The power of language

The language we use is often a good indicator of the actions we take.

I had a client not long ago who, like all of us, wanted to make some changes to improve his health. The more we talked, the more it became apparent that while his intentions to follow through on his goals were reasonable, the language he used was not especially conducive to action, a necessary piece of goal achievement.

One example is that he told himself as well as me, his coach, that he was ‘probably’ going to stop checking his electronic devices so often and focus more on self-improvement activities. Before long, we were able to joke about how often he used the word ‘probably’ to describe how likely it was he was going to do a lot of things he said were important to him.

Maybe you can relate because you too are human like the rest of us.

A couple of unempowering words I personally use are ‘think’, as in ‘I think I’m going to workout today’ and ‘try’, as in ‘I’m going to try to avoid sugar today’. I don’t like to admit it but unconsciously I may be giving myself permission to procrastinate.

There’s much to be gained by being more aware of the words we choose in the normal course of the day. The language we use really does matter.

Today, see if you can catch yourself using words which are undermining your best intentions.

Then work on replacing those words with action-oriented words, empowering words, and see how it improves commitment and follow through on the things you aspire to do.

Coach Barry