Word Wisdom

“Words are the voice of the heart”
Confucious

You have the power to improve your experience at a moment’s notice.

Here’s how: Choose your words wisely.

Words become your thoughts. Thoughts become your beliefs. Beliefs become your reality. When you consciously choose empowering, balanced words, you plant the seeds for a more empowered, balanced life.

Your words, and the intention behind those words, carry an energetic vibration that either uplifts you or drains you of power. You respond on a physical, emotional and spiritual level to the words you use. When you choose your words wisely, you are in command of your reactions.

You feel powerful.

Words are the voice of the heart. Do your words reflect a calm, self-loving, peaceful heart? Or do they reflect an angry, suspicious, bitter heart?

Highly charged words intensify a charged situation. Balanced words nullify that situation. For example, Ellen has a tough day at work and is overwhelmed with projects, deadlines and a demanding boss. She says work is a “nightmare”. Hmmm, let’s see here. No one died, no one’s house burned down. Work is a nightmare? What if Ellen replaces the word “nightmare” with “challenging”? By describing her experience at work as a “nightmare”, Ellen intensifies her frenzied state. She gains control by using a less inflammatory word.

Constricted language reflects a constricted life. By using new and expansive ways of describing life experiences, you break free from those places in which you are stuck. You take control and move forward. For example, I struggled with depression in my early adult life and often used the word “depressed” to describe almost any negative emotion I experienced. One day the thought entered my mind, “you don’t have to feel sad.” My Higher Self spoke to me and offered these insights: Firstly, that I had a choice about how I felt, and secondly, the oppressiveness of depression could become sadness, a more manageable state.

If you were raised in an abusive, neglectful or traumatic family environment, certain negative feelings, and the words attached to those feelings, may continue to reside within you. Even neutral events may trigger a habitual response of anger, humiliation or depression. While appropriate to the experiences from your past, your reactions today may be out of proportion to the current events that triggered them.

Expanding your language provides new perspectives through which to view life events. For example, if you habitually use the words angry, humiliated or depressed as a response to life experiences, choose alternative words that suggest a better feeling thought. This helps neutralize your reactions, opens new pathways for empowering choices and helps you move beyond the story of your past. Practice this:

Replace anger with: irritated, annoyed, bothered
Replace humiliation with: awkward, uncomfortable, self- conscious
Replace depressed with: sad, blue, unhappy

When you choose a better feeling word, you have better feeling thoughts. Better feeling thoughts create better feeling beliefs. Better feeling beliefs create a better feeling reality.

Be conscious of what you think.

It comes true.

(Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1vVDB9D)