“Choose Your Words”… “Carefully”, is how Grandma always finished that thought. And yes it still is great advice today. Choosing your words carefully can lead you to great success, while not guarding your vocabulary can have the opposite effect ensuring your failure.
Remember words have meaning directly impacting actions and outcomes.
So let’s take a close look at word choice, here on “Becoming Today”.
Words have meaning directly impacting actions and outcomes. Whether you are involved in friendly conversation, business discussions, arguments, debates, or talking to yourself, the words you opt to use can either give or take away power from you, your situation and your desired outcomes.
Quite literally choosing the proper expression can change your life or keep you in the wilderness for another 40 years. Words elicit not only an intellectual component, by whether or not you and those you are communicating with share the same definition, they also often first evoke an emotional response. Whether that’s positive or negative is up to you.
While the late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia incorrectly or falsely affirmed:
“Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.”
They certainty can change and do, if there is not a common definition. Even then the word can be further enhanced or exacerbated by tone, volume or even in writing as to how they are expressed. Let’s consider this word:
Fire
Fire
Fire!
Fire
Fire
Fire
Fire!
FIRE !!!!!!!!!!
The same four letters. Pronounced in the same way and even in print you feel the difference. Therefore you can draw different meanings, memories and elicit varied responses to motivate, manage or manipulate others.
This is even true when it comes to self-talk. As we’ve discussed before that inner dialogue, the never ending conversion you have with yourself ( either inside your head or at times aloud) has a tremendous impact on your self-esteem, value as well as your accomplishments and / or failures.
Instead of saying “I feel like _ _ _ _” .
Choose to say “My health is improving”.
Do not bring negativity into your thoughts, or you will find it in your outcomes. And that’s something not very “Becoming”.
Words are an extremely powerful force available for our use. Motivation also plays an important role as we can opt to select words of encouragement, growth and hope or despair, anger and hate.
On our shared path of “Becoming”, I pray you are selecting the positive. The terms that help, heighten, heal, plus are hopeful, heartening and humble.
Let’s identify a few steps that help make your word choice work for you:
Avoid Self-Criticism
Don’t Gossip
Harness the Positive Energy of Words
Encircle Yourself with Uplifting Expressions
Now that we’ve discussed the importance of word choice, let’s expand our vocabularies with some options for incorporating what we’ve learned. Since this began with yesterday’s discussion of “Boldly Declare”, here are some bold options to declare boldly.
Bold words:
Adventurous
Audacious
Courageous
Daring
Fearless
Heroic
Resolute
Bantam
Forward
Gallant
Assuming
Dauntless
Enterprising
Intrepid
Unafraid
Undaunted
Valiant
Valorous
Word that are not bold (so don’t use these):
Afraid
Cautious
Cowardly
Fearful
Meek
Shy
Timid
Unadventurous
Weak
Faint
Fair
Light
Quiet
Reticent
Retiring
Timorous
“Boldly Declare”
Words that Declare:
Proclaim
Announce
Make known
State
Communicate
Reveal
Divulge
Mention
Talk about
Raise
Air
Bring into the open
Voice
Articulate
Pronounce
Express
Vent
Set forth
Make public
Publicize
Disseminate
Circulate
Publish
Broadcast
Promulgate
Trumpet
Blazon
Come out with
Shout from the rooftops
Tomorrow we’ll continue our conversation on declaring carefully chosen words as we’ll expand it to include the role of speaking confidently. I’ll also share some more options for selecting words carefully, properly and courageously as we continue along this path of “Becoming”.
Becoming Today with Rochelle Jeanette 