Carly Rae Jepsen (a fellow Canadian) and Tavish Crowe brought the words to Call Me Maybe to almost everyone’s ears, but what I ended up hearing resonating was the word Maybe…
Maybe is a pretty loaded word. It shines hope and possibilities. It conceals potential disappointment and rejection. Talk about a multi-tasking word!
I hear the word Maybe coming from myself and others all the time and I decided I needed to decode what Maybe means to the people in my life, and maybe 🙂 figure out a better way to approach the word.
Today, I would like to read a book about the word Maybe that decodes all the meanings of the word. I would want this MiniBook to be a simple little book that sheds some light on the ambivalence of Maybe and hopefully show me how I use it, to then start being more clear with myself and those around me.
Let’s do this!
“Maybe we can hang this weekend.” That sounds like avoiding the meeting or being worried the other person might not want to hang with us.
“Maybe you shouldn’t get tacos.” That might be cautionary advice because tacos at that restaurant are sketchy or, it could be that they are worried tacos would be fatty… or, maybe… geez! I just don’t know anymore!
Why do we even USE THAT WORD!?!?
Over the past year, I’ve been observing how people use the word Maybe and found that really, it’s mostly just to avoid making a firm claim. The funny thing is that we often know what we want, but we may politely lead others to think we don’t.
I found that we use Maybe in about 10 different ways:
- To keep from disappointing others by turning down their suggestion or proposition.
- Because we are too preoccupied to even consider what is being proposed to us.
- We need to postpone the thinking on the subject and we’re buying time to think on it at a later time.
- We don’t like any of the options.
- We want to say Yes, but don’t want to seem eager.
- We want to say No, but fear the consequences.
- When we actually don’t have an answer.
- Each of our assessments of the possible outcomes don’t please us.
- We do not want to give an answer due to shyness or it would be unpopular.
- Fear showing through generalized uncertainty and generalized insecurity.
We are basically doing one of 4 things:
- Sparing people’s feelings (compassion)
- Fearing reactions (fear)
- Options are inconclusive (indecision)
- Lacking confidence (insecurity)
Essentially, we could be avoiding speaking our truth.
Trying to be positive
We don’t want to hurt people’s feelings by turning down their invitations or dismissing their advice, so we say Maybe. In so many cases, we’re trying to be nice and put a positive spin on things.
What about trust?
Could Maybe be the enemy of trust? In a trusting relationship, we can use Maybe for what it’s best suited for: offering suggestions, not avoiding options and introducing vagueness.
What we really want
Embracing and communicating what we truly want is not selfish, it’s honest and we all deserve honest relationships. When done with sensitivity, we can come to a common place of agreement that doesn’t bend anyone out of their comfort place.
Confidently maybe
Moving forward from all this, I have learned to redirect my question if people answer Maybe to me and, when I’m proposed something I would want to answer Maybe to, I now have the habit to lay out the bumps I see:
- Time, so propose another date, time or duration
- Place, so propose another place, even swapping out in-person for telephone or vice-versa
- Purpose/subject, redirecting and clarifying what the purpose of the meeting is
The idea here is to make things work for everyone in the best way possible through being delicately open about our wants and limits.
Ambiguity isn’t going to make things easier. In fact, it increases our feelings of uneasiness.
Maybe this worked out, maybe it didn’t…
In any case, I hope you enjoyed this one.
Karine