This time, it fit somewhere else
I love reading and do it constantly. Physical books, audiobooks in the car, while I walk, clean or when I’m training. It is the one habit I have never had to talk myself into.
And I have always done something else with what I read. I take a line and turn it over until I find where it fits. Not just what it says, but what it means for me.
This time, it fit somewhere I did not expect.
The book is The Next Conversation, by Jefferson Fisher, and it is mostly about arguing less and listening more. I was not thinking about my own writing when I picked it up. But partway through a chapter about words, one line stopped me completely.
He writes: “The more words you use, the less I want to listen and the less value your words have. But the fewer words you use, the more I want to pay attention and the more value each word holds.”
I knew immediately it was about me.
A muscle built for a different job
For most of my career, I rarely wrote only as myself. I wrote to employees and boards, in presentations, speeches and recommendations. And in all of those, I wasn’t simply Pia writing. I was also writing from a role.
Precise. Complete. Leaving nothing open, not because anyone was hunting for a mistake, but because that writing was carrying something bigger than me: a strategy, a recommendation, an organisation’s name. You build a particular muscle for that kind of writing.
Nothing gets to stand alone.
Everything gets its supporting sentence.
Then I started writing here, under my own name, to whoever wants to read it, answering to no board and no strategy but my own life.
The old habit came with me, uninvited.
I would write something true and then, almost before I noticed, build a small structure around it. A qualifier. A second sentence whose only job was to hold up the first.
The muscle did not know yet that it was not carrying an institution anymore.
It was just carrying me.
Letting the sentence stand
I had been treating confidence as having every angle covered before I said anything. It turns out it is closer to the opposite: letting a sentence stand as only mine, with nothing behind it but me, and being alright if that is not enough for everyone.
I am not finished unlearning this. I catch the old habit mid-sentence more often than I would like, reaching for one more line just in case.
But I notice it now, and I did not before.
That noticing is where writing like myself, instead of writing like a role, actually begins.
Have you ever caught an old habit following you somewhere it no longer belongs, uninvited, still doing a job nobody asked it to do anymore?
I would love to know what that looks like for you. Hit reply and tell me.
Talk soon,
Pia
Feel free to leave a comment. I love reading them
and get to know you better.
So good!
Pia liked the story . It's hard to change old habits.