Are you accountable for what you say?

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A few weeks ago I crewed for my fantastic coach, Kurek Ashley at his Sydney Life to The Max workshop. As a crew member we get to participate as well and, as with many things we hear in our daily lives, often we don’t get the message the first time round.—well, in my case it may be the 5th time round. Kurek was talking about goal setting. Specifically, for goals to really hit home and be burnt into our psyche we need to say them out-loud, together with other self help messages on a daily basis. Now I have been reading my goals, ‘I ams..’, my creed etc for a couple of years and I stood up and asked Kurek “When you read out your goals etc, how do you get past the self consciousness of actually reading them out?”.

Now, Kurek jumped straight onto me probably because he expected more from me, after all he is my personal coach. You see, I worded my question in a disempowering way. I said “When you….” instead of “When I…..”.

Is there much of a difference? Well yes there is, you see, I didn’t own my question.

How many times a day do we smooth over a request by being ambiguous in the way we ask a question?

You see, we ask questions in a soft way because we don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. The truth is we do hurt feelings and we hurt them more because we’re being indecisive.

For example, when you’re home and you ask your spouse what he/she wants for dinner and your spouse answers fish, what do you do? Tell your spouse you want Thai food? So why did you ask in the first place? Wouldn’t it be more decisive to say “I want to cook Thai tonight, how is that with you?”

Indecision is one of the curses of our society. And, I must admit, I’ve been one of the worst protagonists, till now. Indecision is what stopped me going for what I wanted because I used to say “Anything for a quiet life”, because I didn’t want to hurt other people’s feelings, especially those close to me. Little did I realise that by being indecisive I was confusing issues and making them more complex than they needed to be.

What do I do now?

If someone asks me something and I don’t want to do it I say “No”. I don’t give a reason because I don’t need to, the reason is none of their business. And if someone says “No” to me it’s not up to me to ask “Why”, because it’s none of my business.

Very simple, and to the point.

Want a call to action? Here it is.

When someone asks if you want to do something, tell them straight, don’t beat around the bush. Own your answer.

Until next time,

Have the best outstanding day.

 

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