Just a turn of phrase...

This week has been digital marketing ‘heavy’.

These were my words earlier today, as I tried to convey what had taken the majority of my time since Monday.

It wasn’t until I re-read the text later that I realised it was perceived as a reference to a negative thing, like an emotional weight.

I had typed one thing that made sense to me, but could so easily be perceived differently.

It’s been full and it’s been tiring. My brain has been on overdrive and I am more than ready for the weekend. I could use that as an excuse for not carefully choosing my words enough, but it’s often on jam-packed weeks like this that a ‘theme’ becomes glaringly obvious.

This week, woven through everything that was happening was the importance of the words people use. Specifically, the inadvertent way that unconsidered speech can have effects that we didn’t plan for, or expect.

I think we all have ‘go to’ words and phrases that we use. Phrases we are so used to using, that we don’t always consider the real meaning or potential impact on other people. We dont consider that other people might see it differently, or be affected by it in a way we hadn’t planned.

I know I have them and I know I use them. I think the polite way to say it is that my speech is heavily influenced by local colloquialisms. I was born and raised in a place with a rich dialect - my conversations are peppered with phrases my grandparents learnt from their grandparents.

They will show up in my more informal writing. On the plus side, it makes my writing sound like me, and more personal. When I am relaxed in my writing it flows freely, and it can feel more realistic and honest.

That said, I do also know that I have to review it and consider it from multiple perspectives. I have a general rule that if I feel I need to bounce it off other people, then I should probably make the effort to reword it.

Back to this week. Giving honest feedback to other people on things they’ve said or written (even if it’s about their own company or their own product) can be uncomfortable, but I would rather broach the subject straight away than have to help them address an issue later. Same theme applies here though. It’s about how you word it and checking their interpretation.

On a more personal level, I had to correct myself this week and it came with a fair dollop of ‘mum guilt’. I’ve been having some conversations with my daughter that have required considered wording. None of them I would call easy, as I worked hard to find the ‘right words’, but initially I thought they’d gone ok. I was grateful she was comfortable enough to raise them with me, that she happy enough with my answers, and also curious enough to ask a few extra questions just to be sure. It seemed like she was armed and ready to face another day of challenging schoolyard conversations.

Note: I don’t miss being a kid. I really don’t.

I wasn’t exactly congratulating myself, but you could say I was swimming in a sea of relief that I hadn’t screwed it up. Then at the end of a chat I found myself saying, “That’s not something you have to worry about yet...”.

It’s a phrase that I grew up with. My mum has used it, my grandma used it. It trips of the tongue fluidly. The aim was to comfort, to ease current worries, but when my daughter then asked, “When WILL I need to worry about it?”, my glaring error slapped me in the face.

I explained I didn’t mean that, that it was just a turn of phrase, but I knew it wasn’t a phrase I should keep using. How many times had I told her we could worry about that later, thinking I was easing the situation, when all I’d done was set her worrying about when she would have to worry about something. Building a little worry store in to the future with every misplaced, well meaning, conversation smoother. It made me wonder how many other things I say, without thinking, that are giving out messages I do not mean to convey.

This morning, when I said it again, without thinking, I caught myself and added... “Actually it’s not something we need to worry about at all. If it ever does happens, we’ll deal with it and not worry about it then either...”

When I’m writing, I generally get the chance to proof read and edit before I publish. I read it back and I look at it from all different angles. I am conscious to consider if it could be misinterpreted.

We don’t get that in daily life, but I am going to keep on making the corrections every time I realise (or I am told) that I’ve made a mistake - and own those corrections. Obviously, the end goal is to remove it from my go to phrases completely, but I know that will take time. It slips off my tongue too easily right now.

Changing the way we talk, the things we say, so as not to negatively effect someone isn’t a bad thing. I appreciate that’s often how it’s described in the press. ‘Why should everyone have to change what they do or say because it hurts someone else’s feelings? People shouldn’t be so sensitive.’

Personally, I don’t understand why we wouldn’t want to. The other night, cuddled up watching TV together on the sofa, my daughter accidentally elbowed me in the ribs as she shuffled to get comfortable. It happened a few more times and so I pointed it out. I asked her if she could just move a little bit, so that it wouldn’t keep happening, because it hurt. Her immediate answer was, ‘It doesn’t hurt me...”. I think it might have been my raised eyebrows that made her realise what she’d just said, as the look in her face suddenly changed. “If you know that what you’re doing is hurting someone, don’t you think you should stop?” I’d said it quietly and carefully. Gently. She silently nodded and gave me a hug.

I am well aware that not all of life is this simple. Sometimes though, it can be.

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© Highcroft Writing 2022