Foot in mouth

Most of you would already have heard of this idiom which generally means saying something foolish or embarrassing or accidentally offensive. There are some people who are particularly adept at putting their foot in their mouth. But most of the time, they don’t do it intentionally. It just keeps happening to them whether they like it or not.

Sometimes in their eagerness to do something special for someone, they end up saying the wrong things and hence end up putting their foot in their mouth. Sometimes it may happen in your work places also when you want to say something about one colleague to another colleague but it ends up going to the boss.

Most times, this happens because we say or do things without thinking because it’s always a react first and respond later kind of attitude that we have developed. These days everything is so fast paced that even our thought process have begun to be like that and hence we end up saying things without thinking them through.

Almost everyone has stuck a foot in the mouth at least once in his or her life. When this happens to you, take a moment to recover and come back with something flattering or simply apologise and make sure it does not happen again. Another way of recovering from you gaffe is to turn to humour and it should be directed at yourself by maybe saying, “I really suffer from this terrible problem called foot in mouth, where I often end up saying something stupid.”

Very often, we tend to use e-mails as a means of communication between friends and close colleagues to discuss private issues or even to vent out frustrations. But imagine if you’re letting out your frustration against your boss to a close colleague but you send it to your boss by mistake. Then what?? Go to your boss and tell him or her it was sent by mistake and if your frustrations are genuine, who knows, it could be the start of a brand new relationship which is better than it was before. But that doesn’t mean that you commit that mistake again.

Learn from your previous mistakes. Start thinking before you speak out. It doesn’t matter if you are slow to contribute to a conversation; it will help you better if you think of what you are going to say rather than blundering forward.

When you’re writing an email that you do not want others seeing because it is about them, before hitting the “Send” button, double check the recipient’s email i.d. to see that you’re not sending it to the wrong person.

Very often relationships between people have been spoilt by many a foot in the mouth situations. Don’t fall into that category. Learn not only from your mistakes but also from others’. Do not place yourself in a situation where you will end up regretting what you said.