Unkind

I have a habit of speaking unclearly.  Not mumbling; but speaking too passively.  I say “maybe” when I mean “no”.  I say “possibly” when I mean something more definite.

This is not a defining personality trait of mine.  When I am challenged, cranky, or have the perception of anything less than a normal conversation; I do quite well with my words.

But when a conversation is non-threatening, my words turn to mush.  I fall back in to the habit of not wanting to offend.  I don’t want to accidentally rub someone the wrong way and my words bend so freely that my meanings turn to mush.

This is a work in progress for me.  A big help is the saying “to be unclear is to be unkind”.  I have a history of trying to be too kind with words, thinking that this lack of an offensive stance is being kind.  But it isn’t.  It breeds a lack of clarity and confusion by not just saying what I mean.  In trying to be overly kind, I actually am being unkind to whomever I am speaking because I am not being 100% honest in what I want and in what I am thinking.

Docile-Jessie just wants to avoid friction.  Docile-Jessie forgets to have a backbone.  Docile-Jessie creates more problems in an effort to avoid problems.

Today alone there were at least 3 separate times when I caught myself using passive words when my thoughts and intentions were certainly not passive.  I knew what I wanted.  I simply wasn’t saying it that way.  I was very fortunate today that these incidents were via text and I deleted and re-wrote before hitting “send”.

Tonight I am thankful for the chance to make things clear that I originally leave unclear.  I am a work in progress.  I always will be.  And I’m ok with that.  I didn’t beat myself up today for these errors.  But I certainly was thankful that I had the chance to fix them before the words were sent out in to the world!