I just think that we only lose what we allow to lose or we only give away to people what we've allowed to give away to them.
I've come to believe over time that you only lose your peace or people take away your peace if you freely hand it over to them. So I'd also like to add that you're only in charge of what you're able to do.
SourceLike you may not be in charge of how someone will respond to you or you may not even control how someone will attack you, but you are in charge of how you will respond. So you can say the same thing. You can be assertive and you can even respond in the moment because some moments do not actually call for a pause.
But choosing your words wisely and knowing what to say when and how to say the same thing differently helps a lot. You can respond to someone who chooses to embarrass you or someone who just doesn't know how to speak to people by maintaining your peace, by choosing the right words. Because I believe that usually what goes out of us is what hurts us.
So even the words that we speak to people in the end hurt us if we speak them wrongly. So you may not necessarily have to pause, but speaking in a way, in a certain way and choosing your words wisely can actually mean the same thing, can actually bring out your strength, but just in an honorable way. Absolutely.