Adverbs

Life is much more relaxing when you stop searching for the adverbs to temper your happiness, ambition and success.

I think many of us have this underlying desire not to excel for fear of offending others. There is the sense that we will be excommunicated from the average club we see all around us. We don’t want to be in the average club but for many of us it’s the only club we know, and the only club we see, so we don’t want to be excluded from it either.

I believe that people choose to be downbeat, cynical and generally dissatisfied with their lot, not because that’s how they genuinely feel, but because that is what society expects of them. Happy, upbeat, energised, successful, ambitious people upset the societal applecart. In psychology they call it mirroring when we subconsciously adopt the mannerisms, language, and general demeanour of others. If your environment is miserable, you will do well not to also be miserable yourself.

This is the type of language I typically use

Pretty good

Quite well

Hopefully

Doing ok actually

Going well… for now

Not too bad

Could be worse

It’s not exactly inspiring language. The famous Descartes quote is ‘I think therefore I am.’ In a very real sense, I think we can also say ‘I speak therefore I am’, not so much as verification of our existence, but of how we exist. We might believe that the language we use reflects how we feel, but it’s also true that the way we feel reflects the language we use.

I’m not saying that everything I say will now be awesome and super exciting, but I can at least start by dropping the tempering language. So now instead of being pretty good, I’ll be good, fuck it, I’ll be very good.