| . | Trump - get the better of; "the goal was to best the competition"
beat, beat out, vanquish, trounce, crush, shell - come out better in a competition, race, or conflict; "Agassi beat Becker in the tennis championship"; "We beat the competition"; "Harvard defeated Yale in the last football game"
outmaneuver, outmanoeuvre, outsmart - defeat by more skillful maneuvering; "The English troops outmaneuvered the Germans"; "My new supervisor knows how to outmaneuver the boss in most situations"
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Growing up, my mother seemed to oft get into fights with nannies and house helps who when they were reprimanded for doing something wrong would quickly defend themselves by saying, 'mbadde ndowoza...' (I thought...).
'I thought you had noticed we had ran out of salt', 'I thought you had seen the electricity bill'...'I thought', 'I thought', 'I thought'!!!...My mother's consistent comeback was always, 'Why don't you stop thinking and start talking?!!'...
I take issue with people who would rather think than talk.
'I thought you preferred x, y or z'...'I thought it was okay'...'I thought girls like such things'...'I thought it didn't matter'...
How about you ask me? How about you lay what you are thinking on the table and we, together, decide if we are on the same page?!...How about you talk?!
I am aware of the 'speech is silver, silence is golden' adage; but, I am pretty sure the originator did not intend to encourage communication deficit in human relations. Making assumptions has often been the root cause of conflict, of misunderstanding, of disappointment. Shakespearean tragedies constantly had me thinking; 'kale why didn't Othello talk to Desdemona about the stuff Iago was claiming instead of acting on rumours or what he thought was happening?!...should Hamlet have carried out revenge based on the declarations of a ghost?!...
I also acknowledge that confrontation is no piece of cake for many people yet, wouldn't one rather endure the 'discomfort' of confronting another to confirm whether what one thinks is the truth or not than take a decisive step that turns out to bring unhappiness all around?
I haven't always been willing to confront situations or people; preferring to act on my assumptions or conclusions on a matter. This way of doing things has not 'worked' very well. So, I am training myself daily to as much as possible try to get to know the whole truth, the full story before I act. The good health and growth of any relationship depends principally on effective communication (a good part of which is talking). As far as I am concerned, talking trumps thinking.
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