Your words build or bulldoze. Choose which crew you’re on today.

Speech is never neutral. Each sentence about another person either adds something to them or quietly takes something away, and the taking rarely feels like damage while you are doing it. A joke at the right target gets a laugh and leaves a dent. You are always on one crew or the other.

Listen to yourself in one conversation today. When you catch the line that would land well at someone’s expense, let it stay unsaid. Then say the thing you normally keep in your head, the sentence that would make somebody stand a little taller.