“How are you?”

A very simple question, with a variety of answers you can choose from, but somehow, we stick to the familiar, like “i’m ok” or “good good” or “fine”. There’s no denying the convenience of picking from stock answers. It’s simple, it’s effective and it doesn’t draw you into a long drawn discussion about how bad your day has been, or how well your son has scored in the latest exams (we hate show offs!)

So why do we resort to stock answers when we can do much better? Why say “i’m ok” when you can say “i feel absolutely wonderful!”? Why say “i’m fine” when you actually meant “it’s been such a bad day…”?

For one, we’ve probably learnt from social conditioning that saying anything more than “i’m ok” is not socially acceptable, unless you’re delivering some good news which affects the person you’re talking to as well, like “we’re getting an extra day’s holiday because the boss just landed a big business!”. Try saying “i’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. The neighbour’s cat was howling all night. I just feel like strangling the cat but I didn’t think that will go down well with the neighbour. Not that I like the neighbour very much. She’s always complaining about how much she hates potted plants…”

We don’t like long sob stories. And yet we ask “how are you” expecting a very brief “I’m ok”. no wonder we’re conditioned to answer “I’m ok”. there’s no incentive to answer anything else! We don’t want to be socially unacceptable now do we?

Recently, I’m a bit fed up with answering “I’m ok”. i’m fed up with the monotony “i’m ok” suggests. I’m fed up that knowing I could answer much better than “i’m ok”, I still stick to my day-in day-out answer like “I’m ok”. Can we do better than “I’m ok”?

Since I don’t want to repeat (in words) the annoying things that happened during the day, the only option left is to choose more empowering statements to break the habit of saying “I’m ok”. Somehow, my brain has been wired to pick out the negative things that happened throughout the day than the positive ones. So, in a bid to change that, I am going to exaggerate the good things.

So instead of saying “I’m ok”, let’s try “i’m more than ok, I feel like I’m improving everyday with the challenges I face everyday!”. Ok, I have to admit, this 5-second sound bite reminds me of one of those self-help/motivational/inspirational statement that is trying to do a quick fix in mental health. I’m not proposing to use it for that quick-fix purpose. Instead, I propose to use it to break the pattern of monotony. Use it because I don’t want to use something as boring as “I’m ok”.

A quick search reveals some of the words that can be used after “I feel…”:

magic, vibrant, ecstatic, like soaring into the sky, powerful, invincible, serene, balanced…

So if you catch me saying “i’m ok” the next time, stop me right there! I’ll do better with the next statement. Or if you’re not prepared to receive those answers, be careful when you ask “How are you?” the next time. :)