Today's word is a verb in English for which the exact equivalent in Spanish is very rarely used, so I'm including it in my list of untranslatables: overexplaining, loosely translated as "dar demasiadas explicaciones", that is, explaining too much..

(This is the cover of a Phineas and Ferb comic book we have at home; if you´re wondering why I chose this picture, keep on reading.)

A literal translation in one word would be sobreexplicar, which does exist in the dictionary, but I never use it; I feel that if I do, I'm going to have to explain its meaning, and that's going to take me longer than saying it in a longer way 😀

Do you also tend to overexplain? I've been doing it my whole life; my sister used to point it out to me, though I've been able to reduce it considerably over the years, as I became more aware of it and kept working to progressively improve. I believe this happens mainly when we try to justify an action we've taken or a decision we've made, in order to obtain approval from someone else, or avoid their judgement.

But just as likely, it could have nothing to do with the other person. What could be happening is that, in reality, we're justifying ourselves, repeating the reasons why we do what we do, perhaps because deep down we're not entirely sure, and we think maybe things could have been done better, or perhaps because we feel a bit guilty for whatever reason.

And a third scenario I can think of is a general tendency to tiptoe through life, as if asking for permission, seeking validation for every single thing we do. Perhaps due to a constant fear of making mistakes, or a belief of not holding enough authority in certain areas, or even a feeling of not having the right to be where we are in life... This is something that mostly happens to women, and to other minorities, too. As you can imagine, self-confidence plays a significant role here.

So, what can we do about it? The first step, as always, is to become aware of it. To observe ourselves. And whenever we catch ourselves overexplaining, let's be curious and investigate what's hiding behind that behaviour. That way, we will be able to identify specific situations we can work on improving, and get more confident in the areas that matter most to us.

(By the way, if while observing we notice someone else who, in our opinion, is overexplaining, we can also exercise our curiosity and find out what's happening there: could it be that they're nervous, and it is in our power to help them somehow? Or perhaps we are the ones getting impatient and wanting them to finish, so that we can say our piece or move on to the next topic?)

We can also come to discover that, more than a lack of self-confidence in expressing ourselves, the origin is a much deeper problem: our acts and decisions not being fully aligned with our internal values, and that causing us discomfort (a version of what psychologists call cognitive dissonance). In those cases, we resort to repeating like parrots our programmed explanations, our own ones or the ones we inherited, in order to justify ourselves and make the discomfort disappear, at least for a while.

This week, I encourage you to observe how many explanations you give (or not) in any given day, and to reflect on what's behind each of those explanations. If you'd like to share your observations with me, I'll be delighted to read you.

Personally, I'm very proud of a recent achievement of mine: I was able to answer a question in the way Phineas and Ferb would. Phineas and Ferb are the main characters in an absolutely brilliant Disney Channel animation show, and my heroes when it comes to answering questions from adults with total self-confidence, and without overexplaining!