Communicating in E-Prime

The way we talk can have profound affects on the way we see the world and, in turn, the way the world sees and interacts with us. One of the easiest ways of eliminating poor, irrational, upsetting, and alienating communication (ie. to increase your general likability) is to stop stating opinions as facts.

I recently came across a simple hack for this called E-Prime. The basic idea is to eliminate the verb “to be” from your vocabulary. For example, “She is an annoying person” becomes “She annoys me sometimes” or “I find her annoying”. This shifts your statements from making a judgement to stating a fact. I have found that paying attention to how I state facts and opinions has made me more aware of how I judge my self and others. See REBT if you want more information on the benefits of that.

If you want more more information on E-Prime, check out the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime