YOU’RE IN A FIGHT with your partner and you’re texting back and forth. You’re sending paragraphs upon paragraphs and you’re fuming. You know exactly why you’re mad and you think your feelings are completely justified. You receive a reply and start banging away at the keyboard with your own response. Before pressing send, you pause and think, “Wait, is this response okay?” You run your response by your friend just to make sure. Is this wording okay? What about this emoji? Is it too much or too little? I used to do this a lot. My camera roll was full of conversation screenshots until I learned one important lesson, and that is: say what you mean. If you say what you mean, you don’t need someone to edit your words. Your feelings are authentic to you and therefore don’t need revision.
There’s great beauty in speaking in straight lines. I currently live in L.A., and in my opinion L.A. is the land of empty words. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here. There are palm trees and vegetarian food options for days. But I’ve found that the social norm is to just say whatever sounds good. I’ll have a five-minute conversation with a stranger, and they will end the conversation with “Love you!” I can literally go out for dinner with someone once and they will text me a few days later saying, “Miss ya!” How can you love me if you don’t know me? And how can you miss me if you don’t know what it’s really like to spend time with me? I get that “love you” and “miss you” sound friendly and polite, but what’s polite about lying?
The same idea applies when you run into someone you haven’t seen in a while and they end the conversation with “Let’s grab a coffee soon. I’ll text you!” We both know I’m never getting that text, but it sounds polite to say it. However, it’s actually not polite because it’s not sincere. A Bawse doesn’t make empty gestures; a Bawse says what they actually mean. A better response would be “It was really nice seeing you. Hope I run into you again.” That sounds just as polite, but it’s not filled with fake fluff.
Communication should be relatively easy, but we often make things complicated by not saying what we mean. We convince ourselves that we need to sugarcoat things to such a degree that our actual message ends up buried in sprinkles. Or we beat around the bush and people have to solve a puzzle to understand what we’re saying. I believe you can be both charming and straightforward. I was at a party once and across the room from me was an incredibly handsome man. I kept catching myself staring at him and thinking, “OMG, my girlfriends back in Toronto would absolutely die if they saw this beautiful man.” Instead of stalking him the whole night or orchestrating a forced conversation with him, I approached him and told him exactly what was on my mind. Well, almost exactly what was on my mind (meow). I said, “Hey, my name is Lilly and this is going to sound a little weird, but I have a girls’ chat group with my friends back in Toronto and I think they would find great joy in seeing a picture of you. Do you mind taking a picture with me so I can show them how incredibly hot you are? If you don’t mind, that is!” He laughed and happily agreed (duh).
I’m also a big believer in the phrase “Say what you mean, but don’t say it mean.” Being straightforward doesn’t mean you have to be rude or harsh. There’s always a way to be open and honest while also being respectful. Anyone who behaves otherwise is just being lazy. This mentality is particularly helpful when you need to confront someone. To be honest, I’ve never been any good when it comes to confrontation, but the more I focus on saying what I actually mean, the easier it gets. In the past, whenever I had issues with any of my employees, I used to rehearse what I would say, making sure to sound professional and stern. It would stress me out and I would usually mess up during the actual conversation. But once I started just saying what I meant, communication became a lot more efficient.
Here’s an example of how I changed my communication style:
THE ISSUE: My assistant keeps forgetting to do tasks.
BEFORE: “Hey, I need you to remember to do tasks because forgetting is unacceptable. I asked you to send two emails today and it didn’t happen. Please ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
AFTER: “Hey, it’s stressful for me when you forget to do tasks I’ve asked you to do. Constantly having to remind you defeats the purpose of having an assistant. I’d really like you to figure out a system that allows you to remember things.”
The “before” just sounds like office jargon. Literally, Siri could have said it. The “after” represents how I actually feel and exactly why the behavior is problematic for me.
No matter what the situation is, it’s always tempting to rehearse dialogue so that you say what you think you’re supposed to say. Preparation and gathering your thoughts are awesome, but only if it results in meaningful and genuine communication. Bawses don’t just say things; they communicate with purpose. We’re so used to communicating at a surface level that we often underestimate the power of communicating on a deeper, more human level. For example, I recently had to bail on one of my friends who had asked me to grab lunch. I forgot about one of my deadlines and texted him the day before to cancel. I was bummed because I hadn’t seen him in so long. This could have gone two ways:
SAY WHATEVER:
“Hey, I’m so sorry but I’ve got to cancel lunch tomorrow. I forgot I had a deadline. Can we reschedule? Thanks!”
SAY WHAT YOU MEAN:
“Hey, I’m so sorry but I’ve got to cancel lunch tomorrow. I forgot I had a deadline. I was looking forward to seeing you and I’m disappointed I can’t now. Please don’t think this has anything to do with my desire to hang out with you, and I really hope we can reschedule.”
Saying what you mean makes life a lot easier to navigate. People will be impressed that you don’t sound like a robot and actually have human emotions. Also, instead of forcing people to read between the lines, you can allow them to read the actual lines, which saves everyone a lot of time and energy. Communication shouldn’t be a guessing game. It should be productive and straightforward.
With that said, I don’t want to just thank you for buying this book; rather, I want to genuinely tell you how grateful I am. I’ve worked really hard on writing this with the intent of making you laugh and inspiring you. I don’t know everything about success, but I’m confident about what I’ve written in these fifty chapters. The fact that you’re taking valuable time out of your day to read my book, when you could be doing anything else, is really special. Thanks for giving me a chance.
SINCERELY,
NOT SIRI
IF THINGS DON’T constantly go your way, it’s probably because the world has weekly meetings discussing how to knock you down. It’s true. It’s like you’re a Plastic and we’re all Lindsay Lohan. This is Mean Girls. You got cast without auditioning.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you aren’t that special.