be mindful of the people around you. However this article suggests, as some of the swaps show, negative language will always reflect poorly on yourself. I don’t think this particularly true. Sometimes, when you are fucked, you are just plain fucked! Saying out loud and so boldly can relieve some of the frustrations in the room instead of trying to sugarcoat the situation, which can just lead to more frustration in my experience. The key is your actions. Maybe your language is negative and a little demoralizing, but if you take active steps to fix a problem, it speaks greater than words. Overall, this article was nice and amusing, but it should be taken with a grain of salt.
I think this is actually a pretty good application of CBT, although some of these phrases really have nothing to do with CBT. CBT is about improving your own mental health. Training yourself to use gender neutral terms and rephrasing to more polite and professional instructions have nothing to do with your own mental health. They are still valuable tips that improve your relationship with your coworkers, but I don’t think it really falls under the purview of this article. I think most of these phrase changes can get a pass though. Switching from using expletives and hyperbole to using specific and accurate language when describing a problem can genuinely improve your mental health. It helps immediately put you in a position to solve the issue instead of just complaining about it which can help reduce your stress levels. A key part of CBT that is not described in this article is how to actually do this. It is vital when performing this exercise to be gentle with yourself. If you have one of these less desirable thoughts, acknowledge, gently correct, and move on. Eventually you will retrain yourself, but it will take time.
This article is definitely not hitting the bar for me. I just have some uh, logistical issues with being told to be polite or friendly or calm when I am in situations that do not naturally produce those things for the sake of making others feel comfortable. I understand that those in managerial situations have a responsibility to remain calm and handle negative situations, but I think that type of thing is entirely different than this article’s descriptions. Not to mention half the suggestions listed here are almost extraneous or MORE unprofessional to say. Like, “percussive maintenance,” are you kidding me? I also think this kind of mindset would take us steps back in removing harmful culture from entertainment. It does not make sense to pretend to be fine when you are not, and that will not help create a solution to the problem at hand. Word choice is an important part of obtaining what you want and creating the perceptions you want to create, but I wholly disagree with the suggestions in this article.
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