Listen to what you say. 

Particularly when you are talking about yourself. 

Particularly when you are talking with somebody new. 

At that moment, you are a blank canvas. They know nothing about you, except for what you tell them. 

In moments like these, we may find that we will surprise ourselves. How we tend to repeat the same stories. The same insecurities. The same self-doubts and fears. 

For example, I tend to talk myself down. I’ll say how dance was just this thing I did a while back and I was never that good. Or I’ll talk about how I don’t have a nice sounding voice. I might even make a self-deprecating joke.

In actuality, the person I’m talking to may not have been thinking any of these things. They may have just wanted to briefly talk about dance. Maybe they didn’t even say anything about voices, let alone plan on making me the butt end of a joke. I painted those insecurities onto the blank canvas, and I keep those insecurities there, by repeating it to others whenever I meet someone new. 

Could it be that some of these insecurities aren’t necessarily true? 

When meeting new people and visiting new places, you get to see, with greater precision, what you are bringing with you, versus what you may feel is being projected onto you by other people.

We carry a lot of our own baggage, knowingly or not.

Listening to what you say, I guess, is the equivalent of taking a good look at all the things we carry. And if you truly begin to listen, you then become careful about what you say. Because the words you emit from your soul create realities in your world that then begin to repeat themselves back to you whether you like it or not.

Maybe stop talking down on yourself. Maybe stop carrying those insecurities. Maybe meet someone new, and for once, don’t paint that blank canvas with all that’s wrong, instead, all that continues to be right.

by Jason Lam