Are you sitting comfortably? Let me tell you a little story...
Recently, I went for a coffee with my friend Caroline; she was telling me how she'd just landed her dream job: she's working from home three days a week; she's had a great pay rise, she loves the role and has developed great relationships with her new colleagues. We chatted about it until our coffees were nearly cold!
As we were getting up to leave, Caroline turned to me and blurted out "I'm so pleased we've had this opportunity to chat, I feel so much better about it. I've been worrying there's something wrong with me, I've got this fantastic new job but sometimes I just feel really down. I can't explain why, but I feel so much better now." I ordered two more coffees and we chatted more honestly this time - there was a pattern to this sinking feeling she was getting: it was following the days she spent with her colleagues in the office. So I let her into the same secret I'm going to share with you: the language used around us has a real power on our mind, on our state, on our emotions and on our energy.
Caroline's colleagues all used very negative language. For example, her manager would say things like "we mustn't miss this deadline or overspend on our tight budget". In order to make sense of these statements, Caroline's unconscious mind would have to imagine missing the deadlines and blowing the budget before it could imagine not doing it. This is how our mind processes negatives.
Take this example: consider the statement "don't think of a blue elephant." Notice what your first thought was - I bet it was a blue elephant! In order to process the statement, your brain had to imagine what you didn't want before it could imagine what you did so its process was elephant - pink - not. Notice how the first focus is the elephant. To put this into a more useful context, how many times do you find yourself saying "don't worry" to someone? Every time you say this, the brain's very first focus is to worry - probably not the constructive and positive outcome you were looking for!
Research conducted by the well-known psychiatrist John H Reitmann confirmed this. He once said "It takes an average person almost twice as long to understand a sentence that uses a negative approach than it does to understand a positive sentence." Just imagine all the extra energy Caroline was using trying to battle against all the negative messages she was getting in just two days at the office! No wonder she was feeling drained.
Coffee became lunch...
Over lunch, we discussed how to use pure and positive language to ensure the message you convey is instantly understood and, most importantly, is the message you intended to convey. A few small changes will ensure that your language has a purely positive impact on you, your results and what happens in your life by giving you the ability to choose your outcomes. For example, if Caroline's boss had known about how important pure and positive language is to success, he would have said "let's all focus on meeting our deadline of xxxx and staying within our budget of xxxx." These simple changes would have made him a much better, more inspiring leader and therefore much more likely to have a high performing team.
This is also really important in our internal dialogue. Your internal conversations can have a huge effect on your external results as well as how you feel. For example, if you say to yourself "I'm tired." What happens to your physiology? How does it make you feel? Now say to yourself "I could do with more energy." It's the same thing, and just using different words will have a massive impact on how your brain responds. When I say things like "I could do with more energy", immediately my brain says "I know how to do more energy" and will release the chemicals, change my breathing habits and I'll stand in a different way because I've been given more energy.
Not everybody's aware of the power of their language so I'd like to leave you with the same tips I gave Caroline (over dessert!) in order to ensure all your communications - both internally and externally - lead you towards success in your life...
Give your mind a positive workout...
Like all muscles, the brain develops with a workout! Some practice will help your unconscious mind install good habits to support you in taking you to where you want to be. To begin, start to notice your language in your conversations and your internal dialogues and ask yourself:
- Is my language positive and pure?
- What am I really saying to myself?
- What am I focusing on?
Is your language taking you towards success, or is it holding you back? When you notice that you are using negative language, rethink how you can better phrase what you are saying. Changing your focus to one of success is as simple as asking yourself the following questions:
- What would I like to do instead?
- What would I like to happen instead?
- How would I like things to be instead?
Try doing this for the next 24 hours and notice the positive impact it has on your mind, your state, your emotions and your energy and then build the techniques into all your conversations and start to feel the positive results! Remember: where you are today is a reflection of your thoughts and language used in the past and you can change where you are tomorrow by changing those thoughts and language.
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