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Signe Ulsamer's avatar

Hi Brittney, I love this blog!!! I’m definitely taking just out of emails. Speech is a little more difficult! In general I feel the southeast is more “polite” I like this encouragement to drop the social lube at work!

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Brittany Vermeer's avatar

Hey Signe! I'm glad you liked it. It's something I'm doing better with in emails, but it's still hard to take out of speech, especially when it relates to being an athlete. I'm not sure why we always feel the need to downplay our accomplishments... Maybe it has to do with not wanting to feel like we're bragging? I wonder if there's a gender component, or if men are guilty of doing this just as much as women.

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Eren Elsewhere's avatar

Brittany, this was a really unique article - I enjoyed it. Two things:

1) Your point about people saying "just" to shut down the other athlete - I call this "popping their balloon" --> it's a weird human instinct to bring people back down to earth by devaluing their excitement...terrible habit! You should try to keep them high, even if it's at your expense.

2) I could relate to eliminating "just" from my vocabulary. I loved how you described it as saying "I'm sorry to both you" - that's exactly what is is. (I've also tried to stop using "sorry" where it's not needed!)

Thanks for writing this - awesome stuff.

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Brittany Vermeer's avatar

Thanks for the feedback Eren! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've never heard of the "popping the balloon" analogy but it totally makes sense. Definitely eliminating the word "just" is a hard thing to do. I found myself using it twice this weekend to describe a 5k I ran, and my husband was like, "Remember your blog..." I couldn't help but laugh. It's a process!

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