5 Reasons Why You Should Keep Your Mouth Shut
Talk less and walk more.
Usually, I’d write a short introduction.
But this article is about talking less and walking more, so we’ll jump straight in.
1. You’ll fail
People love talking about their goals and ambitions.
Why? Because it makes them feel good.
It makes them feel respected for their ambitions and they almost feel accomplished.
Like they’ve already achieved what they’re hoping to achieve.
And that’s the problem, but there’s also another.
Let’s say you want to lose weight and you tell people about your goals.
You receive praise and they’re proud of you for wanting to turn your life around.
It makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
The issue now though, is why would you want to lose weight?
You’ve already received the social reward without doing any of the work and if that’s what you were hoping to get, like most of us are, you’ve got less of an incentive to continue.
In both cases, the act of talking about the goal and receiving praise, your dopamine gets spiked, similar to how it would when you accomplish a goal.
We are all chasing that feeling, and if you can keep getting that by talking, what reason do you have to walk?
2. You’ll lose yourself
We seek validation from others.
That is, we seek approval from other people to feel good about ourselves.
For example, you may want to know if you’re making the right decisions.
The issue with that behaviour though, especially if it’s excessive, is that you’ll begin to act to please others.
Let’s say you value external validation highly, receiving that validation then becomes a goal within itself.
You tailor your actions to please others to receive external validation, making yourself feel good.
But that only works in the short run as you’re not fulfilling your true wants.
You’ll end up losing what makes you you.
Let’s use the stereotypical example of Indian parents wanting their children to become doctors.
The kid may go through med school and become a doctor, making his parents proud.
But sooner or later, he’ll realise he killed his dreams to make his parents come true.
3. They’ll get jealous
You’ll never really know how a person will react or how they truly feel as life is one big act.
That’s why you should restrain from broadcasting your wins.
Whenever we win, we want to share that feeling with those closest to us.
But let’s say you keep on winning and your friend keeps on losing, over time, he’ll inevitably become jealous.
You can’t even downplay your wins because faking modesty can be seen as boasting too.
You can’t underestimate jealousy and the lengths people will go as their resentment grows.
They may distance themselves and cut you off or they may try to sabotage.
It’s best then to keep your wins on the low.
Until you win so big that you don’t even need to talk about it yet people will hear loud and clear.
Because at that point, what are they going to do?
4. You lose their respect
Most people are communicative and lack observational skills.
They base their opinions on what they hear, not what they see.
So your reputation, if you’re not well known, hinges on what you say and how you say it.
Everything you say will form a character or persona in the other person's head.
And if you’re not careful, you could paint the wrong picture.
Maybe you’re going through a rough patch and feel the need to talk about what’s going wrong.
You may feel better because you offloaded some of the weight.
But the tradeoff is, you painted a bad picture of yourself in the other person's head.
You must remember people are subjected to biases, like recency bias.
So even if they have known you for years, the old painting of you will get covered by the new.
5. You can’t talk and listen
Imagine you fill an empty room with people.
Each person enters the room with a set amount of knowledge.
Now everyone’s talking and listening.
Some talk more than others, others listen more than some.
The ones talking are dispersing knowledge.
The people who listen gain knowledge.
There’s always one person who’s the loudest.
And eventually, he’ll be the most dumb.
Final thoughts
You only have control over what you say and do.
Talk is cheap, and the more you talk, the cheaper it gets.
Results through action though, are undeniable.
So keep your mouth shut and put one foot in front of the other.
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I lost 50 kg and took back control over my life.
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