Watch Your Pink Elephants

You will have heard of White Elephants but what on earth are Pink Elephants?

Pink elephants are the unnecessary negatives that clutter your conversation and meaning, sending out the wrong signals to anyone you communicate with.

The book Drop the Pink Elephant by Bill McFarlan explains that almost all of us fall into the deadly trap of allowing poor communication skills to obscure our meanings, reduce our effectiveness and highlight our stupidity.

For example, who can forget the words of Bill Clinton when he said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky.”

No one can forget and that’s because of Clinton’s pink elephant.

Here’s another and it’s another politician, this time Richard Nixon:

“There can be no whitewash at the White House.”

These nine words turned the American nation against their President. Why? Because people hadn’t linked the White House with a cover up until Nixon himself made the connection. His own denial created the story.

Pink Elephants only draw attention to the very thing you want to avoid. More examples include:

“Telling my story was never about money.” – Paul Burrell, former butler to Princess Diana who sold his story to the Daily Mirror for a reported ₤300,000.

“I don’t want to gossip but …”

“No offence but …”

“But I don’t think it’s … been done with malicious intent.”

In Drop the Pink Elephant, Bill McFarlan reveals how to avoid the deadly trap of allowing poor communication skills to obscure your meaning and reduce your effectiveness.

This book is filled with helpful, simple and practical advice on how to make your words count for more and provides the highway code of rules for good communication.

Bill says, ”Every negative can be replaced by a positive,”

He says we need to be positive in our writing or conversation.

Drop the Pink Elephants. There is no need to use negative words. If you have nothing to hide, words used will be honest.