Jim's Wisdom #38: Waging Peace, Avoiding Incivility

Bad news is caused by intentionally chosen negative language.

Peace and civility come from intentionally chosen positive language and behavior.

How to build a constructive, positive, and happy environment at work, in the community, and home.
How to remove the negativity of snipy, nasty, and upset people from your workplace, community, and even your home life.
Become obsessed enough to wage peace, eradicate bad language, and have a civil, decent, and productive life.

Waging Peace

The crucial ingredients in civil, decent, helpful, and important communication are positive language and behavior. Yes, it’s that simple, but still extremely hard to accomplish every day all day. Experience shows that one of the most powerful drivers of leadership success is a relentless reliance on positive language. Talking about what to do rather than what not to do.

What’s required first is the eradication of negative language. This step eliminates negative behavior, decisions, and attitudes. How does one really do that? Can peace, tranquility, civility, and decency be that simple to achieve? A passionate commitment to positive language and behavior is challenging and persistently difficult for human beings to commit to. But help is here.

Eradicating Negative Language

When I’m teaching leadership how to get themselves out of trouble our first stop and constant commitment is to remove negativity of every kind from our daily lives, and the lives of others. This is a discipline that requires constant attention. The systematic removal of negativity from our lives will have immediate impact on everyone around you. They will notice. They will notice more when you insist that they too be positive as well and eliminate negativity. And you help them do that every day.

Getting started is the hard part but here’s a tool to help you do that.

Introducing The Bad News Eradicator

The Bad News Eradicator was designed to help eliminate defensive words and negative phrases from your speech, writing, decisions, and actions.

Keep the Bad News Eradicator near you. [Click here to see the complete list of bad news eradicating phrases]
Take it with you when you travel.
Collect your own set of habitual negative phrases and words to eradicate
Add your negative habits to the eradicator sheet, then create their positive equivalents.
Get a whole new life. Give a whole new life to others.

How to use the Bad News Eradicator

Examples of Bad News Eradication

Negative Statement	Positive Change
1. “I can’t comment on what hasn’t happened.”	1. “When it happens, I’ll comment.”
2. “I can’t speak for them.”	2. “They can speak for themselves.”
3. “I don’t know.”	3. “Here’s what I know…”
4. “I wouldn’t say that.”	4. “What I would say is…”
5. “It didn’t happen that way.”	5. “Here’s what happened.”
6. “It’s never been done before.	6. “This is the first time.”
7. “It’s not too expensive.”	7. “It’s affordable.”
8. “Let’s not kid ourselves.”	8. “Let’s stay focused on what matters.”
9. “Nothing is impossible.”	9. “Everything is possible.”
10. “Please don’t hesitate to ask.”	10. “Please Ask.”
11. “That’s not a bad idea.”	11. “That could be a good idea.”