Change Your Words and You’ll Change How You Experience LIfe
The words we speak to ourselves have a significant impact on the way we experience life.
Each time, I explain this to my clients; I can’t help but think, why are we not taught this in school.
While we learn how to use words to communicate, we don’t learn the impact they can have on the quality of our lives and in the lives of the ones we love.
We have all seen how positive and encouraging words can inspire and motivate others to achieve what they would have deemed for themselves impossible to accomplish.
So with this understanding, we should be motivated to choose positive language. Yet, we are more inclined to speak to ourselves using words that disempower and dissuade us before we even start.
Words that disempower us
We use words like “never”
Informing our unconscious mind that we are incapable of the task, such as
“I could never write a successful blog.”
“I will never get that promotion.”
Otherwise, we use words to incite fear and anxiety
by stating phrases such as
“It kills me to go and see Aunt Marge” or
“I really dread doing grocery shopping”.
Our unconscious mind takes the things we say to it, quite literally.
So when we use this sort of language you can imagine what happens.
Our words shape our reality, and we get what we are declaring for ourselves.
How can you become more motivated and feel better?
Pay attention to the words you are saying
Become aware of the words you use and when you hear words like dread, despise, never and so on, make a conscious effort to change it.
Replace the disempowering with a neutral phrase
You might like start replacing these negative phrases with something more neutral.
Instead of saying
“I dread doing grocery shopping”
say something like
“I am indifferent about grocery shopping”.
Introduce the empowered words
When you have convinced yourself of this, change the phrase to something more empowering
“I feel empowered being able to choose what I /my family eat during the week”
or
“I am grateful that there is so much variety to choose from when I do my grocery shopping”.
You get what I mean.
Keep repeating this over and over.
Your unconscious mind will start to believe that you appreciate shopping and you will create new neural pathways.
Remember; you’ve wired in the belief that you don’t like shopping so you can wire in a neutral and then more positive belief about it.
I used the example of shopping, but you can use it on anything and everything.
In their book, Words Can Change Your Brain, Andrew Newberg, MD, and Mark Robert Waldman writes how positive words can stimulate the motivational centres in the brain.
While negative words can produce stress hormones directly affecting ones performance.
So choose something that you are not enjoying doing in your life right now and try this exercise.
Let me know how you go, drop a comment below.
I hate waking up earlier to go to the gym
Its okay, waking up earlier to go the gym.
I feel invigorated waking up earlier to go to the gym.
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