Open mouth. Insert foot.
We all have our foot-in-mouth moments, those times when we utter words we wish, just moments later, we’d had the foresight to prevent from ever seeing the light of day. Those moments we wish we could melt into the floorboards or reverse the universe’s clock. Those moments when our colleagues, friends or partners stare at us in horror, then move a few inches away, as if to convey they’re not associated with That Person, the one clearly suffering from a terrible social disease.
Foot-in-mouth disease.
Fortunately, this is a disease you can recover from! If you have just the occasional slip, try some of the phrases below to soften the impact of your poorly chosen words. If you tend to suffer from foot-in-mouth disease every time you argue, frequently saying things you regret later, you have a bit more work cut out for yourself…but recovery is still possible and I’ll come back to you in a little later in this post.
The secret to recovering from the occasional foot-in-mouth moment is to:
- Show you’re self-aware enough to notice your error. Utter a prompt mea culpa.
- Apologize. Keep it sincere and brief, since dragging it out can actually make matters worse.
- Use a bit of self-deprecating humor. Think of this step as balancing out the universe’s scales of justice.
Here are some examples of the kinds of things you can say to recover from your social faux pas:
- Boy, that sounded a lot better in my head than when it came out of my mouth. Let me try to put it the way I really intended…
- Emily Post is rolling over in her grave right now. As she should be. Let me see if I can put two words together a bit better.
- Yikes! If I were standing outside myself I’d slap me right now. What was I thinking?
- Have you ever said something that you knew was going to come out wrong, but you couldn’t stop yourself in time? This is one of those moments.
- Gosh, a good fishing rod would be helpful right now (making the motion and sound of reeling in a fish)! Then maybe I’d have a reasonable chance of taking back what I just said so I could get it right.
If you suffer from a more aggressive form of foot-in-mouth disease, the kind that comes along with losing your temper in disagreements, then your primary work is around uncovering your mental models of conflict, developing effective techniques to manage your conflict hot buttons, learning how to clear your head in heated moments, and practicing in low-stakes moments–even 10 minutes a day will make a difference. If you ever want some help with this, I’m here.
Do you have a good foot-in-mouth moment or recovery phrase to share?
Copyright © 2007 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.
Photo credit: Georgios M. W.
[Tags]apology, conflict resolution[/tags]
