Words are important. I once wrote about the salient difference between what you do and who you are.
I spent years saying that I “was a musician”. It was easy to say, and everyone knew what it meant. But then the day arrived where I no longer wanted to do it anymore. And you know what happened?
I lost who I was.
If instead I had been proclaiming that I played music instead of that I was a musician, it would have been less a struggle for my identity. After all, we can choose to do lots of things, and it doesn’t affect who we are.
These subtle changes, like saying that you do something instead of are something, can make big changes in what we convey to others.
And so it is when talking about smartphones too.
[Read more…] about What to say instead of “I don’t have a smartphone”