What’s in a Word?

Over the years I have read references on how powerful words can be, from the bibles caution of an unbridled tongue, to philosophers recognition of the power of the spoken word to literally create our world.

But really now, they are just words, aren’t they? There are two points we can look at when it comes to explore this topic, one from the world of quantum physics, secondly from the study of the brain. Physics tells us that there is no true reality, that there only exist “waves of possibilities” and that reality only happens when we focus on a certain point in space, when we “decide” on one course of action or another, thereby eliminating all other possibilities for the one we focused on. 

The key here is there were other possibilities but we decided to choose “one over the other”, for better or worse. So how do we make these choices?

Why do we make the bad ones over the good ones at times? It has been a question I have been asking myself for years and here is what I found. The way we choose which reality we will pick is based on our life’s experiences, as they shape our “model of the world”. Our model of the world is simply what we believe to be true, and this belief controls a part of the brain called the RAS, or the reticular activating system. The RAS is a filter for incoming information and simply filters incoming information and makes sure it matches our chronic way of thinking. All the good things in my life are a part of my chronic thought process, meaning that I gave daily thought to various ideas and concepts and my brain look for evidence of these things being true. Career, health, education, finances, all these things I spent time giving positive reinforcement and I got to see evidence of these showing up in my life in a positive way. The problem is, all the things that are not so good in my life, the things I struggle with, self image (yeah, me too) connection, deservedness of love, all these I have struggled with for years (a gift from my upbringing) and I spent time giving negative reinforcement to these ideas and again, my brain looked for evidence of these things being true. The problem is, where I thought good things or whether I thought bad things, I was right! I am not saying that circumstances and others did not play a role in these events, what I am saying is that how I think on a daily basis, the thoughts I choose have a much more powerful effect on how my life will ultimately turn out than the events I had experienced.

The last piece to this is simply “language”. What are the words I use daily to describe the world I live in, what are the words I use to describe myself, my self image, my deservedness for love, my ability to have an amazing career, my financial status? I am sure when I sit down and write out a full days conversation on any of the topics, the words I have used to describe these pieces, will I be surprised that the ones that are working I use positive language around and the ones that are not I use negative language? Probably not. So part of my focus in daily to be “aware” or mindful of the thoughts I think and challenge myself to rewrite the negative thinking each day. I am not saying this is an easy task, but with the goal of having what I want in life, it is a necessary one. So, what are you thinking??