How to Avoid Sounding Like a Jerk (technique No 30)

Do you remember that scene from the movie classic Annie Hall where Diane Keaton is first meeting Woody Allen? As she’s chatting with him, we hear her private thoughts. She’s musing to herself, “Oh I hope he’s not a jerk like all the others.”

One of the quickest ways to make a big winner think you are, well, a jerk, is to use a cliche. If you’re chatting with a top communicator and even innocently remark “Yes, I was tired as a dog,” or “She was cute as a button,” you’ve unknowingly laid a linguistic bomb.

Big winners silently moan when they hear someone mouth a trite overworn phrase. Oh sure, just like the rest of us, big winners find themselves feeling fit as a fiddle, happy as a lark, or high as a kite. Like the rest of humanity, they consider some of their acquaintances crazy as a loon, nutty as a fruitcake, or blind as a bat. Because many of them work hard, many of them are as busy as a bee and get rich as Croesus.

Yet would any of them describe themselves in those words? Not in a coon’s age! Why? Because when a big winner hears your cliche, you might as well be saying, “My powers of imagination are impoverished. I can’t think of anything original to say, so I must fall back on these trite overworn phrases.” Mouthing a common cliche around uncommonly successful people brands you as uncommonly common.

Technique #30

Don’t Touch a Cliche with a Ten-Foot Pole

Be on guard. Don’t use any cliches when chatting with big winners. Don’t even touch one with a ten-foot pole. Never? Not even when hell freezes over? Not unless you want to sound dumb as a doorknob.

Instead of coughing up a cliche, roll your own clever phrases by using the next technique.