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 cliché. 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
cliché, 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 com119
How to Avoid Sounding
Like a Jerk
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mon cliché around uncommonly successful people brands you as
uncommonly common.