Attitude is everything. And words can be your most powerful ammunition.

During my several counseling and teaching jobs in college, I've often been taught to be careful with my words. There is a mountain of difference between saying, "Did you understand me?" and "Was I able to explain myself clearly?"

I'm not suggesting that you be fake or hide what you actually feel, just that a small bit of paraphrasing might help you reach your goal quicker and also spare a few folks' feelings. Instead, many people choose to make completely unconstructive remarks that have the added benefit of being useless.

Here's one I read recently: "It's all crap."

Wow, thank you for that well thought out comment, fella. I know exactly what you mean.

Actually, I don't. What do you mean?

I hate it when people say it's "bad" or it "sucks." To be completely honest, I don't like it when people overuse the word "good" either. I don't want to sound like your English teacher, but those adjectives mean nothing. What if you ask me whether I like your site and I say, 'It's good."

Are you feeling good, now? Cause you shouldn't. "It's good" either means that I didn't like it and was trying to be cordial or, probably worse, I didn't even visit it. Had I been to your site, I could tell you how the tone of green you chose for your link works well with the dark blue text and that I love the font in your name. I might tell you that I think your font is too small and makes the page slightly unreadable or that there is too much text on the screen. But saying it's "good" is just a way to brush you off. It means I don't care. It means I think your site is so bad that it can't be salvaged.

Tiny little words with so much power. The response you'd get from taking a small minute to reconstruct your sentence. The effort you put into details. Why not give it a try and see if you find the responses as intoxicating as I do. There are few more wonderful things in the world than truly helping out someone else, even in the smallest way.

So maybe it's time to start using your words.

Previously? One For All.