It’s been long said that smart people dismiss trivial conversations faster than a camera’s shutter speed. And perpetual learners of today’s era don’t shy away from the process of reminding themselves of all the trivial things around them, believing simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Have you ever felt like a fool after realizing that you said something trite while talking to someone and they pointed it out just to dismiss it? — “Well that is such a trite of a thing to say, everyone knows that!”. Although you genuinely wanted to emphasize something by squeezing in a trivial phrase to bolster your position in the conversation, it goes to waste nonetheless.
The best part is this awkwardness can be avoided and for good. Celebrities, lawyers, authorities of the gavel and highly persuasive people usually follow a common psychological trick to help nuance their trivial thought into something impactful for their listeners. In my opinion, it can be boldly phrased as “trivializing the trivial”.
Imagine you had to hold your position strong while in a conversation with someone who won’t admit reading is better than watching, and you say “Reading helps you improve your vocabulary”. Well, bury the hatchet, you just said something petty and the person listening is going to bury you under the weight of it. A better way of avoiding something like this would be to add some sort of a proclamation before you go on to say something trivial. For example, the former statement could have been put forth something like this — “I know it’s trivial to say, but I bet reading more will help you improve your vocabulary”, and in all its glory, that person thinks twice and says “Yeah, I know that’s a valid point”.
See what happened there? Accepting that you are about to utter something trivial is helped you say it or better yet, helped you nudge your conversation in a more concise way.
P.S.
This post was meant to be trivial — to prove that boring and simple things when said in a way end up sounding trivial at the end, or do they?
