One that comes to mind for me: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is not always true. Maybe even only half the time! Are there any phrases you tend to hear and shake your head at?
I was told ”a samurai can’t chop down a tree unless he uses the right tool for the right job” because I was seeking help from outside a transitional program (LifeWorks at WKU) because I didn’t trust my staff there and they were making me work a job I didn’t want at the time.
I think the person who told me that was geeking out because he read too much Bruce Lee.
More importantly, I was seeking help because I wanted to get out of LifeWorks because I didn’t like it and everyone was convincing me to stay.
“Practice makes perfect.”
Let me tell you about my 7th grade all county band audition, where I showed up and skillfully played 40 measures of not what the sheet music said because I misread it and practiced what I misread.
“Practice” needs some kind of mechanism for feedback and correction, such as a coach or instructor.
Fake it til you make it
Naw, this one works. If you look like you know you’re doing and are good at figuring shit out for yourself, you are good in almost all situations. We are all bumbling through life; some are better at pretending they aren’t.
Agloe, NY, was a fake town designed as a copyright trap on a map, but then a general store was built on that spot. When a company was caught stealing the map, they used the general store as proof the town actually existed.
In Iceland in 2010, a group of comedians made a joke political party called the Best Party, with a platform that amateurs can’t mess up more than the pros. They won the mayoral election.
There’s a youtube video about how to pretend you know how to play guitar, which suggests you learn just four chords and cycle between them. The comments noted that this is just a beginners guide to actually knowing how to play guitar.
George Lazenby lied on his CV when he auditioned for James Bond. When he confessed this to the director, the director pointed out how he had already convinced an audience with his performance. By acting like an actor, he had shown his ability to act.
The line between pretending and doing is thin, and you learn by doing, so you can learn by pretending to do. If it’s a good enough fake, it may as well be real.
I have found this one to be largely true. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
That’s the whole basis of CBT
I’ll consider that an exception.
“lets agree to disagree”
how about fuck you, one of us is wrong and I want to know which one of us that is!
but there is just no right or wrong answer to every question… sometimes it’s just about opinion.
sometimes these questions are trivial (which color of tie should I wear with this shirt) and sometimes they are literally life and death questions (should death penalty be legal)… and there will always be people with opposing opinions on them. “agreeing to disagree” is literally the best possible thing they can do to live in the same society.
Most people don’t care about what’s true, something that took me forever to realize. Encountering humanity under the assumption that everyone cares about the truth (or any aspect of empirical and normative reality) is bound to be suuuper confusing until you figure things out. People are literally animals (we forget that), and animals are just trying to survive. Some of them are cute or loving. Not all of them are particularly “good,” and even fewer are willing to sacrifice creature comforts in pursuit of some abstract virtues. That’s why Trump gets any votes.
This is also an autistic thing of being more logical in reasoning.
I only got diagnosed at age 30, and had some bad relationships due to me wanting truth and them feeling personally attacked by my questions.
Could be why it took you some time to realise, as most neurotypical people think in past experience for reasoning. https://psychcentral.com/autism/why-people-with-autism-are-more-logical#autism-and-logical-thinking
Hmmm, while I see your point on the phrase, my friend group and I only ever use it on subjective things. Like orange juice or chocolate milk being better, for example. If we’re both arguing (in a fun way) and have no good points to change the other’s mind, then we agree to disagree. Haha
I find it really useful to shut down discussions where no one is budging and are just overall a big waste of time. As an example, if I’ve been trying to convince someone that the earth is round for 10 minutes and they clearly don’t have any interest in changing their view, I’ll just spare me the trouble and say it. If they still refuse to let it go, I start blindly agreeing with them, that usually does the trick.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”
Scrubs’ version was, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will hurt forever.”
“At least, not immediately visibly. But over time and with enough repetition and obsession they will carve canyons through my personality and emotional wellbeing. These canyons will be filled with emotional sticks and stones; huge, warped phantoms of the words they represent.”
Take care with your words y’all. But also, who cares what they think!
I once made my mom go quiet, and then apologize to me, defeating this point.
I was telling her that she could be really cruel with her words sometimes, and that I’d like to her to be less so. She told me I shouldn’t take it so seriously, grow a thicker skin, that they’re just words.
But she’s my mother, and what she thinks of me and what she says will always weigh ten times more in my mind than the words of almost anyone else. Ignoring what strangers think of me is easy, but with her, it’s literally impossible. I was telling her off because I knew she doesn’t mean the worst of what she says, and that despite that, coming from her every word hits like a freight train. That it takes enormous effort to think through and discount the parts she doesn’t mean. I told her that.
At the time I felt really clever for making that point. Getting her to actually go quiet and say sorry felt amazing, so it stayed with me.
I later realized it probably landed so hard because of how her parents treated/treat her.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” It’s like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear it. There is a very limited context where it may be applicable, but mostly it’s used to give up trying or mock someone for failing a task. Have you never gotten better at something over time? Learned an instrument? Played a hard video game? Learned to ride a bike? It stops problem solving dead and kills motivation making it less than useless. Oh and its misattributed to Einstein like every other shitty quote
“it is what it is”
If it weren’t what it is, well, it wouldn’t be anything at all, would it?
This one is about accepting things for what they are rather than wasting energy wishing they were different.
Fair point, but something about the tautology of the phrase has always grated on me :\
“It is what it is.”
“Is it?”
“IS IT!?”
Yea as the other commenter said, the idea behind this saying is that ypu shouldn’t malinger in the “oh no I really wish I had done xyz!”. Oh well, it is what it is, no changing the present, only the future.
“You miss every shot you don’t take!” or similar. It’s useless, makes no sense, and is disrespectful to yourself and others.
Which is why I love saying it to pricks at work.
“Boys will be boys” Oh yes, what deep insight, nicely expresses the lack of parenting that let little Billy here become a FUCKING BULLY that regularly kicks, punches and intimidates other children. Even worse when adults agree that “shitty and violent” is just how boys are, you know boys will be boys.
Well done being a role model guys, not only does that excuse the bully, it openly communicates to the victim that 1) he’s allowed to be like that, 2) they should be bullies too and 3) nobody has any intention of actually helping them and changing the situation.
And then you make them shake hands afterwards and both have to apologize, the bully and his victim.
GRRRRRRRRR makes me so angry! Complete abdication of your responsibility to actually parent your little monster.
some people I work with got to saying “1000%” when asked “would it be possible to…?”. As you gonna give them 10 of everything they ask for??
Person learns what exaggeration is, more at 11
I know you’re being sarcastic but you’re also wrong. They aren’t being sarcastic in this instance, They’re telling the clients “My answer is the biggest Yes imaginable”. They aren’t being rude to the clients face. maybe you’re thinking of “hyperbolic”?
I prefer using higher precision when responding like this. I will often say something like: “137.825%”. Mostly, I do this because it makes the other person feel awkward, and I do it because I constantly feel awkward, and so I just want other people to feel a tiny portion of what it’s like being me.
“everything has pros and cons”
I usually give the CGP Grey’s legendary answer: “…but it’s hardly ever the case that all the pros and all the cons all PERFECTLY balance each other out, right?”
"No pain, no gain. "
As someone who’s been running for over 30 years and working ou for 20, if there is pain, there is injury. When there is injury, you take a break and regress. People may say that muscle pain or stiff muscles are a sign of a good workout, not an injury. However, even with those your risk of injury is much higher, and you’ll eventually hurt yourself. “No pain” should be one of the outcomes of smart exercise, not an admonishment for not working hard enough.
“Well it can’t get any worse” And “Well, you gotta do something”
The first is almost always dead wrong. Trust me, you can make anything worse.
As for the second, it’s shockingly coming that in a given scenario, the best action is to not do anything different at all. It may seem like things are bad and something has to change, but changing your strategy at this point can still definitely make things worse. Sometimes inaction is the correct action.
“it’s just a few bad apples”
That’s only half the saying. It is used most of the time as if the full thing is “a few bad apples aren’t a problem because the rest are fine” rather than the real thing “a few bad apples spoil the lot.”
Yeah. I always vehemently agree with the person misusing. “Yes! That’s exactly it. A few bad apples spoil the bunch. Perfectly captures the problem, friend! Good call.”
In French, it is actuall “a single apple” spoil the whole thing “une pomme pourrie gâte tout le panier”
Any phrase that begins with “no offense but”. Just say it, don’t add that phrase, it makes any statement look more offensive.
