Cliche hell
Please stop using clichés. It is like vomit - Regurgitated bile. Hell is a place where everyone speaks in clichés. Most of us are already suffering from listening to clichés. Some of us are guilty of spreading them.
It reeks of unoriginality. It is not clever. It is lazy.
Every time you parrot something that we heard before – you diminish yourself. And we tend to stop listening when we already heard it before.
The exception to this is the use of distinctive quotations – which I will discuss in another post. For example, Shakespeare never goes out of style.
So, which clichés push my barf nerve?
Pushing the envelope
Thinking outside the box
Raise the bar
Win – win
There is no ‘I’ in team
Go over his head
Bend over backwards
Just business – nothing personal
Fly-by-night
Nose to the grindstone
The full nine yards
Thirty thousand foot level
Working my fingers to the bone
Another day, another dollar
Put your money where your mouth is
24/7
Clichés are boring, unimaginative and destructive.
If that is the way you want to be remembered – use clichés. You will be quickly forgotten.
If you want to be different – be different. And you will be remembered.
In another post I will talk about how to twist clichés to make you more interesting, effective and memorable.
George Torok
The Speech Coach for Executives
Here is hopefully another one for your barf list
ReplyDeleteThink outside of the box....I could choke everytime someone says that to me!