There is a funny quirk of the English language that has an odd way of influencing the way we think. Words have a very powerful affect, they more or less determine our ability to think. Let’s just pretend that we only know a total of 10 words, in this case all nouns and totally unrelated. Our brains only have the ability to understand and communicate 10 different concepts. Replace one of those nouns with an adjective, and we suddenly have almost doubled our vocabulary as we can now communicate at least 19 different concepts. This simplistic example showcases just how dependent upon words we actually are. The more words we know the more thoughts we are capable of having, and the more complex our thoughts can be.

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From Flickr jordan99mac under Creative Commons

“It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.” -George William Curtis

Over the course of my college career I studied business, and more specifically marketing. Over several years my professors instilled in me the “values” of the modern business world. The most prominent of which is, “does this benefit the bottom line?”  It’s a question that undoubtedly has faced many a business owner and employee. It’s a sort of flawed dogma that negates one very important fact.

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