The Problem with Negative Words - Wisdom 4 Humanity with Patrick Mosher

So the first one is the problem of negative words. So when you say, "I am not happy." Let's put it here. So, "I am not happy." Here is— oops. So here is "happy." I hope you can see that. Here's the universe of happy. So when you say, "I am not happy," not happy is anything outside of the universe of happy. So when you're saying you're not happy, you're actually not being precise about your language. Not happy is anything but happy. Not happy. So not happy, usually the connotation we're trying to convey is I'm sad or I'm angry or I'm irritated or I'm upset, but you're not telling the person that. You're just telling them I'm anything but not happy. You know what else is not happy? What else is not happy is joyful. What also is not happy is content. What also is not happy is giraffes, blue monkeys, and green earth. All those things are in the universe of not happy. So the whole use of the language of not something is kind of tricky from a language perspective. And this is really important for us to get this right because It erodes your meaning. Be more precise with the meaning. Don't just say, "I'm not happy," but say, "I'm feeling irritated. I'm feeling angry." So that's one thing to look at is really how do you say the thing that you really mean? "How are you feeling?" "Not great." "Not great" could mean good. Not great could be okay. Not great could be I'm feeling angry. Not great could be— not great could be I'm irritated. It could be a whole bunch of things of being not great. All you're saying is that I'm not in this realm of great, but it could be all those other things. Okay, so that is the universe of not. The problem of not, the problem of negative words. Not happy, not great. I would love to see other nots that you've heard in the world before. So, I'm not happy about that, I'm not feeling great about that. It's really not describing how you feel about those things. So that's the problem of negative words. The next piece we're gonna go to, I think is doubly fun to talk about. Because it is doubly difficult double negatives. Doubly difficult double negatives are things like— this one drives my wife bananas because I do these all the time— is my favorite is "no problem." "Hey, can I get that for you?" "Yeah, no problem." "No problem." "Can I get that for you?" And all of a sudden it's "no problem." means that before I was like, "I was going to do you a favor, but now I'm telling you that it's not a problem." Who entered "problem" in the conversation? I did. So in a sense, and this is kind of tricky to get, is if you say, "Patrick, will you get that for me?" and I say, "No problem," I just put you in debt because I said, "Well, you're not making it a problem for me." It wasn't a problem before. So other phrases like this, and I've been asked about this list a lot, so here are other phrases that are doubly difficult double negatives. Things like, "Not bad." "How's that taste?" "Not bad." "Not bad" doesn't mean it tastes good. It doesn't mean it tastes anything other than not bad. So it could be sweet, it could be sour, it could be good, it could be really good, it could be your favorite food on the planet. I don't know, but not bad "Mad" doesn't tell you anything. "No hassle." "Hey, that's no hassle." "No worries" is kind of like that. "Do no evil." "No evil" doesn't mean doing good, it just means no evil. "Can't complain." "Hey, how are you doing?" "Can't complain." Why did you just enter complaining in a question about your being? And your being isn't negative, so you can't complain. That's a double negative, a doubly difficult double negative. Oh, how about if we do this? Well, that wouldn't hurt. Wouldn't hurt? Great, I didn't know it was gonna hurt. You know, hey, could you take this, could you take the garbage out? Wouldn't hurt. You know, could we do this with our team? Well, that wouldn't hurt. What, did I wanna hurt the team? Not uncommon. I just added this one yesterday, I heard this one yesterday. Not uncommon. You know, it's not uncommon for this to happen, which means it's common for this to happen. So just say, this commonly happens, instead of it's not uncommon. You're making people do so much work by doing double negatives. Don't do that, okay, don't do that. All right, no worries and no problem. And I wanted to show this to you, that two negatives don't equal a positive. See, science tells us this. Two negatives don't equal a positive. So science says, take two magnets. Here we go. Ooh, let's see if we can do this. Two magnets, and here's two magnets. Boom. You know what just happened? The positive and negative went together. But now I've got this negative and this negative, and I can't put those together. 2 negatives don't equal a positive because I can't force those together to create a positive. Ah, you know what? Opposites attract. That's what happens if we really look at science with this. So I drive my wife crazy with this one. So we go to a restaurant, no problem. Hey, would you get this for us? And I say, no problem. And the food person says, no problem. And I go, Was that a problem? I'm sorry if that was a problem for you. Let's not create any problems for each other. I'm so sorry this isn't it. You know, they're like, my wife just rolls her eyes and go like— so be careful of using these doubly difficult double negatives. And if you've got more of these, I'd love to see those in the chat about doubly difficult double negatives.