What Does This Action Say About Me?

Rui Zhi Dong
2 min readDec 29, 2019
Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

The human mind’s a funny thing. So many things make sense in our mind. Yet when the actions are verbalized, we realize it’s not actually what we want to do. The mind will rationalize our actions unconsciously.

Asking What Does This Action Say About Me brings that automatic action from the subconscious to the surface.

When you’re running late, ask yourself, What Does This Action Say About Me?
When you’re ghosting someone, ask yourself, What Does This Action Say About Me?
When you’re neglecting your responsibility, ask yourself, What Does This Action Say About Me?
When you see see someone committing a crime and you don’t say or do anything, ask yourself, What Does This Action Say About Me?

If you’re constantly late, your answer might be, I’m just the kind of person that’s very busy and people need to wait for me.

Or I’m showing a lack of integrity by not showing up on the agreed time and not showing respect for the person I’m meeting.

The next question to ask yourself, Is this action consistent with the kind of person that I want to be?

Maybe the answer is, Yes, I’m a big deal and people just need to get use to me being fashionably late.

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Rui Zhi Dong

Entrepreneur and Writer. Working on book, Thinking Questions. Influenced by Charlie Munger, Nassim Taleb, Ray Dalio, Marcus Aurelius, Cicero.