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11 Things Socially Aware People Don’t Say
What we choose not to say is just as important as what we decide to say
“Zoe, What’s up? You’re beaming!”
“You’re not going to believe it,” Zoe replied wearing a smile as wide as the sky. “I’ve finally gotten paid from the company I told you about in the United States for my designs. It basically doubled my monthly income. That’s not even the best part: I was offered a three-year contract. The owner of the company told me to expect the same pay, if not more, each month going forward.”
Zoe is the mother of my son’s best friend. Since I met her two years ago, she’s been fighting to get her passion project of designing patterns for kids' clothing off the ground. Money has been tight. She and her husband have a second child on the way and they’re both working temp jobs in order to make ends meet.
Before my wife and I could offer her congratulations, however, one of the other people we were having dinner with decided to stomp on her parade: “Don’t get too excited,” he said in a stern voice. “Doing business between Spain and America is not cheap. You’re going to get crushed with taxes.”
We tried to butt in and salvage what was left of Zoe’s smile, but it was too late. As soon as she heard, “You can kiss half that money goodbye,” she was completely deflated. Instead of enjoying a well-deserved moment in the sun, she spent the rest of the evening in the shade asking for financial advice with a stressed-out look on her face.
This may be an extreme example of someone lacking social awareness. But we’ve all said things in the past without first thinking about how our words affect other people.
Fortunately, there is a very easy trick to make sure this doesn’t happen as often: keeping track of the phrases you hear that turn people off and being more conscious not to say them yourself.
In addition to “Don’t get too excited,” below are 11 more phrases that people with high social awareness avoid saying — capped off with suggestions of what they choose to say instead.
1. “I told you so.”
People don’t like to be reminded when they made a bad decision. And they certainly don’t like to…
