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Do You Talk Things Up?
How living in Japan taught me to be humble
“Hustle!”
“Bring it on!”
“I crushed it!”
“Zone of genius.”
Are the above expressions something you pride yourself on saying?
I hope not!
In the West, we have a tendency to talk things up.
If we have done something reasonably well, we have ‘crushed it!’.
If we are proficient at something, we have found our ‘zone of genius’.
If we are working hard, we are ‘hustling’.
If there is a challenge ahead, we like to taunt it with ‘bring it on!’, even before we have started taking action towards it.
While positive self-talk has a useful purpose, often giving us the courage to take on challenges we otherwise would feel intimidated by, or putting us in a heightened state of awareness for a competitive sporting event or public performance, over-the-top attention seeking declarations and mantras have almost become second nature, suggesting we are perhaps often trying to prove ourselves.
