Five phrases to remove from your vocabulary and five phrases to use instead

There are some weird thoughts that pop into your head as you are driving home late at night. One of those was to my good friend Shawn who started to remove the word ‘busy’ from his vocabulary. Busy, as it turns out, is a choice and not a state that people put you in. Sure, there are lots of demands in your life from your work, family, friends, health and such but you can choose what you say yes (and more importantly say no) to. That means that if you are busy, it means you have chosen to do more things than you can handle.

It used to be a badge of honour — I would say that I’m extremely busy and people would nod their heads as if that was what all successful people should be. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t derive a bit of satisfaction telling others how busy I was but that’s now changed. I say no to more things than ever (maybe luckily, I don’t get invited to as many things as I did before). I actively choose what I want in my life or who I want to hang out with (or at least I try to).

So as I was thinking about this word ‘busy’ and thinking if I should remove it from my vocabulary, I started to think about the other phrases that I use and how I would change it, if I adopted a similar mindset. Aside from busy, here is what I will be experimenting with in my life: