Hi, this is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track. Welcome to the latest episode.

I'm not normally a fan of life hacks per se, however, for this episode, I want to talk to you about one that has helped me, and it's how it's not only impacted one particular area of my life, it's impacted numerous areas, and this hack is having a good vocabulary.

I've always had an interest in words. I've liked the way that they have power, that they have range. They managed to encapsulate so many different aspects of our life. And I've always had this fascination, especially when it came to a magazine that used to come out monthly when I was a young fella and it still comes out now. It's been going for decades now, and this one called Reader's Digest.

Reader's Digest is made up of various articles on a wide range of subjects. It's got a jokes page. It's got anecdotes from readers, humorous stories. The one part that always had me and it was the first thing I always did, was written by a chap by the name of Wilfred Funk, and it was "Improve your word power". What he would do is in this column. It was just two or three pages. He would have 20 words, and it would be obviously a word that's not in the common vernacular, it's not a common usage word, and he would give you four options as to what that word could mean.

Then at the end of it, you'd be given the answers, and he would give you a rating, so you could work out how you were doing in comparison to the average person. I really enjoyed those and spent many, many years doing these. The way this became a life hack is I have found over the years that having a broader vocabulary, a more powerful vocabulary enables you to be able to communicate with everyone, regardless of their status, where they sit in a company's hierarchy. So you could talk to everyone from the cleaner all the way up to the CEO. Because of that power of vocabulary, you just adjusted according to the person that you're talking with.

The other thing as well, is it tends to give you confidence because you know that you can communicate with them on their level. There are a number of different advantages as well to being able to communicate with various people. What I found is this, especially nowadays, as I've got my mindset sorted, is it gives me the opportunity that when I'm going through a particular challenge or I'm trying to make sense of my emotions, I'm able to hone in better using a wider range of words.

Instead of just being happy, I can be ecstatic. That carries a little more weight than just happy. Being able to hone in like this means I'm better able to identify my emotions, I'm better able to utilise them. Which also means I can then communicate to my partner more effectively what it is that I'm feeling, what I'm going through or what I'm trying to inform her about.

So, this particular life hack, I'm heartily encouraging you, there's numerous apps, I've got a few on my phone that do a word of the day. That means that every day you get a word to use. Here's a couple of stories regarding vocabulary. I worked with this chap years ago, and he had mentioned to me that he was writing a novel, and I asked him, "I love reading books. Do you mind if I have a read of it and say, you know how it stacks up?"

He brought in the book and I read it, and it was a pretty good book. He had a good premise to it, and he had a good flow to it. The problem was that there were places where he used words that just didn't have any oomph, any power. So I said to him, "You might want to expand your vocabulary". I bought two little note pads, you know, the ones that are about the size of your hand, and each day, I mean, each week, I wrote at the start of the week, he would come in and I would have written five words and their meaning on the page.

During the course of the day, he had to come to me four times and use that word of the day and put it in a sentence or context that made sense. So we do this for a number of months, and then I quit that job and I didn't see him for a number of years, and he didn't keep up that building of his vocabulary, which is a bit of a shame. However, he still remembered all the words that I taught him.

You could see when he was telling me this fact that he hadn't lost any of the recall of these words. That he was proud of himself for expanding his vocabulary and be able to have a more broad range of words to be able to use to fully describe exactly what it is he's trying to describe. That was a really cool one

Then my two boys, as they were growing up, I used to say to them regularly, make sure you've got a good vocabulary. My oldest boy would have been about the 15 year mark, and I said to him, well, it was to both of them. "The really good thing about having a broad vocabulary is a lot of the times you're using words that are either not in the common usage or they're archaic, they're words that people just don't use anymore. Listen, the good thing about knowing those words, especially if they were words that could be viewed as derogatory, is you can insult people, do it with a smile, and they feel like you've complimented them. But you've had some fun just stirring them."

My oldest basically went out that day and bought a book on all these archaic words. The book was probably about as thick as your thumb, and he learned them all. I saw him a little while later and he said to me "You know what? You're right. It's good fun. I was walking around the saying these things to all these people and they were all excited because they thought I was giving them a compliment, but I wasn't".

So instead, of ripping into people, he was able to express that frustration that he had with them or whatever it was, but in a way that wasn't actually damaging to them. So he felt he could get it out and it wasn't causing any harm. So again, that's another advantage. Having a good vocabulary.

Also, it's good fun because you can do crosswords and all of this sort of thing, and I know that I used to have a lot of people. For some reason, they would figure out that I had a good vocabulary and they'd be doing a crossword or a word puzzle of some sort. They would just say to me "Hey Wayne, what's this word? Blah, blah, blah?" Or "What's the word for, you know, whatever." And then I'd go "Oh, it's this" or "It's this" and what I used to be astounded by, was how often I actually knew the word, which was a sense of pride for me. Of being able to tell them what the proper word was and actually be correct.

So there's lots of different advantages to this, However, like I said, the big ones are being up to better communicate your thoughts, your ideas, your goals, your dreams and frustrations, your problems to your partner, or to your friends, to your family, to your children, so the better you can convey that meaning, the more accurately you can present yourself to those people, and you can also communicate with people regardless of their status in life so it's really important.

Also it does make it easier to understand a lot of legal jargon and things like that because you can tend to put things into context a lot easier. So anyway, that was my life hack. Nothing more complex than that. I do encourage you to get like a vocabulary building app. It's one that I enjoy. I still learn new words. I still get reminded of words that I might not have used for a lot of years, and so that's a little bit exciting.

I do encourage you to do that and practice. That's the key. Start up a game with someone with a friend or a family member or your partner. Have a word and see if you can just casually drop it in the conversations and make it fit and sound good. Now that doesn't mean you have to try and drop them into all conversations and trying impress people.

It just means you have them there if you need them for that particular situation. So anyway, that's my life hack. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope to put it into practise, so get out there, have fun with it and remember, here's to a good life

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