5) Speak with Conviction

The most popular thing I've ever posted on nataliefoundit is this animated typography video of a Taylor Mali poem. If you haven't already watched, you owe it to yourself to do so before you keep reading. The day I posted it the number of page views reached an all-time high, and the passalong rate soared. Clearly, its message resonated.

Like many of us, I went through a phase in high school where "like"s and "um"s littered my speech. My mom claimed that I used to speak like Anne Marie from All Dogs Go To Heaven when I was younger, and was constantly challenging me to bring back my own articulateness. "Are you like exhausted, or are you exhausted?" she would ask. Eye rolling ensued...she knew what I meant.

But of course, she was right. We'd like to think that "um" and "like" are just mental stalls that give us time to formulate our thoughts and words. Instead, they become a crutch, a bad habit that make us sound like we have no idea what we're talking about. In a world that includes Carrie Prejean and Erik Lanksder, being aware of our own articulateness becomes that much more important.

But simply omitting the Valley girl speech patterns is not enough. If we cannot commit to our own words, how do we expect others to be swayed? By padding our speech with tempering phrases, we give ourselves an out so we can save face if we're wrong. But it comes with the high cost of diluted meaning and less impact.

Keep Mali's words in mind. We owe it to ourselves to make an effort to speak (and write!) with conviction.