“I meant what I said and I said what I meant: an elephant’s faithful 100%!”

Dr. Seuss knew just what he was doing when he put those words in good old Horton the Elephant’s mouth.  Like Horton and his Who, sometimes we ADDivas say EXACTLY what we think…and sometimes we embarrass, offend and are a bit too transparent — 100%!

It’s about time we talked about … talking … er, blurting … er, impulse control (is that an oxymoron or what?).

So it is honesty or is it impulse (or both) that allows those sometimes-blunt messages to come out of our mouths? My guess is that our wild brains are simply reacting to whatever is happening in the moment. It’s almost like Pavlov’s dog: see the food = salivate. The parallel for ADDivas is:  see the situation = speak first response that come to mind.

We truly have the mind of an innocent child in that respect, we react from a place of truth, perhaps one of the many reasons that it’s hard to BS an ADDiva. We like our information straight from the hip, no fluff please.

It reminds me a bit of a tea kettle on verge of boiling 100% of the time. We are always ready to bubble over with the slightest nudge from the outside world … or our inside world. We like to share what’s going on with us…even when nobody else really cares to hear it!

I’ve done my share of ADD blurting. Once, I told a new client that her promising new apartment complex had a name that sounded like a pregnancy clinic! Not popular, I assure you. Surprisingly, she didn’t walk out of the room and we had a strong business relationship for years in spite of my comment.

Careless words do cause serious problems in relationships, business,  families and even with ourselves. Sometimes those blurts are self talk that denigrates us and imposes even lower self esteem than we deserve (“That was SO stupid of me!” we say out loud, or loudly to ourselves).

It’s not all bad, though. Sometimes the honest truth DOES need to be spoken, as in Horton’s case. We ARE like the elephant, often faithful (to the truth) one hundred percent. The world needs our reality check every now and then. Perhaps more often than we realize. So, within reason, our ADDiva honesty is a good thing … just not in the midst of a business meeting.

What about you? Do you blurt out “too honest” comments and suffer for it? Or is your truth a welcome relief? Tell me about it! And mean what you say!