I am what I speak

Do you even hear yourself right now?

I regularly find myself saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT.

I realize this might seem a bit weird and a waste of precious prompting time, maybe even a little anthropomorphic and delusional.

And before you start thinking I’m prepping for an impending human-vs-robots war or something, trying to get on their good side or whatever, it’s not like that.

It’s simply a byproduct of attempting to speak consistently and consciously. To anybody and everybody, even if they’re not sentient. Yet.

How we talk to our robots is how we talk to ourselves.

You are what you speak

It took me a long time to start respecting the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Repeating it over and over, I would tell anybody who would listen: ‘I’m a perfectionist’, ‘I’m not a writer’, ‘I’m not good with money.’ On and on and on.

Of course, I wasn’t telling them. I was telling myself. And it sure as hell wasn’t helping me change those ‘facts’.

When we speak to others, we can hear ourselves too. And what we hear influences what we believe about ourselves.

By telling myself ‘I’m this’ and ‘I’m that’ I kept myself stuck in a mostly imaginary and verbally reinforced persona. It was one of my most under the radar and unconscious habits.

When I pick up a glass of water, I’m not consciously focusing on my bicep, underarm or fingers tensing. I just pick up the glass. But when I pick up a weight to exercise, I’m actively looking for a conscious connection with the muscle-groups involved.

It’s the same with talking. In regular conversation I do more blurting than contemplating but through practicing my coaching skills, I’ve learned to choose my words way more carefully and consciously. And the awareness has spilled over into other conversations.

But even though I’m aware of it now, it still doesn’t come naturally.

Refining how we speak, like exercise, takes practice.

Talking the walk

What we say influences who we become. For this reason Jordan Peterson argues that we should always speak the truth (or at least not lie) and be precise in our speech.

Speaking honestly and precisely creates alignment between our words and our behavior. So we can actually walk our own talk. 

But the talk comes first. And we can’t do this alone.

We need to be able to speak imprecisely and untruthfully first. A lot. Talking out loud is the only way to figure out what exactly we mean and what we believe is true.

Ironically, we need to talk to other people to hear ourselves.

This can be a friend or a family member (or even ChatGPT) or even better, a coach.

We need someone there to help us dig up, examine, and refine our words (and thoughts) in a safe, supportive conversation without any judgment. Where there are no mistakes, just words and iterations.

That way, in every conversation, we get closer to who we really are.

Talking out loud and hearing ourselves matters. Even when we’re talking to robots.