Clichés are nothing more than overused and abused catchphrases that demonstrate your inability to contribute an original thought to the discussion, and few things drive me to drink like someone who speaks in clichés. To avoid having “air in the conversation,” you inexplicably present commonly used jargon without thought or remorse while ignoring the fact that your audience is looking at you the way a dog looks at a ceiling fan (visualize a blank stare up with drool coming from the corner of your mouth). Let it be known that no one in your office responds to your cliché with any level of enthusiasm or sense of profound epiphany. In other words, it’s wasted.
You can’t “give 110 percent” — to try just shows you suck at math. “It is what it is” will always be the case because it will never be “what it isn’t.” And “thinking outside of the box” is so common that speaking it just shows you don’t know how to do it (behold the irony). But the cliché I want to discuss is “failure is not an option.” Despite the title of his book suggesting otherwise, Apollo 13 flight director, Gene Kranz, never spoke the phrase, “failure is not an option.” If this is news to you, you’re wrong, and I thank you for making my point – failure is an option.