Over the past few weeks, I've read the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. The Heaths are brothers who brought together their insights from two very different professions to find out what an idea needs in order to spark change in behaviors or beliefs. Each chapter offers several examples of ideas that were successfully transferred through what the authors call the 6 aspects of SUCCESs: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories. The stories were definitely interesting and really help me, the reader, to remain engaged throughout the book, but I couldn't help but feel like it was all a little sensational. If I were in a business where I needed to advertise a new service or get my employees to learn a new procedure, it would be fairly easy to apply these concepts. But for me, in my leadership role and my life, those are not my goals. It seems a little more useful when I think about it as being rhetoric and understanding the perspective of your target audience, but still there's something a little artificial and even deceitful about this. 


Then I realized that this is probably typical of someone like me (according to the Meyers-Briggs test) would think. I tend to be an idealist and value morals and ethics, but I struggle to "sell" my ideas. I think that I should just be able to be up front and plainly state my ideas and people should listen, that I shouldn't have to "convince" anyone, but that doesn't always work. The greatest insight to me from the book was that when a person learns or finds a solution to a problem, it can be extremely difficult to communicate those ideas to others because we forget what it was like not to know them. The ideas become a part of our frame of reference and we struggle to level with others who don't already understand. I loved this because one of my personal goals is to constantly gain and expand my perspective because I think that is essential for true progression. 


So there is a part of my philosophies on life that seems to suggest that I really want to love and help everyone like I've been commanded to do, but there's something that that is eating away at me as I am typing. I can honestly say that in this present moment, I do not love each of my roommates and that is wrong. We have all of these issues in our apartment of not connecting and not being nice to each other and not cleaning up after ourselves and while they're all petty, I am upset over them and there is a spirit of contention in our apartment. As I am currently wishing that none of my roommates are reading this, I am also overwhelmed with the realization that even though I poked fun at the idea of being a leader in my apartment at the beginning of this semester, my apartment really needs it. This weekend, we will be having an apartment discussion and I don't know exactly what I'm going to say. I want to take some time to really ponder the perspectives that each of us in the apartment are coming with and be prepared to offer my ideas for solutions in ways that everyone will be able to understand and will not feel threatened by them. I am also grateful for Professor Wilson's advice in her public speaking lecture because I may not practice my discussion since that would be pretty difficult, but I am going to have an outline of what I'm going to say and hopefully it will work. So I guess you can wish me luck this weekend...or since its BYU, you can pray for me if you'd like.