How to become dangerously articulate

4 ways to start loving uncertainty (and absurdity) in your thinking and in life

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There is nothing that would make you more dangerous than learning to articulate yourself.

And there’s a lot more to becoming articulate than this simple fact:

The world is designed to make you consume and comply, rather than think and create.

Yes, you are told what to think and not how to think.

The world wants you to do and to listen, and not to speak.

We know this by now, about society conditioning you into becoming bland and replaceable.

But not so many people talk about learning to how to speak articulately.

Because becoming dangerous means learning to speak.

A not-so fond but nostalgic memory came to mind as I was brainstorming this newsletter.

I was walking to jiu-jitsu in the cold but sunny afternoon this past Sunday.

Whenever I was in secondary school, I always struggled with speaking.

I always knew what my soul wanted to say on paper, but not to other people.

I always knew what my mind wanted to speak, but my mouth could never open.

And whenever I did open my mouth, I would shake and sweat in fear. I would say one thing, even though I was trying to say something completely different.

It’s quite funny to think about it now. Anytime I would get asked a question in History or Biology, I would always start sweating profusely. And I really wanted to talk with my teachers. But I just couldn’t.

Shyness is a silent killer of opportunity, I think.

It’s funny to think back about my blue school shirt strangling my armpits, because it was always one size too small for my small but slightly muscular frame (I was lifting a lot back then).

But it all definitely taught me something profound.

Articulation is not just about being able to think or speak.

True articulation is the most creative form of rebellion.

True articulation, which we will talk about, has nothing to do with sounding smart, but in actualizing authentic thinking by embracing uncertainty.

And it’s just like that famous story of a man pushing a rock up a hill. Have you ever heard of the myth of Sisyphus?

But first, here are some things a lot of people don’t seem to understand about articulation.

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Stop trying to sound smart

Profound Idea: Articulation has nothing to do with sounding smart, but with sounding authentic.

Firstly, a lot of people are destined to live their entire lives with thoughts they can never properly express.

What’s worse, is that we consume and consume more and more information than any generation in history - on a day-to-day basis - and yet when the moment comes to actually say something about all that information?

we say jack-shit :)

Secondly, you should understand this: most of us believe being articulate is about being certain in our thinking.

Making no mistakes. Never stuttering or stumbling over your words. Having memorized vast amounts of information. Ready to shoot philosophical one-liners from your mouth as party tricks when the moment calls for it.

But this is exactly what articulation isn’t.

Articulation isn’t a performance designed to prove your competence. In reality, true articulation has everything to do with embracing the complete opposite of what it means to “sound smart.”

Embracing uncertainty.

Because true articulation is a creative act of discovery.

If you’ve read any of my past newsletters, you might know that I’ve always had an interest in philosophy and psychology since I was 18 or so (I’m 22 now).

I used to watch a lot of Jordan Peterson lectures, and I’m not ashamed to admit they always filled my heart with curiosity and hope. This is how I first learned about my own profound interest in ideas; and it’s one of the big reasons as to why this newsletter exists, and why I want to make Profound Ideas my life’s work.

I just have a profound interest in ideas for some reason.

Regardless of your opinion of him now, I think it’s impossible to deny how unbelievable Peterson’s ability to articulate himself is. Go watch his Bible lecture series on YouTube if you disagree.

And it only clicked for me about 3 weeks ago, as to why I’ve always been drawn towards listening to his speaking. I was watching one of his 10 minute “meaning of life” videos while doing research for a past newsletter.

Profound Idea: What makes someone dangerously articulate, is the willingness to think out loud without fear of making mistakes. To make your intellectual curiosity visible, and to embrace the possibility of not knowing everything while speaking aloud.

Peterson would start with a problem or question and think in real time. He would pause and think. He evaluated in every deliberate pause he took, and this is how, I think, he developed his authentic voice.

This is how he learned to become dangerously articulate.

It made me think of true articulation as being a voyage of discovery into the unknown, an adventure into understanding the world through uncertainty.

And I think there’s something absurd about this, too.

French philosopher Albert Camus - even though he said he wasn’t a philosopher but rather an artist (legend) - has recently taught me about the word embrace.

I’ve been reading The Myth of Sisyphus as many of you might now, and I think now is a good time to make a profound connection.

Camus believed that the universe was what he called “absurd.”

That the meaning of existence is undefinable through reason.

Because humans have a deep desire to understand everything with certainty. Our hearts desire unity, understanding, and meaning, in a reality that doesn’t seem to offer us any. There’s a lot of things in life we don’t know the answer to. And we never will. Just like how we’re all floating on a rock through space, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense if you ask me!

This is the nature of absurdity.

It stems from this profound idea:

you always want an answer to everything.

You want to know why you suffer stupidly the way you do. You want to know why your mind overwhelms you constantly, acting as your enemy and not as your friend. When you buy the new iPhone you want to know when it will arrive as soon as you’ve clicked “purchase.” And if there’s a delay on your order, you want to know why. When you go through a shitty break-up, you want to know every little reason as to “why” it wasn’t working, oftentimes to hurt yourself by fixating on issues instead of trying to fix them.

The human heart always looks for answers. It fucking hates uncertainty.

But maybe there doesn’t have to be certainty in everything you do, especially in how you speak and articulate yourself.

And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make here.

Profound Idea: In an uncertain world, embracing uncertainty becomes the foundation of dangerously articulate thinking.

If you want to become articulate, you need to embrace uncertainty.

Because what if trying to be certain in everything you think and say is actually making you inarticulate?

If you only speak from certainty you are reciting and not creating.

When you embrace uncertainty as your ailment, not a perfect cure, every word is a step forward into the unknown, which inevitably makes the unknown, known.

Articulation is a creative act that actualizes the self through expression, not just the communication of pre-existing thoughts.

Bringing out the most of your potential, I feel, is how you bring meaning to an absurd, seemingly meaningless world.

Learning to speak and to articulate yourself is how you achieve this:

• By being willing to explore uncertainty

• By asking questions

• By leveraging the fact that you don’t have all the answers

Without ever embracing uncertainty, you will never venture outside the comfort zone of your current identity, and actualize who you are, and who you potentially could (and should) be.

Profound Idea: If you fear uncertainty in your life, you need to leverage uncertainty to overcome it.

You will never discover your own voice unless you embrace making mistakes and flaws in your speech, and in your own thinking. That is how you discover and improve.

Use uncertainty as fuel for your thinking.

Be certain of nothing and you will fear nothing.

Your perspective is not a law that others must follow. It is simply an offering you give to the world.

You only need the courage to think out loud with what knowledge and experience you do happen to have.

Your perspective isn’t valuable because it’s perfect, but because it’s yours to say.

Because the world truly needs for you to create your own thoughts. It doesn’t need anymore pre-packaged ideas.

Here’s why.

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Become obsessed

You need to become obsessed in your own curiosity to become genuinely useful to others.

You cannot articulate something you’re not fascinated by.

I want you to think about why it is that you can’t shut-the-fuck-up talking about topics you’re interested in. Really think about that, it’s like articulation on autopilot. This is why advice like “practice speaking” often isn’t enough. It’s too vague and generic.

You don’t just need things to discuss, you need things you are interested in discussing.

And this is the exact solution as to how you can build your own irreplaceable perspective on life:

Your unique perspective comes how you make connections with what interests you.

When you see connections across multiple disciplines, you become a profound thinker. Psychology to philosophy. Philosophy to biology. Biology to Linkin Park. Camus and articulation into a newsletter topic. This is where breakthrough insights happen and true wisdom is built via these connections.

When people in my own life ask me how to discover what their true interests are, or how to find hobbies or passions or “your purpose” in life, I usually say I don’t know. I’m not a guru, I just so happen to know a lot about what my own interests are.

But I do know you just have to keep doing and living until you build your own answer.

And it’s never going to be a perfect answer that’s certain, but it is your perspective on the question.

Here’s a profound idea:

You have to force interest at first in order to discover what does interest you in life.

You have to fake bravery until you feel it.

You have to fake discipline until you build it.

And you have to fake curiosity until you fucking find it.

You need to act on ideas before having certainty about the outcome. You have to embrace uncertainty, like we have said. But the more you act, the more feedback you gain, and the more signal you get from your heart telling you, what problems your soul wants to spend a lifetime solving.

The first step in this process is reading.

Yes, I’m being serious.

And I’m not talking about reading for the sake of knowing, but for the sake of discovering.

Reading feeds curiosity. Reading improves how well you ask questions. Reading fuels better synthesis through asking better questions. Reading makes the perspective you have to offer to the world more valuable because you can synthesize everything you have read into solutions that can help people.

This is how you develop your own voice with your own words.

No two souls will articulate their understanding of a book or paragraph the same way because we all have different building blocks in our minds.

It’s how you build with the same pieces that everyone else has; this is what makes you unique.

This is why when I say, “use your own words, not somebody else’s,” or that “most of your thoughts aren’t your own thoughts,” it’s because you haven’t articulated the ideas in your own unique way. If I memorized The Nicomachean Ethics line-by-line, and could recall it at an instant, it’s not my understanding I’m articulating but Aristotle’s.

This is why your unique combination of interests creates a perspective that literally cannot be replicated by anyone else.

This is why you need to follow your obsessions ruthlessly, even when they seem disconnected or “useless.”

Every deep interest is a potential solution tool when properly angled toward other people’s problems.

It’s like building a mental Swiss Army knife of conceptual tools you can use in any context.

Any problem.

Any question.

Any situation or person you’re engaged with.

This is what makes you dangerously profound thinker who can create solutions to any problem. You don’t need to think outside the box when you’re thinking within multiple boxes simultaneously.

Articulation → Uncertainty → Peterson → Absurdity and Albert Camus → Reading

Lots of connections that create something I feel is quite unique :)

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Be like sisyphus

Trying to improve your articulation is like pushing a rock up a hill for eternity.

You’re going to make lots of mistakes.

You’re going to stutter when talking about complex topics you love.

You’re going to hate every second of pondering and hunting for the right word, the right idea, and the right connection to make, between an experience you had 2 years ago and the book you read last weekend.

Becoming dangerously articulate is your Sisyphean boulder.

Here’s a profound idea I learned from Camus in relation to all this:

The struggle itself is your source of joy.

There is no end point.

No final goal.

But it’s the possibility of finding joy in this eternal struggle, as Camus would say, that is enough to fill a man’s heart.

There are 4 daily habits you must practice if start embracing your struggle:

• Reading - Discover what makes your soul genuinely curious and lean into it obsessively. Your soul isn’t characterized by your achievements but by your interests. Read to find what sets your mind on fire, then follow that fire wherever it leads

• Thinking out loud - No, not the Ed Sheeran song. It’s the Feynman technique. Practice it religiously. Explain what you’re learning as if teaching a curious child. Make mistakes in front of others. Make mistakes in front of the mirror. Make lots and lots of mistakes if you want to grow

• Teach yourself - Leverage the fuck out of the Feynman technique. Again, practice teaching what you’re interested in as if talking to a child, and angle your favorite topics and interests towards solving a certain problem or question. It helps to do this in person (I like to annoy my girlfriend at out favorite breakfast spot doing this; explaining the AQAL model and spiral dynamics went just as you’d imagine - over both of our heads!)

• Write - Use your own words. Just write. Write for no reason but to vomit words out. You’re trying to articulate yourself by breathing your words into existence. Writing is how you actualize yourself onto the page. You’re not just communicating thoughts, you’re discovering thoughts you didn’t know you had. Do this, and a part of you becomes real - you can literally hold your own words, a part of yourself, on a physical page

The process looks like this.

Read something from a book or from a screen that interests you. Then, practice explaining it to yourself. Speaking is what breathes your words, your heart, your soul into existence. When you think out loud, you discover gaps in your understanding and connections you’d never make in silence. It’s the ultimate form of creative expression and self-actualization.

To speak, is to become capable of being heard, by either someone else in the world or by your true self.

When you breathe your words into existence, you discover gaps in your understanding and make connections you’d never have made otherwise. I discovered all this through recording my Youtube videos.

Articulation is a creative act. You think up new thoughts through speaking, through making them real and concrete. Giving them shape and form and feeling. Emotion. Uncertainty exposes gaps, gaps become opportunities for growth, growth creates solutions you can offer to others.

Articulation is one of the most profound forms of rebellion. It’s an revolt against meaninglessness, because you’re deciding to take action, and to say something meaningful in a world that can often feel meaningless.

The joy here doesn’t come from saying something, but from trying to say something.

From recklessly pursuing the endless practice of actualizing your authentic perspective and self through creative expression.

One uncertain sentence at a time :)

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How to become dangerously articulate

1. Embrace uncertainty over certainty - Use not knowing as fuel. Ask questions. Be certain of nothing. Remember that your perspective is not valuable because it’s right, but because it’s yours. Hunt for truth, wisdom, and put respect above all else. Question everything and you will find what problems your heart and soul wants to spend a lifetime talking about

2. Become obsessed with your genuine curiosity - Force yourself to act on ideas until you discover what truly lights you up. You have to fake it until you make it here. Consume widely. Read broadly. Then, once you hear signal, go deeper. Act. Make mistakes. Receive feedback. Act again, but based on the wisdom you have gained from learning what you do want from life, and what you want to avoid in life at all costs

3. Practice thinking out loud daily - Read, read, read. Then, practise thinking out loud to yourself. You need to practise speaking if you want to get better at speaking. Talk about what interesting ideas you’ve read. Connect one paragraph to 10 ideas, to 38 concepts. Force yourself to explain and to simplify what you’ve read. Speak, speak, and teach and speak

4. Learn to angle your interests - Connect your weird obsessions to other people’s problems. Learn to weaponize your unique combination of interests into solutions the world needs. This is what makes you irreplaceable as a profound thinker

5. Find joy in the endless practice - The struggle is the goal, not the top of the mountain. Be like Sisyphus. Find happiness in always pushing a boulder of understanding up a hill, no matter how hard or uncertain it feels. Always keep pushing and find happiness in doing so. The practice of expressing yourself is a profound form of rebellion

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your time and attention. I know it’s very valuable, so I appreciate you being here.

If you want help with mastering the reading process as fast as possible (with two bookmarks full of questions that help you to evaluate and challenge what you read while you are reading), you can download my Guide To Profound Reading here.

You’ll get 2 months free access to my Substack paid-tier.

Reduced price ends December 9th.

Paid subscribers can read it on my Substack for free, here:

Also, you’re an absolute legend.

I appreciate you being here, and thank you for your interest in ideas.

- Craig :)