This is a campaign for the “opportunity to keep your mouth shut”.
And it’s quite simple: let’s develop a “will it add something positive to the life of the person that is in front of me?” button and push it every time we think about saying anything.
Imagine it’s Friday night. Even though you’ve worked 60 hours this week, there are still things you couldn’t do, and they are now backed up. The things you could do, though, didn’t work out that well, and you’ll have to review a bunch of stuff on Monday morning. Maybe Sunday night. Your child also caught a cold, and you spent a few hours awake last night taking care of them. That perfect diet you’d planned to start this week is ruined because you couldn’t go to the grocery store and basically you had to figure out something to eat on the fly the whole week. And I won’t make the story even worse, in spite of the fact that we all know it can always get worse.
Then you meet that friend in the parking lot, and they say: “Hey, dude, you look tired”.
Now imagine it’s Friday night again. But now, you’ve worked 35 hours this week, because on Thursday you could take that afternoon off like you had been hoping to, and go for a bike ride with your child. They are perfectly healthy and, by the way, haven’t been sick for a long time now. Great! You ate really healthy and well for the last 5 days, because you were finally able to organize and go to the organic farmers’ market in your neighborhood. And you just won the lottery! No, just kidding, that would be too much.
Then you meet that friend in the parking lot, and they say: “Hey, dude, you look tired”.
I don’t even know which one is worse, but I know for sure that both are terrible. You can also make up whatever story you’d like for this day. If it ends with someone telling you you look tired, it’s not good.
And just in order to make it even easier to use the button, let’s just remember that the good ol’ “you’ve gained some weight” fits in the same category.
