The gap between what we say and what we do

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

I thought of that recently while listening to someone (myself) complain about the same thing for the tenth time. You know the drill. It’s the friend, the colleague, or even your own inner voice that keeps circling the same frustration over and over.

It might sound like:

• “I hate how much time this job takes from me.”

• “I can’t stand how cluttered my home feels.”

• “I hate these extra pounds I want to lose.”

And yet nothing changes. We keep doing the same things in the same way, and our actions contradict the words we’re saying either out loud or to ourselves.

Our actions speak louder than our words.
If I say I want more respect, but I keep staying silent when I’m overlooked . .
If I say I want balance, but I keep saying yes to everything . .
If I say I want change, but I keep repeating the same patterns . . then what I’m doing is telling the world a much different story than what I’m saying.

So here’s the uncomfortable (but very key) question:
If this thing is bothering me so much, why am I not making a change?

Sometimes the answer is practical, maybe we don’t know how, or we feel stuck. Sometimes it’s fear of conflict, or fear of what might happen if we actually did something different. And sometimes, we just get used to the habit of complaining (this can be a hard one to admit, but let’s be honest)!

Nothing shifts until we shift.

If you’ve been circling the same frustration, consider this your nudge to step back and ask yourself:

• What’s one small action I could take that aligns with what I keep saying I want?

• What would it look like to set a boundary, to have the conversation, or to finally start making a plan?

You don’t have to solve everything at once. You just have to start showing, through your actions, what really matters to you.

Because what you DO is what people hear. And more importantly, what you do is what you hear, too.