Words create.
Do you doubt the effect of a love poem to create feelings of love?
How about the words of a song to take you back to a time when you felt a certain way?
What about the power of words to mobilize us to action?
Words reveal.
Language is symbolic. Consider the metaphors you use in your everyday conversations. Depending on what you tend to say, it reveals different patterns of thought.
- Did you “sleep like a baby” last night? Or “sleep like a rock”?
- If there’s a tough decision you have to make, do you speak of it as “something you need to weigh” or as a “battle in your mind?”
- Is change something that “you allow to happen” or do you “make it happen?”
Neither is better or worse than the other–unless you want something different. For everything you say, an image/structure is created in your brain and your brain seeks a matching reality in the outer world. If you want to change what you’re creating on the outside, examine and adjust your language that comes from the inside.
State the outcome you want in a positive way.
I don’t mean the “unicorns and rainbows” kind of positive, but rather, do you talk more about what you want or what you don’t want?
For years I said, “Don’t forget where you put your keys.” When I learned that my brain doesn’t hear “not” and I started saying, “Remember where I put my keys,” I spent a lot more time finding them and less time searching for them.
It’s a simple twist of a phrase, but it makes a big difference to your brain.
Our brain has a natural bias to focus on obstacles, problems, and what’s wrong or missing. When that happens, guess what seems bigger–obstacles and problems!
When I’m talking to a prospective client, I always ask, “What do you WANT?” Most of the time the answer is something like
- “I don’t want to hide & play small anymore.”
- “I’m tired of feeling overwhelmed. My life is out of control.”
- “I don’t want to be so stressed out.”
- “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
That’s a hard place to be. ^^
The simple exercise of flipping the focus to “What do you want?” dramatically increases the ability to achieve it.
Your words reveal your inner world as they create your outer world.
Are you creating what you WANT?
