‘don’t know’ is disturbing. As a result they tend to try to avoid such situations. If you look at this ‘formula for behaviour’ for a moment, you will realize that it is a formula for disaster! If you only stay safely in areas that are completely known to you, and always avoid those that are not, what will you ever learn?
Nothing!
The baby is exactly the opposite. Why? Because a baby loves not knowing! Not knowing opens up the infinite opportunity for learning fresh, new and exciting things. The baby is purely ignorant, and ignorant (which comes from the Latin ‘ignorare’) simply means ‘to not know’. Realize that the more you know you know, the more you will know that there is still more to know!
Approach your pursuit of new and fresh knowledge like a baby does – with enthusiasm and gusto!
Give Your Brain a Healthy Diet
Your brain survives on the four foods of Information, Nutrition, Oxygen and Love. One of your brain’s main sources of information is Vocabulary and Language. Therefore feed your brain a healthy diet of words, making sure that you ‘eat’ regularly, that your ‘diet’ is varied, that you constantly supply yourself with ‘fresh food’ and that you never ‘fast’ for too long. Sometimes it’s good to binge!
Learn From Your Mistakes
As with ignorance, many adults also are discomforted by and afraid of making mistakes, especially with words. They, mistakenly, think that this shows them to be slow, unintelligent and somehow not worthy.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
If you want to learn how to speak any vocabulary brilliantly, learn from the greatest language learners there are – babies and children. They seldom hide in the safety of words they know; their preference is to leap for the stars, and to make as many mistakes as are necessary to get there.
That is why they often prefer hard or ‘more difficult’ words: these give them a better game to play in acquiring them, and often lead to mistakes that are much more humorous and which provide many more belly laughs than the ‘correct’ ones!
We now know that mistakes are not an impediment to learning; mistakes are the golden pathway to learning.
Enjoy all of yours from now on …
Become Friends with Words
You bring your feelings and emotions more into play when you increase your Verbal Intelligence. Many people mistakenly think of words as ‘intelligent’, ‘analytical’, ‘hard’ and ‘cold’. And who would really want to have a relationship with anything (or anyone) that only had those qualities?
But words are in fact ‘wondrous’, ‘imaginative’, ‘sensual’, ‘sexy’, ‘warm’, ‘delicious’ and many other things which would make you lust after a relationship with anything or anyone possessing these qualities.
As soon as you start making friends with words, as babies do, they make friends with you, and allow you to meet, learn from and play with them much more rapidly and with thousands of times greater enjoyment and fun than before.
Persist in Your Pursuit of Verbal Power
Remember that one of the prime qualities used to describe the incredible intelligence and accomplishments both of babies and the great geniuses is that single word: persistence. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘persistence’ as meaning: ‘To continue firmly in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition; to continue to persist.’ It comes from the Latin ‘per’ and ‘sistere’ – ‘to stand firm’.
If you steadfastly pursue your goal of Verbal Intelligence, you will become much more Verbally Intelligent, and will approach the incredible skills of the baby and the genius in this area. Persist and you will overcome all obstacles to learning. Persist and your mistakes will turn into successes. Persist and you will acquire thousands of new word-friends.
Persist!
Word Power Booster Number 2
In this vocabulary booster section I introduce you to some fascinating adjectives. They will spice up your conversation, adding richness and depth to it. Choose the definition that you think is closest to the correct meaning from the four options given for each. See the answers here.
1 DIDACTIC (dy-dák-tik) (a) Teacher-like; instructive (b) Aggressive (c) Explosive (d) Like an extinct bird
2 SURREPTITIOUS (surep-tísh-us) (a) Grey in colour (b) Serrated (c) Stealthy or secret (d) Completely silent
3 HERETICAL (heh-rét-ikal) (a) Deserving of punishment (b) At the present time (c) Greek behaviour (d) Revolutionary; contrary to the official/established viewpoint
4 COPIOUS (kópe-eus) (a) Able (b) Abundant; plentiful (c) Religious (d) Relating to the police
5 IMPERATIVE (im-pé-rra-tif) (a) Royal (b) Relating to the empire (c) Vital (d) Strong
6 INEFFACEABLE (in-e-fáce-abul) (a) To confront (b) Incapable of being erased; indelible (c) Female face (d) Building
7 INESTIMABLE (in-ést-im-abul) (a) Not enough time (b) Priceless; immeasurable (c) Unfriendly (d) Timetable
8 UNPRECEDENTED (un-préss-e-den-ted) (a) Never known or done before (b) Description of dental procedures (c) Damaged (d) Before production
9 UNEQUIVOCAL (un-e-kwívo-cal) (a) Different voices (b) Unambiguous; leaving no doubt (c) Unequal (d) Discordant choir
10 CATEGORICAL (kata-górr-ical) (a) Bluntly and unconditionally expressed (b) Dividing into categories (c) About cats (d) Vaguely defined
Word Power I – Roots: How to Improve Your Vocabulary, Creativity, Memory and IQ!
‘Words are the instruments that make thought possible.’
Judd
‘Words are the body of thought.’
Carlyle
In this chapter and the next you are going to learn more about the incredible power of words.
I will guide you through recent history, showing you how words developed as a ‘secret power’, and will introduce you to research that show why this was so.
The bulk of this chapter and the next are then devoted to a veritable feast of building blocks of vocabulary and Verbal Intelligence: Roots, Prefixes and Suffixes.
With the mastery of these your Verbal Intelligence will inevitably improve, and your life will change irrevocably!
