Came with me to the rabbit hole of the power of words.
Your words matter more than you think.
Your words have power.
That’s why Don Miguel Ruiz talked about the impeccability of words in his famous book The 4 Agreements.
As a result of my work as a writer, I pay a lot of attention to the written and spoken word. Over the years, I have realized the following points that form the basis of my theory: what we say to others and ourselves is more important than we think.
Here, I share them with you.
- We have to listen to ourselves as we talk. We listen to others but ignore our words. We ignore reality and ourselves.
- People do not know what they are saying even though they think they know it. When we answer a question, for example, we answer conditioned by what the other person wants to hear, and therefore we do not communicate our true intentions. And obviously in this way, although we can hide our intentions, the flip side is that we take power away from those intentions.
- Words create reality. We can see it in the codes of computer programs. In the same way, we code our brain, which is still a programmable computer.
- We make others feel and think one way or another, depending on our words. And those sensations condition our existence. Because the way you think and feel is the way you act. If you feel good, you work from that state of well-being. If you feel lousy, you will be more irascible and misbehave.
- Politicians use different words to modify the perception of reality and affect public opinion; you can also do the same to reprogram your brain and, thus, your reality.
- The word generates, structures, and enhances efficient thinking. Reread it. The better you structure your words, the better you communicate with others and with yourself, and the better the communication, the more clarity and the easier it is to achieve your goals because you see new paths you did not see before.
- What you say at a conscious level makes you get some resources or others from your subconscious. What you say feeds back to your mind and serves to continue generating the following speech. That is why the first words or phrases with which you start a conversation are essential because your brain will use them to continue creating a speech. Ergo, if you start with victimizing words, your mind will most likely generate more of the same. If you start with positive words, your brain will look for coherence in the speech and suggest more positive words. Remember, your words are the bricks with which your brain builds mental castles (the narratives that create your identity).
- That which you cannot name does not exist. And that can generate emotions that cannot be expressed in words and creates frustration. Those emotions stay inside us and take energy away from us because we live in a loop until we find a way to express what is happening to us, and in this way, we take most of the intensity of the emotion out of us.
- Wisdom is knowing how to communicate complex concepts with simple words. Wise persons are translators of complexity into the common language of the everyday. Therefore, the fewer words you use to synthesize a large concept and the more common words you use, the more impact your messages have. This type of communication is the one that not only sweetens the ears of the listener but also permeates and remains in the heart and soul.
- It is not about talking for the sake of talking. It is about being congruent and backing up your words with actions. It is about living what you say you live.
- Communicating is about transferring energy. Whether written or spoken, the word transmits a specific energy. You can feel it when listening to a song, a motivational speech, or reading a good book. And that energy can be of many kinds: it can make you sleepy, stimulate you, and make your head hurt. Words generate emotions by transmitting energy. Ask any writer; they’ll tell you, “Don’t write, make music.” Good writers seek a rhythm within their literary creations; they make music with their words, which readers reproduce in their minds.
- Speaking in the first person holds us accountable for our actions. Question the things you are told. Because if you assume a thought is yours, you will end up speaking it in the first person and being responsible for those words and ideas that are not yours but someone else’s. And more importantly, they end up limiting you, defining you as a person, and creating your reality through the constitution of your identity. Ultimately, until we reconstruct ourselves as adults and unlearn the concepts we were indoctrinated with as children, we are what we were told we were. Do you want to change? Question what you have been told you are.
If you don’t change your inner narratives, you will always get the same results even if you do different things (why stop selling hamburgers and start selling pizzas if you are a lousy cook). If you want to improve, you have to change who you are.
And to do that, you have to work on your narratives. As you become someone else (a good cook), the things you do, even those you thought didn’t work for you (hamburgers), will work for you.
AG