In this series of posts, The Ever Slightly Improving Life, I will try to share the small details in everyday life that I think you can change to improve yourself, ever so slightly but relentlessly, as a person overall. I will include the things I implemented successfully on me, and I hope you will join the discussion of anything I say.

When you speak, each word you say should matter.

Chances are, it's happened to you that you are hanging out with friends and you say "I'm getting kinda hungry!" hoping that maybe somebody will join you and you can share the responsibility of deciding you all have to go somewhere to eat. Maybe you were out for drinks, and it was getting late and you go "Well... It's 1 PM, it's getting late". But you don't really do anything about it unless somebody else joins in expressing the same opinion.

Everybody does this. I realised that I'm often on either side of this interaction: sometimes I, non too convincingly, voice a concern or an opinion which I would like to act on (but only if somebody else is doing it with me), and as many other times I hear somebody mumbling similar things and join in, giving the speaker "permission" and the courage to actually act upon what he said.

People catch onto this. Your words, the more you utter them without actually doing shit about them, the more they lose any significance. People will ignore you - and you will find, if you take notice of this, that you yourself will ignore who does such things. There is no clear cut distinction between alphas who speak and act and betas who wait for permission. You will see this behaviour in everybody in various degrees and it will look bad on anybody - it will display the lack of the confidence it takes to act autonomously, without awaiting the pack's response.

Don't speak up if you are not ready to do something about what you are saying. If you say "I'm hungry, let's go eat something" do it with purpose, have a proposal for a place to eat ready, and engage your friends to get an answer: you want to go. You will go. What are you going to do, follow me? And you? If you say "It's getting late" add a "it's been a nice evening, thank you all, goodbye" and get up, and walk out of the bar.

People will take notice that you do what you say. You will be the one that's looked at as the leader of the pack, as the decisive person who can pick a direction and turn everybody towards it.

If you found anything useful in this post, you might like to check out the other post in the series, which you can find on my profile.