Page 29 - How To Sell Yourself

28 How to Sell Yourself They ought to know better, but!
The athlete, the jock, has given us two words that never ex- isted before 16-zillion-dollar salaries for mediocre shortstops: “ya know.” There isn’t a sportscast that doesn’t have: “Ya know, George, ya know, we went out on strike, ya know, because the owners, ya know, they were, ya know, unreasonable, ya know.”
I know.
Soon after she was elected to the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton held a news conference. Asked about her husband’s presidential pardons, she said “you know” 19 times, three times in one sen- tence. There were also plenty of “uhs.”
On CNN, reporting the “breaking news,”anchor Lou Waters said, “She...uh...demonstrated complete...uh...control and...uh...cool throughout the...uh...presentation.”
Beware of useless catch words and phrases
Teenagers have given us “like,” “and so,” “know what I mean?” and “okay?”
Most of us overuse “I think,” “I believe,” “as a matter of fact,” “to be perfectly honest,” “frankly,” “if I may say so,” and “as it were.”
This is pure garbage.
Many wise men of the past have said the same thing in differ- ent ways. Euripides wrote, “Second thoughts are ever wiser.” Dionysius the Elder said, “Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.” Pericles is quoted: “The man who can think and does not know how to express what he thinks is at the level of him who cannot think.”
Make the pause work for you
Use the silent pause and really think on your feet.
We’ve developed a disease that I call intellectual dysentery. Sounds keep pouring out of our mouths uncontrollably. When the people who do it hold a position of responsibility, we have no choice but to question their competence. And the worst scenario is when the audience knows the next word before the speaker is able to...uh...get it...uh...uh...out.