As philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, ‘The limits of my language means the limits of my world.’
My guess is that at this stage you’ve rid yourself of disempowering terms such as can’t or failure. However, are you now unknowingly being held back by using perfectly good or even great language? What options have you not yet considered for speaking your next levels into existence?
Sometimes we become used to reaching for certain words or phrases that simply don’t carry enough clarity or don’t pack enough of an emotional punch. This is often because the people around us favour them. In such instances a quick rewrite, choosing something more to your taste can make all the difference.
For example, I have a friend who loves the word tremendous, one I never opt for but it works (tremendously) for him. For me the word genius is key but to another friend this some word sounds empty and elite.
Strangely, I find old fashioned slang from the 1920-1960s perks me up with its oddly quaint enthusiasms, ‘And how!’ ‘Righteous!’ ‘I’m hitting on all sixes,’ ‘Everything’s Jake.’
While modern corporate terms such as, ‘Kick into touch,’ ‘Think outside the box,’ and, ‘Drill down,’ leave me flat.
Elevating your life entails doing what genuinely works rather than doing what should work or what works for others or what used to work once upon a very long time ago.
To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of these word choices. If you find that the original delivers brilliantly for you – great/marvellous/outstanding! Keep using that. This article is for those who no longer feel empowered by certain stylings, those particular expressions that are disappointing and confusingly feeble in doing their job. It’s an invitation for you to get creative with how you speak to yourself in the pursuit of your personal success/ultimate destiny/dream life… you get the idea.
How swapping out one word for another can alter the job that you’re doing –
From using Goal to saying Direction:
When we exclusively land on the word ‘goal’ in speaking about an area of our lives we’re looking to evolve into, we can inadvertently put unnecessary pressure on our life-system. A goal can feel absolute and unyielding. We can lock ourselves into a result which might make us feel like a flake if we later need to adjust that desired outcome.
For example, if you say, ‘My goal is to write a novel,’ and then in the process you discover that short stories or spoken word appeals to you more, then you might feel less delighted by this adjustment into something that suits you better because you’re letting go of a fixed goal rather than adjusting your route. Telling yourself you’re setting off in the direction of finding the right creative platform for you can be a better way to communicate this to yourself. No less definite but far more pliable.
Gratitude to Support:
Gratitude is the quality of feeling thankful through focusing on the upside of what we already have. However, when you’re most in need of feeling grateful that’s exactly when you’re least likely to be able to experience said sensation. Changing the word to ’support’ allows us to recognise it as part of our reality and then soon after that we feel the warm fuzzies that follow. Also it takes the guess work out of what exactly is supposed to feel so frickin’ marvellous. Do you feel grateful that you were made redundant from your job? “No.” Well then, what part of the situation do you feel supported by? “I feel supported by (grateful for) the fact that I have marketable skills, a steady spouse, an emergency fund, that it was done kindly…” Now you can access that feeling of support which is what gratitude depends on.
Massive Action to Targeted Action:
This particular word swap helps keep overwhelm at bay and promotes efficiency. Rather than asking what are all the things that can be done, the question becomes focused on the actions most likely to give the required result. Again, it depends how this helps or hinders your thinking and action taking and also where along the action-taking continuum you find yourself.
Manifestation to Actualisation:
Manifesting is an act of something energetically coming into being, which can feel quite passive to some people. Actualisation is a making actual or existent where the emphasis is more far more hands on. This word swap keeps it in the realm of the energetic while also allowing more space for the physically practical, material aspects of bringing new things into your life. Note again that the inverse might be the case for you.
New Terms just for the sake of the new:
We become habituated to hearing the same expressions over and over, such that we stop attending to the things we hear all the time, so simply changing up a phrase for the sake of change can be a really powerful tool in allowing you to hear it again.
If you speak more than one language or if you’re a student of languages, it can be mind blowing to listen to self development materials in your non-dominant or less-used tongue.
Equally a self-directed kick in the pants such as, ‘Let’s do this,’ can become, ‘Step Up,’ ‘Forward March,’ ‘Get In There!’ None being necessarily more effective than the other, it’s a question of whatever gets your attention.
If you’ve been telling your 6 a.m. bathroom mirror self that you’re a, ‘Lean, mean fighting machine’, might it be worth switching to calling yourself, ‘You good looking beast, you!’ or borrowing Matthew McConaughey’s ‘Statesman, philosopher, folk-singing poet’?
As playwright Tom Stoppard reminds us, ‘Words are sacred. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little.’
And that nudge into a clearer, more immediate, more emotionally available format can change your trajectory and, across time, your destiny.
