What’s your verb?
“What’s your verb? “— Divya Dhaliwal
This topic came up one summer evening back in 2016 over a call with my friend Divya Dhaliwal. She introduced me to the concept of identifying myself and the people around me using verbs.
It’s common for people to describe themselves using adjectives, but in my opinion, it’s much harder to define yourself using verbs, especially a single verb. That’s because verbs represent actions, which are 1) the building blocks of how we live day to day and 2) harder to hide behind perceptual biases inherent in self descriptions. Actions speak louder than words and actions speak for themselves.
By distilling myself down to a single verb, I am forced to face what drives my actions, and, by proxy, what I stand for. And like many things in life, change happens, and over time our verb may also change. And with it, our motivations, actions, and reputation.
