“If you don’t own an experience, you can only talk about it and, when that happens, talk is truly cheap.” That was what The Grasshopper was proselytizing this morning.

I sense he was attempting to convert me from talk to experience with his message.

Experience is cleaner – meaning it’s more direct. Talk seems to nibble around the cookie’s edge forever.

I learned a concept years ago called “Incongruity.” It’s when a person’s affect doesn’t match up with their words. The textbook example of incongruity is a person saying “Yes” while shaking their head from side to side. Dr. Dave Dobson taught us that the unspoken response is the one to pay most attention to.

People who don’t own experiences, yet talk about them as if they do, are incongruent. That’s just another way of saying that what they are saying deserves little of your attention.

What experience are you pretending to own? Reminds me of a story . . .

I got a call from someone I casually knew inviting me to participate in an event. He went on to describe the event and all the benefits associated with it. The underlying current was that he was describing benefits he claimed to own, but didn’t. His words were spot on but his delivery was incongruent.

Think about salesmen that you like. That could take a long time but when you find an example or two, contrast them with the ones who made you exclaim “P.U.”

What was the difference? The ones you liked were more congruent. Their words matched up with their experience and made you feel more comfortable around them.

It’s OK to talk about something you don’t own. That’s called exploring. But when you claim to own it and you can’t produce the “deed,” you are offering up incongruent words not worthy of my heed.

The real lesson for us all is to find the touted experiences that we don’t own and retire the stories we’ve been telling about them. The abbreviated message is this: Stop fabricating fables or, more to the point, stop lying.

Your lack of experience will betray you even if you swear on a stack of bibles and bare false witness to the directive “so say you.”

Are you Experienced?

All the best,

Jimi Hendrix (an obvious incongruity)