Your Language Defines You
This article discusses how we use language in our everyday lives. Questions are posed for you to gain insight into the way you speak. People perceive us based upon the words we choose to use: regardless of the situation, how we use our words, and where.
Background
You may find the title of this article somewhat unnerving, but it contains real truth.
Water colors may be like your language…
And as they say – it will set your free – almost…
Have you really noticed what your language sounds like any time lately?
You would have to record it or have someone give you feedback about what you typically speak about.
Background of the Image
When we speak to people are our words harmful, helpful, encouraging, supportive or otherwise? Otherwise covers a lot of ground, yet all one has to do is listen to some of the conversations going on around you to determine where they fit.
The language may be yellow, it may be blue, or green, or some nasty sounding brown colored words – you know the kind of stuff you flush down – let’s hope not.
There is no red in our image, but if it were there, it would represent anger.
We know that anger floats around quite a bit these days: just listen to talk radio for about five minutes from any side of the aisle or middle ground and you’ll understand clearly. Seems like a bunch of angry people who tend to justify their comments with righteous indignation – we’ll let you think about the leaders of the pack all around with your own guesses – we no longer listen…
But, we read voraciously…
You Use Language Everywhere
It could be your job, your family, your friends, and all the other things that occupy your mind. You may sound off to more than the groups we mentioned: it could be anyone you come in contact during your day.
(Wisdom-Sidebar) BTW your language may be filled with intensity at times, such as joy or glee shouted from the mountain top. Or, all kinds of other emotions – the list of them is long. We are sometimes whispering from low in the valley when experiencing melancholy. Gee, doesn’t that have sophistication to it: more so than simple sadness – that was our minor attempt at lifting language – we’ll write more on this subject in future articles.
So What is it for You?
Do you have any clues about your language? And if so, what might your language say about who you are being? A couple of ideas to consider are in the thoughts that permeate your day. What do you think of during the day? Positive, neutral, or negative? All, some or just one?
In any case, they are your themes – and are likely to be running throughout your day, especially without your realizing much of it. What are these? Can you name a few themes? And once you have, what language tends to be present with your theme?
This may seem like some pretty weighty stuff because we give all kinds of meaning to everything such as events, interactions with people, remembrances of experiences – literally all kinds of things which come present during our day. BTW most of the negative meaning is absolutely useless and false, – some of the positive stuff too.
Have you ever heard the expression “Meaning Making Machine”? It is our mind that is the meaning making machine and do not believe it without pondering the stuff that shows up - because most of it isn’t very helpful or meaningful for that matter. This is probably why the expression came about that tells you to “Ignore the first things that come to mind”…
Ok, now that we have befuddled you somewhat – let’s get serious…
We Give Meaning to Everything
We suggest that since you do give meaning to literally all your experiences and your stories of them, usually without paying much attention to this point, we say let’s give truthful meaning to our beliefs and base the meaning on the evidence that we know matches reality.
Huh? You can do that! We call it measuring your results…
Measuring Can Help Us
The critics will say that when we measure our results with our CAM Awareness Scale, we get subjective measures – well …. yeah!!! No Kidding. We are not going to drill into your brain and implant a testing device to measure your responses of those neurons firing – we won’t have to in the future because you can just scan it with a smart scanner yourself and read your own numbers.
Until we get there, the subjective measure of 0 to 10 are very helpful. The more your track it, practice out with it, the better you get at it. You are the master here.
We invite you to review these ideas and concepts over for a while and see if they resonate with you.
We’ll leave you with one other thought about this language concept.
Measuring things produce predictability…
Personal Responsibility
You are responsible for who you are being (i.e. your actions define who you are being) and it shows up always in your language.
If you want to become more precise, more open, more available, more helpful, more connected, – it’s up to you to begin using language that produces the results we just described.
They exist in your beliefs, and the choices you make about them: more importantly, is that they live in how you speak of them.