…with Gary Moss

Some look at the enormity of the task and say, “I Can’t”.

Behaviorists know that when you say I Can’t, you have sabotaged yourself.

Some look at the enormity of the task and whisper, “I’ll Try.”

Psychologists know that when people say I’ll Try they are not fully committed, and are planning a convenient escape clause for themselves.

Some look at the enormity of the task and say, “I Will”.

The ‘I Will’ person is the person that I like to be. The ‘I Will’ people are the ones that I want on my team.

It was a cold winter day in December 1968. I was standing over the grave of my first child, my infant daughter, who had succumbed to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). I was numb. Life was not fair. Getting out of bed in the morning was an overwhelming task.

When I meet scrabble enthusiasts who settle to play words like ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ and ‘smile’ during their game, when these same people tell me that ‘gox’ and ‘etui’ and ‘ngwee’ are not ‘REAL WORDS‘, I become very annoyed.

Standing at that graveside, if I had given in to the notion of ‘That’s All There Is’, I should have jumped into the grave along with the coffin.

But there’s always more East to go.

At times we may become overwhelmed and discouraged; it may seem that there are no answers. But I have learned that the human spirit is resilient. We are all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit.

One trick is, breaking the challenge down in size. There are 155,000+ words in the OWL2, the Official Word List, and bible for scrabble players. The average person on the street knows about 5% of the words in the dictionary (7750 words). That means that the average person DOES NOT KNOW

147,250 words in the OWL2. What percentage do you think that you know?

Which of these are words in the OWL2?
___ crwth
___ gjetost
___ healings
___ myc
___ nonidea

Once you learn the answer to my question, will you be able to learn and remember the words that are new to you? If you had a chance to use them in a scrabble game, would you play them?

I have used my teaching and organizational skills to break down the task of learning the dictionary into bite size pieces. It doesn’t reduce the size of the whole job. But when you see how easy it becomes to master one piece, it will motivate you to go ahead to another piece.

When you get to the point that you know 10% of the words in the dictionary, you’ll know twice as much as the person on the street. You Can Do It.
CLICK HERE and challenge yourself.

P.S. My life evolved. I founded a school in the memory of my daughter. I went forward and have 5 children and 3 grandchildren. I spend a part of every day engaging other, teaching life’s lessons, encouraging people like you to be all that you can be.