Are You Sure Your Words Are Working For You?

The quickest way we can make changes to our life and living is to make some changes to the words that we speak and the words that we think.

What we say out loud and in our head determines what we think, what we think determines what we feel, and what we feel determines how we act.  It all starts with ‘the word’.

• Our lives are a mirror of our thinking – one of the most powerful statements is “We Become What We Think About” (a quote from Earl Nightingale in “The Strangest Secret” – check it out on YouTube).  What we think and say is the most influential process in the life of every human being. We ‘create our own reality’ by our thoughts and words.  

• We live in a world of ‘double negatives’ – if you haven’t noticed, you will realise it when you start to speak in a more positive way yourself. When we greet people with “Hello, how are you?”, we may well receive a ‘double negative’ reply such as “Not bad.” or “Can’t complain.”  Double negatives are not positives.
  Our brain does not compute “Not bad” as meaning ‘good’ – it simply hears the words ‘not’ and ‘bad’.  Think about what you say when someone asks you how you are.  You might like to ensure that your answer is positive – “I’m good”, “I’m great”, “Very well thank you”.
  If we’re not having the best of days (and we all know that happens sometimes), don’t get caught in denial and say “I’m good” when we’re really not.  Instead, come up with something along the positive lines of “I’ve had better days, but things will improve. Thanks for asking.”
  A phrase we often use is “Don’t forget…”  We are actually planting the idea of forgetting in someone’s mind because we have said the word ‘forget’. When we say “Remember…” we get much better results.
  Listen to the double negatives in your day-to-day conversation. Keep yourself in check and make sure you are speaking in a positive way. Once we are aware of how our speech in society is full of double negatives, we will realise how we are often working against our own best interests. Every word we say, every thought we think becomes part of our belief system, our attitude, determining what happens in our lives.

• How often do we use the words ‘ought to’, ‘should’, ‘have to’ and ‘must’?  Possibly hundreds of times a day.  Every time we use these words we are effectively letting these actions and ideas own our time and energy.  We can take back our Personal Power and start to make choices instead of letting these things own and control us.
  Start to say “I choose to…”  This will seem ridiculous at first.  “I choose to do the end of the month accounts.”  “I choose to clean the bathroom.”  “I choose to put the garbage out.”  etc. We know there is a consequence to what we do (or don’t do) but changing the way we speak so these actions or ideas don’t ‘own’ us, absolutely energizes us. We are now taking control of our time, and we find our attitudes changing as well.  We will no longer use the words ‘ought to’, ‘should’, ‘have to’ and ‘must’ – we will simply make decisive statements, like “I’ll get stuck into those accounts tonight.”  

• We all know we have Self Talk – that constant chatter that goes on in our heads – running something like 10 times faster than we usually speak out loud. Apparently, we can have 50,000 or so thoughts in a day. Let’s make sure most of them are positive.
  We know our thoughts are full of day-to-day ‘waffle-like “Did I leave the iron on?”, “I’ll call Bob when I get home.”, “What time am I meeting Sally?”, “I need to start that report.” etc. but there is also a lot of ‘negative training’ running around our minds.
  How many times have we all heard ourselves say things like “I could never do that.”, “That would never happen to me.”, “How dumb am I?”, “That’d be right, I knew it wouldn’t last.” “Oh I could never afford that.” etc. As soon as we hear ourselves saying those self putdowns or negative comments, immediately correct them and say something positive, something uplifting, something encouraging.  This is all part of the process of ‘changing our chatter’. 

I often quote Henry Ford’s words… “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

Remember, we can’t always control what we think (we all have random thoughts occasionally), we can’t always control what we feel (try telling yourself you won’t get angry when someone does something that affects you – you already are angry!), but we can always control what we say.

Choose your words with great care.