Your Words Become Your Reality
What you think shapes your identity. And what you say determines your reality. The words that come out of your mouth take shape in the world, remaking your circumstances by changing attitudes and driving actions. It’s no exaggeration to say that you have the power to create (or destroy) by exercising the power of speech. If you’re to take control of your attitude, it’s vital that you understand the power of words and their critical connection to your thoughts and, ultimately, to your attitude.
We’ve already discovered that your thoughts have the power to shape your identity. When you think positively—or negatively—about yourself, others, or the world around you, those thoughts go to work, impacting everything from your energy level to your relationships, even your possibilities for the future. In this chapter, we take the power of your attitude to its logical next step. First it shapes your thoughts, and then it inevitably flows out in the things you say. Your attitude determines your thoughts, and your thoughts become your words. And those words are powerful tools that will shape your life.
What happens when you think in one direction for a while? You begin to speak in that same pattern. There’s a direct link between your attitude and your thoughts—and between your thoughts and your words. When you have a positive attitude, you think positive thoughts and your words follow. And it works the same with a negative attitude. It produces negative thoughts, which in turn produce negative words.
I’m certainly not the first to point this out. The critical connection between thoughts and words was mentioned by none other than Jesus of Nazareth, who said, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”1 That ancient wisdom holds true today. Your attitude shapes your thoughts, and your thoughts inevitably flow forth in words. And here’s the important thing to remember—your words become your reality. If your thoughts have great power, and they do, your words have more.
Think of it this way: Your thoughts are like an atomic bomb. We all know the power that comes from nuclear fission, breaking apart atoms of uranium or plutonium so that tremendous energy is unleashed. Your thoughts are like that. Even a tiny thought or idea can release great power in your life, as we discovered in the last chapter. And if your thoughts have power, your words have even more because they’re fueled by your thoughts. Your words are like a hydrogen bomb, which uses nuclear fusion to create a chain reaction. You need an A-bomb to set off an H-bomb, and the power released is about 500 times more than an atomic bomb alone. So it is with your words. They have even more power to shape your life than your thoughts do.
So here’s what the chain reaction looks like in your life. Your attitude produces your thoughts, and your thoughts produce your words, and your words create your reality. The good news is that this power can be used positively. But first, you have to recognize the negative speech that flows from a negative outlook.
Your Words Have Creative Power
Your words have creative power. Let that sink in for a minute. The things you say take shape in your life and in the lives of those around you. You’ve already experienced this, though you may not have noticed it. When you read a good book, the author creates a setting for your using nothing but words. You fall in love with the heroes and hate the villains. You can picture the mountains or the seashore or a tiny apartment where the characters live. It’s like you’re there. That’s the power of words. Ernest Hemmingway noted this creative power:
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you, and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.2
You and your friends do this too, though you may not be writers. When you describe the excitement of winning an important game, your friends feel that same joy. When you share your heartache over losing a loved one, your friends literally cry along with you. Your words create something in them—the beauty of a sunset, the thrill of an adventure, joy, pride, self-confidence, determination; you create all that using words. Sadly, this creative power can also be used destructively. Words can create joy and beauty, or they can destroy it. Spoken words shape reality for us—and for those around us.
For over 20 years, psychologists Clifford Notarius and Howard Markman have studied the power of words to shape relationships. Incredibly, this team of researchers can predict with 93 percent accuracy whether a newly married couple will eventually divorce. How do they do it? By examining their words. From videotaped interviews with the couple attempting to solve a problem, Notarius and Markham examine their words to gain clues to their thinking.
Do you see it? There again is the relationship between our thoughts and our words. The pair of researchers claim they can predict when a couple feels hopeless about the relationship based on their words. They conclude that a happy marriage has less to do with how ideally matched the couple is and much more to do with how they communicate with each other. The psychologists report that it takes hours of positive communication to undo the effect of one negative remark. “One zinger can erase twenty acts of kindness, the way one candy bar can wipe out twenty minutes of exercise.”3
Your words have the power to create or to destroy. Think about the effect your words may be having on you or your relationships right now in ways you haven’t noticed. For example, when you’re complaining, what’s the effect on your attitude? On your workmates? On your children? What has been the effect of praise in your life? How have you responded when others complimented or affirmed you? How did it shape your attitude? Your thoughts? Your actions? How often do you exercise your word power? Do you tend to use that power positively, giving hope, encouragement, and affirmation to others? Or do you tend to use your power negatively, offering complaints, criticism, or insults? Your words have creative power; use them for good.
The Spiraling Effect of Thoughts and Words
Your thoughts take shape in the form of words, which in turn shape your reality. And the power works in the opposite direction as well. Your words shape your thoughts, which in turn affects your outlook. The writer George Orwell pointed this out, saying, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”4 That theme was played out in Orwell’s futuristic novel 1984. The story centers on an oppressive, authoritarian government that controls the population by, among other things, using the power of words. The evil dictator known as Big Brother created a language called Newspeak, with which he controlled people’s thinking by eliminating “dangerous” words and creating others, such as crimethink, which was any thought contrary to the government’s official version of reality. If you doubt that words affect thoughts just as much as thoughts affect words, consider how politicians in real life vie to shape what we think on any issue by influencing the terminology we use to talk about it.
This makes it even more critical that you learn to take control of your words. The way you talk about yourself will reinforce—for better or worse—how you feel about yourself, which will in turn produce more of the same kind of speech. So, for example, when you make a simple mistake like locking your keys in the car, if you say to yourself, “I’m such an idiot!” you’ll begin to feel that way. In turn you’ll think more negative thoughts about yourself, and you’ll talk yourself down even further. But if you take control of your words, you can reverse that spiral and affect your outlook for the better. What if, in the same circumstance, you said, “Cool, I get to learn how to solve a really annoying problem”? Changing how you speak will change how you think, and that will in turn produce a positive outlook. The next time you face a challenge, you’ll be thinking, “I can handle this; I solve problems all the time!”
Your thoughts and words are really inseparable. One flows to the other and back again. Perhaps that’s why ancient Israel’s King David said, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.”5 He knew that words and thoughts go together like chocolate and peanut butter. One feeds into the others, forming a spiral. And you can keep that spiral going in the right direction.
Recognize and Eliminate Negative Speech
One of the key things you’ll need to do in order to harness the power of a positive attitude is to recognize and eliminate negative speech from your vocabulary. Sometimes it’s difficult to see patterns of negative speech in ourselves because they’ve become second nature. You may slip into them without thinking about it. Even worse, you may be tempted to justify your negative speech in the form of complaining, sarcasm, and the like as venting or just kidding around.
Here’s an exercise to assess the grip that negative speech may have on you: Go for 24 hours without saying anything negative. If you couldn’t go for one day without having a drink, you’d have to conclude that you’re an alcoholic. If you couldn’t go a whole day without smoking, you’d be forced to see that you’re addicted to nicotine. In the same way, if you can’t go for an entire day without speaking negative words, you’ll have to admit that you have a problem in that area. Without a doubt, you can trace that negative speech back through your thoughts to your outlook on life. This will be a revealing exercise for you.
What do I mean by negative speech? Here are eight types of negative speech to recognize and avoid.
Gossip
Gossip is passing along an unkind or unflattering rumor or report (whether true or not) about someone who’s not present. Gossip is tempting because it rises from our feelings of inferiority about ourselves. We somehow feel a bit better when we’re making someone else look worse. Do you see the connection between what we think and what we say? That connection is real.
Gossip is easy to resort to, but it almost always backfires. You never look taller when standing on somebody else’s demolished reputation. And as has so often been pointed out, what goes around comes around.
Have you heard the one about three friends on a fishing trip? The fish weren’t biting, so one of the guys had the bright idea of sharing their biggest shortcoming with each other. They all agreed, so the first fellow admitted he had a tendency to drink a bit too much. The second confessed that he was guilty of going to the casino once in a while and blowing his entire paycheck. They turned to the third friend and said, “So what about you?”
With a huge grin on his face, he said, “My biggest problem is gossiping.”
It always seems tempting to share negative information about others, but there’s nothing fun or funny about it. Recognize that speaking ill of others stems from your own insecurities, and never do it.
Complaining
Complaining is saying something negative about a circumstance rather than doing something constructive about it. It’s tempting to justify complaining because we often find ourselves in difficult or annoying circumstances beyond our control. Somehow it feels good to let off steam by griping about what’s wrong. Notice again the link between what we think and what we say. Complaining stems from the belief, right or wrong, that we’re powerless to bring change or that we’ve been somehow wronged. Because our outlook is negative, we think we’re helpless, and we vent that feeling by complaining.
The result, of course, is that complaining only makes us feel worse, and it has a tremendously negative effect on those around us. Be alert for complaining, and trace it back to your thoughts and outlook. You’ll be amazed at the connection. Don’t complain. Even being silent is better than pouring negative words into a situation.
Naysaying is devaluing or rejecting a suggestion without evaluating it fairly. Often, naysaying is a power move. We do this in marriages, relationships, employment situations, and even the political arena as a way of taking power from the other person. “That’ll never work.” “No way.” “Never happen.” “Here we go again.” Those are all forms of naysaying. The thought connection is this: When we fear losing something in a relationship, we rob power from the other party by naysaying. We may fear losing authority at work, losing money, or losing stability or security because of changes in the status quo. Because we have a negative outlook, we fear change, and therefore we short-circuit it through negative speech.
As with all forms of negative speech, naysaying is self-defeating. Nobody likes a naysayer, and naysaying often circumvents positive changes.
Insults and Sarcasm
Insults and sarcasm are saying negative things about another person, especially when spoken directly to them. We’re tempted to do this because it feels empowering and can be a way of exercising power in a relationship. If you can put the other person down, you may win your point by making him or her look or feel foolish. Sarcasm is an especially tempting form of insult because it can be passed off as humor. How often have you heard someone make a cutting, sarcastic remark and then defend it by saying, “Relax, I was only kidding!”
The thought connection here is obvious: When we feel threatened or inferior, we lash out with aggressive speech. Insults and sarcasm are a power move, intended to make you feel superior to another person. Again, negative outlook leads to negative self-image, which in turn produces negative speech.
Contrary to popular belief, words hurt people. Insults and sarcasm are incredibly harmful to others, even if they don’t reveal the hurt to you. Never use words to harm.
Trolling
Trolling is saying negative things directly to another person through electronic media. Trolling is more tempting than making a direct insult because it’s one step removed—not face-to-face. Also, it can be done anonymously, which makes the conflict one-sided. The same thought connection that applies to insults and sarcasm is at work here. Our negative view of life produces negative self-esteem, feelings of helplessness, and fear. Add the possibility of lashing out anonymously, and trolling is all too easily done. Our culture is awash in negativity on the Internet. Don’t get sucked into it.
Lying
Lying is deceiving others using words. Obviously, this includes making false statements, but there’s more to it than that. Being untruthful includes misrepresenting the truth using partial truths, omissions of fact, carelessness with facts, misdirection, or exaggeration. The thought trail behind lying leads back to a belief that truth is somehow an enemy. We falsely believe that if the whole truth were known, we would suffer in some way. Though there are occasions when facts don’t need to be made public, any attempt to manipulate the truth is dangerous. The age-old wisdom holds true: The truth will make you free.
Bragging
Bragging is relating positive and often exaggerated information about yourself for the purpose of making yourself look better to others. It’s a close cousin of lying because bragging generally paints too rosy a picture of the bragger. Of course there are occasions, such as a job interview, when you must let others know your accomplishments. Generally, however, bragging stems from the negative thought that others somehow don’t respect us enough or give us the attention we deserve. Bragging only makes that worse, of course, because nobody likes a bragger. Social media has created an epidemic of bragging in the form of creating online profiles that match little resemblance to our real lives. It’s easy to give the impression that our lives are more interesting and well-managed than they really are. The best way to combat bragging is with silence. Simply avoid whenever possible the words I and me, and you’ll notice how often you’re tempted to say them unnecessarily.
Profanity is the use of words that are generally regarded as crude or socially unacceptable. We’re tempted to use profanity for a variety of reasons, such as to lend impact to our speech, to make us look “authentic,” or to shock or intimidate others. The use of profanity in America is increasing. A poll conducted by the Associated Press revealed that nearly 75 percent of people questioned said they encountered profanity in public frequently or occasionally. Two-thirds said they think people swear more often than they did 20 years ago. Interestingly, that included the poll respondents themselves! The poll showed that 62 percent of people ages 18 to 34 acknowledged swearing in conversation at least a few times a week. Interestingly, the poll showed that many people who regularly swear believe it’s wrong for them to do so.6
Despite being more socially acceptable these days, the use of profanity is negative speech that results from negative thinking. It stems from one of a number of false ideas—that words don’t have any value, or that we should have the freedom to speak as we choose, or that it shows us to be “authentic.” Swearing is disrespectful to others and a lazy way to speak. It nearly always creates negative feelings, putting distance between you and your hearer. Recognize profanity as negative speech and eliminate it from your vocabulary.
Use Your Power for Good
From the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, we’ve seen many powerful examples of the way words shape reality. The things we say really do have creative power. And that’s true for you as well. It isn’t only great leaders who can use words to shape the future—you can too.
Dr. Dennis Hensley is an English professor who had a student named Sean in his world literature course. Sean was a wrestler and looked every bit the part. He excelled at weightlifting, and his chiseled physique showed it. Though Sean began the semester getting average grades, he made steady progress. When he earned an A on a quiz, Doc Hensley encouraged this tough-guy student with a handwritten note on the back of the paper: “This is superb work, son. I congratulate you. You’ve been working hard, and this is the payoff. Well done!”
When he handed the papers back, Doc was pleased to note the smile on Sean’s face when he saw the grade. When the young man read the note, however, he looked crestfallen and avoided eye contact. After class, he quickly left the room.
Two days later Sean met with his professor to explain his reaction. With tears in his eyes, Sean recounted the sad story of his parents’ divorce when Sean was just seven years old. “I somehow felt it was my fault that my dad left. I got it into my head that if I could just be a better son, he would come back and live with us again. We’d all be happy then.” After a pause, he added, “So, I played every sport at my schools and all the summer sports I could sign up for. I thought that if I could just hit enough home runs or score enough touchdowns or shoot enough baskets, my dad would be proud of me and would come back.”
Of course it hadn’t worked. “I always felt that I’d failed,” Sean continued, “I haven’t heard from my dad for the past two years, and I probably never will. I thought I had gotten past caring, until…you praised me…and you called me son…I realized at that moment, that all my life I’ve wanted to hear a man I looked up to telling me he was proud of me, and calling me son. You have no idea what this note on this paper means to me. I plan to keep this for the rest of my life.”
Sean graduated with a degree in elementary education and went on to become a teacher in an inner-city school. More than a teacher, he became a father figure for many of his students. He called each one “son” or “daughter,” passing on the gift that his English prof had given him.7
Do you see it now? Your words have the power to create. With your words, you bring beauty, joy, passion, energy, truth, wisdom, justice, and gladness into the world. With your words, you create a better future for yourself and those around you. Your words do indeed have power. Use them carefully.