Words: more valuable than gold
Given that it’s taken YEARS for me to finally start a blog, I’ve got a backlog of articles saved on my computer that have never seen the light of day.
The following was written in April 2019:
Sometimes people listen. And when they do, you better hope you said something of value.
With the exception of my clients paying for a speech lesson, I didn’t know anyone actually heeded my advice. Recently, I received a text from a gentleman I dated briefly in New York City roughly a year prior. While our time together totaled less than two months, one simple conversation of ours had apparently changed his life.
“You’re living in a state of apathy,” I told him unapologetically. He wondered why he didn’t feel things when others ooed and awed at puppy videos. He distracted himself with work, masking his problems with an obsession with financial spreadsheets. Soon after, an utterly unfair twist of fate ended our courtship as quickly as it had begun. Those words, though, lingered in his mind for months to follow.
“You’re living in a state of apathy,” I told him unapologetically.
Just over a year after we’d met, he reached out to let me know that he’d quit his lucrative job in New York to move to Miami and embrace a lifestyle conducive to less work and more – much needed - play. He somehow credited (or blamed?) me for his decision to move. Whether it works out in his favor or not, he told me that our conversation “literally altered the course of my life.” No pressure…
This entire experience taught me a valuable lesson: sometimes people listen. And sometimes what you say sticks. It matters; it really does.
We speak or communicate via text for hours each day without second thought to what we’re actually saying. How important, though, are these things called words?
The most important, I tell you. The most.
In speech coaching, I teach my clients that it matters less what you say than how you say it. This is true when it comes to improving one’s confidence and delivery. I sleep peacefully at night knowing that what you say will often change for the better once you do in fact learn how to say it artfully.
At the end of the day, though, content matters. Why? Because those words can change lives. Literal lives.
A few years ago, I occupied a seat at H&R block with a bundle of negative energy, tension, and upset. Forty minutes had passed since my scheduled appointment time with no hope of being seen on the imminent horizon. This was my second visit in two weeks, and I already knew the level of incompetence possessed by the accountant assigned to do my taxes. The last time I was here, I had to navigate the computer for him and even lend him my pen. Do you even work here?
My patience, typically 100 notches higher than most, transformed to fury with each passing minute. An elderly woman walked casually around the waiting room and spotted the acerbic look on my face. In the most angelic tone she smoothly stated, “all will be well,” paired flawlessly with a delicate smile. For an instant, her sense of calm irked me given my heightened state of annoyance. Easy for her to say! She hasn’t been hunched uncomfortably in a plastic chair wasting her life away just to owe half her savings to the IRS.
But then I let it settle.
All will be well.
This is true. This moment is frustrating, yes, but it won’t last forever. I silently thanked her for appearing just when I needed those words the most. Now, years later, I hear her voice in times of stress. I see her face and that genuine smile. All will be well. She comforts me when my anxiety is highest, and I don’t know so much as her name. In three seconds, she left a lasting impression. And what’s more? She will probably never even know. When I saw her again the following tax year, I thought about telling her what an impact her comment had on me, but I didn’t want to look like a creep.
The tiniest of remarks can leave the grandest of impressions. How often do we say something in passing that actually strikes a chord with someone else? The truth is, we have no idea.
In this case, I remember the moment vividly. Often, though, the details of an encounter escape us, while the words leave a permanent imprint. We may be impacted subconsciously for the rest of our lives - by something so small, so simple, so unintentionally profound.
It’s likely that all of us have impacted someone in this way, whether they or we know it or not.
The scary part is that the same could have happened if the comment were negative. One person one time told my friend that she looks better in person than in pictures, so to this day, she hates having her picture taken. While everyone else reassures her she’s fabulously photogenic (truth), she may never believe it because of that one comment made that one time in her life.
Not everyone will behave like my Miami-transplant ex-suitor and actually tell you when your words make a mark. When they do though, the feeling is truly indescribable. Sometimes we have the luxury of finding out; other times life precludes us from that honor. In any case, our words are more valuable than gold. Sometimes people listen. Be prepared for when they do.
Herein lies the moral of the story: choose your words carefully. You never know who might be listening.