6 Language tips to soften edges hardened by life
There I go again. A mad dash across the kitchen to turn down my burning crepes on the stove & whack!
My protruding hip bone cops a bruiser courtesy of the rude, pointy corner of my concrete bench top.
“AAGGHH!” I wince.
While I’ll now be nursing a purply-blue bruise that will eventually fade to a yellowish hyper-colour stain on my skin, my concrete bench top knows no damage.
Hard edges are like that. They are designed to be impenetrable. To withstand mounting forces that threaten to harm what fragility lies beneath.
Impact is designed to hurt.
Life has a funny way of hardening our edges. Some of us more than others.
Heartbreak calcifies our emotional arteries, numbing our capacity to feel for as long as it takes to accept life must move on. Age sees the softness drip from our faces. Replaced by bony edges wrapped in tissue thin skin. Turmoil stirred by stressful chapters leaves painful mental deposits. Minefields of emotional triggers we spend a life time trying to avoid.
I’ve learnt that the impact of prolonged reactive living takes time to undo.
The world becomes used to your hard exterior & robotic ways. After a while, it becomes the version the everyone expects. You know it’s not really you. But you have no idea how to crack through the tough, tailored exoskeleton that’s become your skin & surrounds your heart. That’s how you’ve become accustomed to living.
As a high performer who for years box ticked her way through life, I make a constant effort today to soften my edges. Finally understanding how much better life is when you allow yourself to feel it all.
Joy, love, warmth & gratitude are wonderful. But let’s not forget sadness, frustration & loneliness. Feelings that hurt reminding us of our humanness, & that we must take the good with the bad. The good, always returning once the storm clouds pass.
Softening our edges starts with courageously releasing our grip. Letting go of the illusion of life’s permanency & accepting we all exist in a state of flow. Each of us at the mercy of the universe’s current.
We can choose to relinquish control & curiously captain ourselves through the motion picture of our lives. Or, we can choose to fixate on unforgiving, static pictures. Boxing ourselves in to a compartmentalised world. Our mind on constant alert & ready to defend against anything that will disrupt our ideal.
After years of boxing myself in, I chose to be my life’s captain & learn to float.
It’s been an intentional process & always will be a work in progress.
The benefit has been profound.
I find myself more patient & my mind much more accepting of change. I am much less distracted. Presence now my default state. And the concept of winning is jarring. It seems hollow.
Ironically, I feel more in control of myself & my happiness, now I’ve let go of the need to control.
I’ve discovered there is strength in softness.
After years of boxing myself in & existing within a world focused on winning, targets & goals. Today I choose language that reinforces growth & fluidity, not depletion or finish lines. Words that softens my edges & are kinder to my mind.
Here are 6 language tips to soften our edges & nurture a growth mindset:
1. “Making time” reinforcing abundance, instead of “finding time” which reminds us of what we perceive we don’t have
2. Today I like to work towards malleable “milestones” within a broader picture, rather than rigid “goals” that can be won or lost. I find “milestones” loosens the need for control & flexes the agility muscle in my mind. It strengthens my ability to adapt to change.
3. Try minimising use of the word “just”. I believe we should never shrink the importance of our words. Each of us, a very worthy someone.
4. Don’t get caught in the weeds talking about the “what”, growth is in the “how”.
5. “Winning” follows nicely here. While it feels great at the time, numbers are always reset to zero. An uncompromising focus on a finish line, in this case “winning”, creates enormous swings in motivation through fits & starts. I like to test this by always being willing to walk away if “winning” doesn’t serve my broader picture.
6. “My schedule is busy,” is very different from “I am busy”. Jam packed diaries can easily drain the most refreshed mind. I like to remind myself I am not schedule. I exist within my schedule & am in control of what it looks like. After years of not being in control of my own time, it is very important to me to not reinforce my own busy-ness.
It’s easy to allow ourselves to become hardened by life. To slide down the slope of regret, nurse the callouses of resentment & allow comparison to steel our joy.
What is there to lose by choosing to live our lives with a little more marshmallow & a little less peanut brittle?
Remember, only one will bounce off any hard floor. The other, will shatter like glass.
Hands down, soft & squidgy works for me.
Peta x
“I coach high performers to find balance & fulfilment in life”
High Performance Coach | Commercial Growth Consultant | Guest Blogger |
Author of My Beautiful Mess - Living through burnout & rediscovering me