BUT... Changing Directions with Tact

“But” signifies a change in direction. Often the opposite direction. Have you ever said, “Yeah, but”? You are doing this, BUT you would rather do that. You see this, BUT you would have rather seen something else. You just heard this, BUT you have a totally opposite viewpoint.

I propose that we waste too much valuable time focusing on “buts”. There is no pun here. Really.

We each have our own ideas of what we believe to be valuable and not valuable. With that, comes the buts in our lives. Differences of opinion. Differences in the approach to resolve an issue. Differences in how much passion we posses which drives us to achieving those things in our lives that we want to achieve.

The buts get in the way. The buts create more conversation which takes more time because now we are probably engaged in somewhat of a debate about the topic. I’m not against debate. It’s healthy. We learn from debating. We grow as a result. I’m speaking more along the lines of when we know something works yet others want to “yeah but” it to death, that’s when it becomes frustrating and creates obstacles that now create a delay in the success of the larger goal.

Some things we just have to trust will work. Especially when so many others have achieved such success with a process. Even though it requires work to be done, we must still do that work in order to reach the goal.

This is neither rocket surgery nor brain science. Yeah, I know.

If you are engaged in conversation with someone and you say, “yeah but” it immediately says to them that you are about to take an opposing view. Perhaps a kinder and gentler way of digging deeper into this conversation would be to just ask a few questions without using the word “but”. Questions like, “Can you explain that in more detail?” or “How has that brought you success?” or maybe “Are you completely out of your freaking mind?” Okay, minus the last one, but you get the idea.

You can engage in communication, disagree, yet still avoid conflict simply by asking a few questions and avoiding the use of the word “but”.

Argue if you want, but I’m going to focus on GO DO!™.