Label for efficiency not as a one size fits all

What this episode covers

Hi, welcome to another episode of David Sammel nuggets. Today I'm going to talk to you about labelling. And we, you know, labelling can get a bad name. But actually labelling is very important to us as human beings to navigate life efficiently. When we hear that something somewhere is a good restaurant, in our minds, we are willing to try it because we heard that it's a good restaurant, and if we go, then it is, then we label it as a good restaurant. And you're the same as if we hear that someone's an athlete, or an artist or a sculptor, we know immediately what they do in life. But of course, this is superficial, because all these people are more than just artists, sculptors, or athletes, they do a lot of other things in life and are much more complex than that. But in terms of navigating life, quickly and efficiently, it really helps to understand quickly where people sit in certain boxes. But of course, when we want to get to know someone better, or we want to help somebody, then and all we want to teach somebody, then labelling can be very damaging. For instance, people who stutter cannot be labelled as stutters, they are just people who fall over their words. And a lot of research has gone into this and coaches are working with people who fall over their words will, we'll have to work with a family around them and friends around them to to not label them as doctors, but just people who speak normally, who fall over their words, and will learn how to breathe and do certain exercises and be given the tools in order to be able to overcome this impediment. And of course, they can and do overcome it very, very often. But it is far more difficult to succeed if they are labelled. And think about it. They've also done studies in schools where they've taken kids and labelled them as gifted. And they perform better than kids who are labelled as not very smart. And if you take the kids from the not very smart classes, and then put them in a new school where they get labelled as gifted, research shows that they immediately perform better. It is it is crucial in our own lives not to label ourselves. Because the moment you label yourself, you actually close yourself up to improvement. So rather than saying, Oh, I'm dumb, or I can't believe how useless I am, it is much more helpful to say, Gosh, yeah, that was a dumb mistake. Or in that situation, I have sometimes pretty useless, but I'm going to work to become much better in that situation. You know, if you label yourself as non athletic, that closes the door to becoming athletic. Whereas if you say, you know, I would like to be more athletic, and I'm going to work at it, then you're opening the opportunities to become more athletic. And let's be honest, every single thing in life that we work at, we're going to get better at. So therefore labelling someone and labelling ourselves is is very counterproductive. In in trying to learn and get better. But in terms of just pure efficiency in life, it can be very, very helpful. I hope that gives you a little bit of insight and make makes you think maybe a little bit differently about labelling. And I will speak to you again next week. Thank you very much. This is David Sammel signing off from a another golden nugget. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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