Be Quiet

The one who guards his mouth preserves his life; The one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin. Proverbs 13:3

Are there certain situations where you have found your mouth continually gets you in trouble? No matter how hard you try, if you speak, you’re going to say the wrong thing in the wrong way.

What do you do?

Be quiet.

Part of learning how to guard your mouth is learning when to be quiet and when to speak. If you’re in a situation where you have not been able to speak in a productive way, then do not give yourself permission to speak. Maybe what you have to say is true, but saying it in a way that doesn’t provide encouragement, sound rebuke, or open the door for further dialogue is not helpful to the hearer and only makes you look foolish. What you need to do is be quiet and contemplate what would be graceful to say if anything at all. Maybe you’ll have to be quiet a lot to figure this out, but it’ll come, and in time you can wisely choose when to speak and what to speak.