Hello hello,
It has been awhile since I’ve last posted and I figured it was about time for a new article. I wanted to keep this simple because, as always, I have too many things that I need/would like to do and only one of me to do them all.
Today I would like to talk about my sign off in written correspondence.
As we all know, words have power. What type of power one wields in their day-to-day life directly corresponds to the words they choose to use.
Of course there is a lot more nuance than just which words one uses, but once the individual realizes that choosing the words best-suited for the situation they’re being applied to is the foundation and once that foundation is built well, they will see a huge change take place in their lives. Once the foundation is built well and settled, you may begin to add things to it, aka– pay more attention to the further nuances and refine their powers further.
So, the moral of the story here is to watch your words carefully, lest you use some that are sub-optimal for your situation and not properly convey what you’re trying to or get what you’d like.
It can really take awhile to figure this out
Depending on who you are, this can really take some time to figure out. After all, people know what they themselves mean and they understand themselves completely. Most people believe that they communicate very effectively and that, should there be a misunderstanding, it is purely due to the other party rather than themselves. How could someone else not understand what they’re saying when what they’re saying is perfectly clear?
Why do you have to speak better? Why can’t others listen better?
You have to speak better because you have something you want to convey, if you really want that conveyed properly you need to speak as well as you can. It is hardly ever the fault of someone else for not understanding, this is especially true if you don’t take the time to verify their understanding. If you don’t take the time to speak as well as you can and also make sure that the other party understands correctly, then what you are trying to convey really doesn’t mean that much to you it would seem. Again, if you really want something, you will make sure that you get it.
Others can’t listen better because they are always doing as well as they can. It is important to make sure that the other party is actively listening and actually absorbing what you are communicating when you are communicating. People have to want to listen for one, so you need to entice them to do so if they do not entice themselves. People also don’t usually assume that they have understood wrong either, why should they if they think they understood correctly? People should do well enough to check their own understanding of the matter being communicated to them, but we cannot hold someone else responsible to do this of their own accord. We cannot see what is happening in someone else’s mind/head and though they look like they are paying attention we all know that they may very well be thinking of a beach, their lover, the bills they have to pay, the growth on their testicles, the rock in their shoe, or the poop that they have been holding in for an hour.
Things always have the possibility of being misconstrued
You should know this if you don’t already. How many mistakes have you made due to a misunderstanding? How many mistakes have affected you due to someone else’s misunderstanding? One only needs to go watch a few episodes of any sitcom to go and see the comedy that ensues due to the misunderstanding of a word or phrase.
In almost anything, “prevention is better than cure”. Remember that. In regards to communication, this means that we must anticipate and head-off any misconstrusions that may occur. Well, not that we “must”, but we would do well to do so of course. It may take more energy/brain power or time, but the investment is always paid back in you getting exactly what you expect– at least insofar as it is within your control.
I type a lot of emails
I type a TON of emails. It is my job, emailed communication is the preferred method in my industry. I must have sent over 10,000 emails in my five years of being in the business so far. Let me tell you though, there are plenty of people/industries/professions that email a lot more than myself. I am probably in the low end of email typing.
Nevertheless, before I was in my industry, I hardly ever paid much mind into how I was typing and what I was attempting to convey. I’ve certainly learned a lot in sending all of these emails to many different players in different lingos. I thought I knew how to communicate effectively before, but oh how wrong I was. Luckily I was fortunate enough to have the proper epiphany and see that even though I was communicating at an acceptable level (in written AND verbal communication), I had a lot of improvement to make. I didn’t really know how badly I was communicating until I actually realized the proper way to communicate effectively.
You don’t know light untill you know dark, hot untill you know cold, and how badly you’re communicating until you know the proper way of communicating. It’s a catch 22, because how do you know you’re communicating properly if you don’t know you’re communicating properly. Maybe you’re already doing fine, in which case this article is largely not for you.
Now, I could go through what I have realized through my thousands and thousands of emails but I feel like that’s a future article. I’m only really feeling called to focus on one point of my emails in this article.
My email original email sign-off
What could I have to say about an email sign off? Can I add anything to “sincerely”, “best”, “thanks”, or any other choice you might use to sign-off in an email?
Well, yes!
I used to use all of the standard words for email sign-off when I first began writing emails, whichever one I felt best for the occasion I would use.
After some time of this however, I was eventually influenced by a “co-worker”. This “co-worker” and I kinda sorta worked together, I worked for a company and he worked for a company established in another country (I can’t remember really, sorry) and he sent things from his territory over to us to use/sell, we were essentially sister-companies of a sort.
Anywhoooo, his sign-off was always the same and really struck a chord with me; as I do with all great things that other people do that I like, I adopted it for myself to use. His sign off was very simple and an upgrade from one of the standard sign-offs.
The sign-off was simply: “All the best, [NAME]”
Why did this resonate with me? Well, because this is what I’m always trying to do– be the best and be the best at everything I can possibly be to the best of my ability.
Using this signature basically says, “I’m giving you my best”. That’s best wishes, best email, best correspondence, best care, best everything. While you should give your best to every person all the time, you should especially always give your best to any clients that you may be interacting with.
I continued to use this as my generic email sign-off for 3ish years, there was no better option in my mind and this was also supported by the fact that I have really only ever seen maybe a handful of people use it when communicating with me so it was basically “unique” to me as well.
Eventually, once I realized I was communicating ineffectively I realized that this signature could easily be misconstrued and it needed to be updated.
My problem with the sign-off “All the best,”
Now, really I am talking semantics here, there really is no problem using “All the best” and if you use this as your email sign-off don’t take this as a point that you should change it, it really is a great sign-off.
I didn’t plan to change my email signature, it just happened one day after I realized that everyone is always going to see what they want to see– while this is true always everywhere, this is especially true in written communication.
In written communication, unless you know the person well through real-life interaction, phone calls, or time, it is very easy to project ideas from your mind onto the text for there is no tone or body-language to help you out for context.
If we are going to be preventative rather than curing then we need to realize this and keep it in our mind so that we may account for it properly if needed.
In being preventative and playing with how some people may take and read “All the best” we must realize that not everybody sees things the way we ourselves do. I would never get offended by “All the best”, but some people certainly might.
If you sign, “All the best”, then there is the possibility that another person will take that negatively. It’s possible for them to think, “PFFTTT, all the best? Yeah right”, “All the best? You just made a mistake, how is that the best?”, “All the best? Who does this person think they are?”. There are plenty and plenty of options, it can be hard to comprehend, but many people get irritated or on edge when they see someone who is “better” than themselves.
Of course no human is better than another human, but many people don’t believe/know this and of course many of them do this unconsciously. If someone says “All the best,” the subconscious brain doesn’t think critically about what the “best” is– it doesn’t think about how everyone’s “best” is different it only hears the word “best” and thinks, “if you’re giving me all the best, that means I’m not the best, because best is best and anything not best is not best”. I know that is overly simple and doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the subconscious doesn’t have the ability to think critically, it only thinks very simply.
In essence, saying something like “All the best,” though probably hardly ever intended in any…. let’s say…. snooty manner– it can easily be taken/inferred as snooty or implying anyone else is not the “best”. “All the best,” can be especially taken/inferred as snooty should the one absorbing the sign-off have a low-level of self-confidence/self-assurance.
Helpful hint: Remember, anyone saying anything about themselves does NOT say or imply anything about anyone else. If your emotions rise from something that someone is saying about themselves, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this? Where is this stemming from? Why do you feel the need to make what someone else is saying about themselves about yourself? Is it insecurity? Jealously perhaps? You only know if you take the time to think on it, which I highly suggest you do, otherwise you will never be able to curb this behaviour if you have it.
Do you see what I’m getting at in this section? You can’t control how another feels about certain stimuli, you especially can’t know what stimuli will trigger what reaction from a person. You shouldn’t have to worry about what another thinks (unless they’re important to you I suppose) and I’m not suggesting that you should, but if you’re concerned of another entity’s experience being positive when speaking with you, then this extra level of care/thought will help in that endeavor.
My “new” sign-off
So, this new sign-off of mine isn’t “new”. I’ve actually been using it since Jan 11th, 2021 and if you’ve read what I’ve written before you’re likely to have already seen it.
My “new” sign-off is: “Wishing you all the best,”
Now, why is this signature better? Well before I added the words “wishing you”, they were basically implied however not everyone implies them.
Adding the words “wishing you” to the sign-off allows for my meaning to be explicit, rather than just implied for someone to miss.
Not only that, but this signature offers TWO beneficial interpretations:
1. It can be read as: “Wishing YOU all the best,”
2. It can be read as: “Wishing YOU ALL the best,”
So, without any editing, this sign-off may be read in the way that it is most beneficial to the reader. If I am replying to one person solo, I’m wishing them the best. Should I be replying to one person in an email with multiple people on it then the person who triggered my reply may read the signature as addressed to themself or they may read it as me addressing the group. Additionally if I’m replying to an email with multiple people on it then anyone who I’m not speaking directly to/with may read the sign-off as addressed to everyone, including themselves, receiving my best wishes which is nice to receive/be thought of if not directly addressed.
Other than the sign-off being versatile towards one or many, it also has the added benefit of it being virtually unable to be misconstrued or read in a negative light. There is not a single person that would take someone wishing them the best negatively as why would they do that? Everyone loves to be wished all the best and they are more than happy to receive that wish/gift when it is given. Who doesn’t want to hear, “you’re the best!” or “I hope you get all the best of everything”?
All that being said, there is one singular occasion where I could see people getting upset/irritated/put-off about reading the sign-off “Wishing you all the best,” and that would be in the occasion where/when the giver of those words do not mean them.
Say what you mean, and mean what you say
I could write a whole novel over just the above subheading, and perhaps I will in the future, but for now I’ll write insofar as it pertains to this article.
People don’t like incongruity. In fact, people will go to great lengths to make the things congruent that they deem better that way. Just look at how we destroy hills and land so that we may have these cookie-cutter cities/neighborhoods/houses flat and matching rather than building them along with the nature that’s already there. Look at how we cut and pull and modify our bodies for that “perfect” look. People don’t like incongruity, especially so when it comes to words vs actions.
Everyone can feel when someone says something and doesn’t mean it, even if they ignore that feeling, it’s there. Anyone who says something untrue is essentially lying and people don’t like liars either. Almost everyone would rather people just tell them the truth and be honest (even if it’s ugly) than have someone say what they don’t mean and lie to their face.
As such, there is a small chance that people will take someone “wishing them all the best” negatively since it will appear fake/inauthentic. If I’m (or you are) going to “wish someone all the best” then I (you) need to mean it. You cannot just adopt this phrase because it looks and sounds good, well you can.., but it would be better to only use it if you mean it– you don’t want to be caught/labeled as fake/incongruent and end up worse off than you were before.
So how do people believe me to be authentic when I wish them all the best?
Well, I don’t care and it doesn’t matter.
Really, I do actually care (who wants to be disliked?), but I have to make myself not care and make it not matter because it’s not worth it.
Here’s the thing: I could say that I mean something till I’m blue in the face and people could always still choose to not believe me.
There comes a point where you really can’t spend time worrying about what is outside the realm of your control. In this case, it’s peoples’ beliefs. I have done my duty in saying something meaningful to them, if they choose not to receive it then that is their prerogative. I could always and sit and explain how my words have meaning and that they should take/believe them, but that’s not worth my time and is way overbearing– nobody has to like or believe me and I shouldn’t invest my energy in attempting to change their mind. It is completely outside of my powers to change their mind– it is their mind after all, they are the only ones with the authority to change it and you can’t make anyone else do anything that they don’t want to do.
Even if you could force someone to like you or believe you, that’s just a shell of a good time. It wouldn’t be real, you’d want them to really mean it.
Should they not believe me, I will never sit down and explain to whomever that I’ve been using this “new” sign-off since Jan 11th, 2021. I won’t explain to them that and since that first email where I used it, there have been 1,159 emails where I have used it at my workplace (and even more than that since the inception of this article).
There’s no need to explain how at my workplace we use a group email and as such we do not use an email signature because it can be any one of five people sending out an email. I don’t need to tell anyone how I type that message out manually every single time (so far over 29,000 keystrokes for that one phrase) and further contribute to my future arthritis (not that I care or think about that when I’m typing something like this, though it is a fun joke I like to make).
I don’t need to let anyone know that, I don’t need recognition for anything I do really. I know what I do and that’s really all that matters.
If people come and work with me enough, they will eventually see that this is something I do in almost every email interaction with them. They will eventually notice that it’s a shared email account and that we don’t have any signatures or canned responses (I might use this feature if google actually made it user friendly, I don’t blame them though– we’re not exactly using gmail as intended. There are a couple improvements they could certainly make to that feature though).
They will see that I could choose not to say it, and yet I take the time to say it as much as I can and not only to say it to them almost every time, but to everyone. If that doesn’t show everyone that I mean it, I’m not sure what could.
Though there may be truth in words, but the real truth is in the actions that accompany those words.
In Closing,
I really do put lots of thought into as many of my actions as possible, even the smallest of details. I’m not perfect, but I do my best to always be as thoughtful and considerate as possible when I’m able.
Meaning what I say and saying what I mean is what I do and has very thoroughly benefited my life, I believe that proper intention/thoughtfulness behind speaking words is beneficial for everyone.
I hope you enjoyed this article about this tiny thing, thank you for reading.
Wishing you all the best,
FCP 🙃
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