This Is How You Become More Articulate

you once said the most dangerous person

is one who is

articulate what would you recommend to a

one who wants to learn to speak in a

more articulate

manner well articulate is an interesting

word e because if your joints are

articulated and that means you can do

things with them because they're

articulated right they're not one

solid vague Mass they're

differentiated and someone who's

graceful is

articulated and compelling because

they're articulated

and speech is a form of articulation in

that manner because the act of speech

itself is extremely complicated it's a

very complicated motor activity right

it's very complicated action to dance

with your tongue let's say

and it is definitely the case that there

is no more exceptional form

of the capacity to be dangerous than to

be articulate and one of the things that

really shocks me part of the reason that

my son and I and our co-workers

developed this essay app is that young

men in particular are never taught this

it's like well why learn to why be

literate well do you do you want to be

do you want to be competent and

dangerous or do you want to be vague and

useless cuz those are your options and I

don't care what your job is it doesn't

matter what you end up doing know if

you're a plumber of great respect for

plumbers by the way and you're

articulate you can negotiate with your

clients you can introduce your

co-workers you can you can make a case

for your

employees you can you can advertise your

services

you can think through your problems

you're you're firing on all

cylinders there you know our whole

culture is based on the idea of the

supremacy of the word our whole culture

is based on the idea that it is the word

itself that extracts habitable order

from chaos and

possibility and the reason our culture

is predicated on

that is because it's a deep truth and to

the degree that our culture actually

embodies that it

works so it's a great thing to be

articulate and it would be so lovely if

our Educators were wise enough to

communicate this appropriately to young

men who are striving forward and to let

them know in no uncertain terms that if

they want to make themselves into forces

to be contended with that there's no

sure root to that than an exceptional

poetic literacy now it's not like young

people don't have an intuition of this

there are reasons they admire rap

musicians for example who are often

extraordinarily articulate in their

performance and their capacity for

spontaneous poetic utterance and

certainly the greatest people I've met

including great warriors you might say

are great in no small part because

they're are ticket it I know a uh former

special services Special Operations

Soldier Joo willink some of you might

know about Joo um he's got a pretty

decent online following and you know

he's about 4 feet wide and about 3 feet

thick and he's one tough son of a

I'll tell you you don't want to mess

with him and he knows perfectly well and

is very capable of articulating the fact

that his success as a eminent Warrior is

in no l no small part dependent on his

ability to

communicate because he could communicate

well he could listen to The

Men Who were under his command because

he was articulate he could explain to

his superiors the situation on the

ground because he was articulate he

could make a case that the men under his

command who were deserving would be

promoted because he could think in an

articulate manner he could plan

strategically and not lose

battles okay so that's the case for

being articulate and what's the

alternative you want to be inarticulate

you want to say ah and like and M and

pause and stumble and and and be unable

to formulate a strategy be unable to

elucidate a vision be unable to compel

and convince other people to entice them

with with your with your articulated

vision of what might be you want the

opposite of that that's why would you

want that you would you you would you

would choose awkwardness over Grace

that's it's

Preposterous it's it's beyond foolish

and I cannot understand for the life of

me why this case isn't made in

compelling manner particularly to young

men and I know it's not being

articulated to young men because they're

dropping out of the educational realm in

droves and it's unbelievably sad so how

do you become

articulate

well by paying attention to what you

say that's a good start and what do I

mean by

that I mean pay

attention to what you

say

so you can you can you can think of this

as an

analogy

so imagine that you're trying to walk

across a swamp and the swamp is murky

but you know there's a path you know

there's a a path of stone under the

water but it twists and moves and if you

stay on the path you won't drown the

crocodiles in the swamp won't devour you

and as you walk forward you can feel

with your with your next step where the

stone might be and then you feel it's

solid then you take that step and then

you do the same thing with your foot

again you search and and you find out

what's solid and you step on it and you

move forward in that manner that's what

you do with your words it's the same

thing you feel and you you

feel is this the right word h is it is

the fact that I'm uttering it putting me

together and making me intact and

stronger or is it tearing me apart and

making me dissolute and weak and and you

can learn to do that I learned this in

part from Reading Carl Rogers who's a

great clinician and Rogers believed that

the integration of language and action

was a necessary precondition for

operation as an effective clinician that

you had

to align what you said with who you were

and that one of the things that your

clients would be evaluating you for was

that capability and you might say that

someone with that

capability manifest themselves as

genuine and

trustworthy and and more than that I

would say also as compelling and

interesting although that can be gamed

but the entire

combination that emerges out

of the domain of articulate

communication can't be gamed

it's not not

easily you feel your way I noticed 40

years ago when I started thinking these

things through

that much of what I said actually made

me feel weak I didn't know why exactly

but sometimes some of the things I said

didn't have that effect they they

weren't accompanied by a sense of Shame

let's say they weren't accompanied with

a sense of vulnerability they were solid

and at the beginning that was probably

only about 5% of what I said the rest of

it was instrumental you know it was

language I was using to get my way in

the manner that Tammy described when she

introduced me tonight there was an

arrogance in my use of language that had

to do with the desire to attain proximal

victories right to appear smart let's

say to win an argument something like

that a very different idea than merely

feeling my way along to see what word

was appropriate for what moment but you

can learn to do that and you can listen

to yourself and you can stop humming and

ha and using like and you know and

fillers

and you can take the time necessary to

craft your words carefully and you

can practice merely saying what you

believe to be

true and you can read and you can read

great writers and you can write and you

can write about what you think about the

problems that obsess

you and you can become articulate as a

consequence and there'll be nothing

about that that is the adventure of your

life and so it's a moral Endeavor in

some real sense right to become

articulate is to become the master of

your own

tongue

and to become properly articulate is

to is to make the word

divine and to treat it in that manner

and to decide whether or not you believe

that it is the case that

the Divine word creates the order that's

habitable and good and if you do believe

that well if you don't believe that then

what do you believe and if you do

believe that

well go all

in see what happens see what happens if

you become articulate

[Applause]

I I'll I'll give you one more small

example Tammy touched on this in the

introduction too she said she'd learned

to

pause you can pause it's it's a

prayerful pause in some

sense when you're in a discussion with

someone you can ask yourself they might

present you with a question or a

conundrum or a proposition and instead

of responding with what you know to be

right so to speak you could just ask

yourself what do I actually think about

that but it has to be a real question it

has to be the kind of question that

you'd pose to someone you didn't know it

has to be a question predicated on the

idea that you might not know who you are

and that you could ask and so someone

will present you with a question you

think

okay what do I think about that but but

you have to want to know the answer and

then the answer will make itself known

cuz that's how thought works and then

you can just communicate that

answer and and if you do that you'll be

interesting right away you'll be

interesting to the person that you're

talking to and if they do that to you

they'll be interesting too and then if

you both do that you'll have an

interesting conversation and if you have

an interesting conversation you'll both

grow as a consequence and that's

actually the pathway to

growth and you just wait you can wait

you can open yourself up to the

possibility that what needs to be said

will make itself manifest if that's what

you are striving for if that's what

you're asking for and then you can

merely communicate that you have to

abandon instrumentality to do that so

one of the reasons Joe Rogan is so

successful by the

way is that that's what Joe does he just

asks questions

he he doesn't he isn't trying to get

something from his guests he's not

trying to become more famous he doesn't

need any more money there's no

instrumental utilization of language in

his discourse he's

just a humble lunkad you know in the

most profound sense who would like to

know more than he knows and who asks all

the stupid questions he can think up and

it turns out that he's actually very

very smart and and very well educated

now from after talking to hundreds and

hundreds of people and listening and so

the stupid questions he asks aren't

stupid and there are questions that are

shared by virtually everyone who's

listening and he takes his listeners

Along on this process of exploratory

Endeavor and it's the pathway to

success and that the same thing can be

true of your life the pathway to success

is is much it's a

if you're Guided by the spirit of honest

inquiry and every word you say is

reflective of what you believe to be the

truth then the pathway that you walk on

is a golden Pathway to

success and and I I know that I know

that to be true