I know it can be hard, but you have to shut up sometimes

it will give you more than you think.

We live in an era where we share our lives excessively. At our own request, we are becoming characters from the “Truman Show.” Everyone knows what we eat, where we are, who we spend time with, everyone knows when we enter a new relationship and when we break up with someone, when and where we move, strangers know our schedule, our favorite places, our vacation plans. All we need is someone's instagram and we actually know quite a bit about the life of an unknown person. Overstepping the boundaries of privacy has become so normalized that at this point creators are forced to reveal everything they do and feel. People think they have a right to have insight into other people's lives and become angry when they don't get permission to do so.

Plenty of us tend to overshare. We just get to know someone, and we're already telling them about our entire existence. And sometimes we don't even have to do it, the internet already has everything about us. We forget that we don't know these people that well, we don't know what their intentions are. After the meeting we get remorse, we regret that we said something and we keep thinking about it. From oversharing often comes our overthinking.

Some things you should keep to yourself. You come up with a brilliant idea today, you want to create something , you want to start a new business, you want to start learning a new language, you have another ambitious plan that you intend to carry out. Excitedly, you want to share this desire with others before you even take the first step toward realizing it. And why isn't that a good thing? After all, “we all do it.”

First of all, you put a lot of pressure on yourself. Before, only you knew about it, now someone else knows, so at that moment you have thoughts that you must do it and you must succeed. But what if it doesn't work out the way you wanted it to? You will feel that you have failed in the eyes of the other person. What if the results don't come as quickly as you thought? You'll feel ashamed that, for now, it's still not developing the way you assumed. What if you just change your mind and don't want to do it? You'll feel stupid because you've already announced to someone that this is your plan. It's hard sometimes to admit that something didn't work out for us and it's silly when a week after we pushed to the world about our fantastic idea, however, we back out of it.

What would happen if it stayed in your head until you reached your goal? You won't be afraid of uncomfortable questions, of pursuing something you don't want to because you've already told someone about it, or of being judged by not having the results you planned. You won't feel the stares of others on you, and above all, you won't listen to the advice of everyone around you.

I wrote about advice in a previous text, they can change your whole perception on an idea. You tell someone in excitement about what you're going to do, and instead of support you get a lot of words about how it's risky, how it doesn't make sense, how you should have done it differently. Then doubts arise in your mind that you didn't have before. And you feel that your enthusiasm passes, it’s replaced by fear that maybe it won't work after all. Lots of ideas go unrealized in this way.

What else can happen when you immediately share an idea with someone? Your mind will perceive it as a false sense of fulfillment. It's a state when you feel contentment and satisfaction, but not from authentic achievement, just through adrenaline when you tell about it. This is enough for our brain to perceive it as success already. For us, approval in the eyes of another person is a reward, so is being considered interesting and ambitious. But because of this false fulfillment, we may lose interest and desire to act, because we felt such a high kind of excitement that our emotions subsided afterwards.

It's not that you should remain silent during the conversation, not say anything about yourself, not answer any question. The point is that you should consciously choose what you want to say and what you prefer to leave to yourself and stick to it. So that you don't lie down in the evening with the feeling that you regret that the other person knows a thing about you that you said under the influence of the moment. And for you to carry out your plans at your own pace, without pressure from others, without stressful questions, without advice you didn't want.

What is worth doing? Ask yourself. When you think at this moment about things you wouldn't share a second time, what are they about? Careers, relationships, problems? What are you finding difficult to keep to yourself, even though you know you should? Is this the way you try to prove your worth to someone, or do you not have many chances to talk about this and under the influence of the situation, conversation, you say everything right away? You need to get to the root of this behavior. Then you will think twice before saying anything more about this particular topic.

Let others do the talking; you don't have to respond to every story with your story. You don't have to reveal details from your own life to keep the conversation going. You don't have to say everything about yourself to be considered open-minded and communicative. In this way, you practice very important things - listening to others (and this is an essential skill in creating interpersonal relationships), self-discipline (because you know you should work on something and you try to do it every time you talk) and assertiveness (because more than once someone will try to convince you to talk about something private when you don't feel like it).

Also, remember that you can always put your thoughts on paper. Take a journal (I think you'll do better writing with a pen than in a notes on your phone) and pour out your feelings, your excitement about a new idea, your frustration, all the uncomfortable stuff and all the plans you can't wait to fulfill. This will be accessible only to you. You won't feel that you've said too much. And you will feel relieved that you have given vent to your emotions.

I don't know how many people will be able to identify with what I've written, but I think discretion for everyone should be important, and it's worth looking at who we give insight into our lives and to what extent.

Thank you so much for subscribing and reading. Find me on tiktok, instagram, pinterest and tumblr.