When someone’s words and actions don’t align, his or her actions are the most predictive of future behavior.
For example, many people say they don’t like social media or wish to spend less time on it, yet they spend hours per day scrolling. Their actions speak louder than their words and reveal their true desires.
What do our actions reveal about who we are, and how do they shape us?
7 Observations on the Nature of Action Versus Speech
The difference between what we say and what we do holds a lifetime’s worth of insight and wisdom for those who are willing to observe. This knowledge can deepen your self-understanding and help you understand and predict others’ actions—a useful life skill if there ever was one.
1. Actions Shape, Words Evaporate
All the words you read and the advice you repeat to yourself pale in comparison to the shaping power of your actions. We are embodied beings, and so what you do with yourself in time and space creates powerful ruts that your future self will slide right into. Choose those paths carefully, as each step makes the next one easier.
2. People Judge Your Behavior, Not Your Explanations
Each of us holds our own explanations and excuses as more valid than those we hear from others. In the grand scheme of things, and over a long enough period of time, our explanations cease to matter—and all that is left is the track record we leave behind. Best to accept that fate will give headwinds and tailwinds, and speak of your excuses no more.
3. The Environment Shapes Behavior More Than Resolve
Although we imagine that our actions flow from our ideas, it is not always that simple. We may say to ourselves and others that we want to go one way, but then we are swept away by forces stronger than our own willpower in another direction entirely. We are not helpless in such situations—we can direct our energies toward shaping the environment that will shape our future actions.
4. Stress Reveals Priorities
In pleasant times, when the air is warm and the charts are pointing up and to the right, it’s easy to hide our laziness behind a rising tide. However, it’s when challenging times come and stress grinds us down that we get to see what people are really made of. We see whom they protect and how they behave, and whether they can keep the promises they made.
5. Effort Demonstrates Beliefs
In the second chapter of the Book of James in the Bible, St. James wrote: “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” What he is saying is that only our actions can reveal the deepest beliefs in our hearts. If you say you love people, but treat them poorly, you love them not. If you take real risks on their behalf, your love speaks volumes.
6. Action Creates Skin in the Game, While Talk Is Cheap
Maybe you know people who complain or share their opinions on every topic under the sun. These costless actions reveal very little about their desires because they are undertaken without the tension of everyday trade-offs. You may say, “I hate being overweight”—but do you dislike the discomfort of mild hunger even more? Only your actions can answer that question.
7. Wisdom Is Revealed in Concrete Reality
Wisdom is good judgment applied to a specific situation. You cannot be wise if you have good ideas that you cannot or will not act on. Although it’s fun to think through hypotheticals and debate ethical dilemmas, we need to be careful not to think too highly of ourselves or others until those good intentions are translated into reality. What we do amid the tensions, frictions, and trade-offs of real life matters far more than what we say.
If you ever wish to take stock of your life so far, all you need to do is look at your real-world actions—the relationships you’ve maintained, the risks you’ve taken, the projects you’ve completed, and the beauty you’ve added to the world. Everything else is just noise.