Hey, welcome to Happy Productive 8 and today let’s talk about the WORDS we use.
Words have POWER. We can use them to our benefit or detriment but sometimes we don’t even realize how much the words we are using are actually hurting us.
In today’s episode we’ll talk about simple strategies to flip our words. When we change our words, we change our reality.
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WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
The words we use have power
When we change our words it changes our reality
A simple tool for flipping any negative word
When it’s okay to lie to our brains
FEATURED ON THE SHOW
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello hello and welcome to Happy Productive episode No. 8. And today we’re going to talk about the words that we use. I love that we’ve made it to eight episodes you guys! Eight is my lucky number. And I love eight because if you turn it on its side, it’s designed for infinity. So how cool is that? All right, so let’s talk about the words that we’re using every day in our lives. And why is this important? Because words have power. They have so much power and we can use that power to our benefit, or we can use it to our detriment. And the thing is that sometimes we don’t even realize that the words we’re using how much they’re actually hurting us.
So for example, let’s say that you’re sitting around and you’re using the words “I wish,” right? I wish I had a better body. I wish I made more money. I wish I had a better partner, whatever that wishes right? But what we’re really saying when we sit around going “I wish I wish I wish” is that “I haven’t got a chance in hell of this happening.” Wishing just says let’s sit around and feel sorry for ourselves Think about this for a second. You don’t say “I wish I could get up in the morning and brush my teeth” or “I wish I could take a shower every day, right?” We don’t say those things because we’re actually doing it. And so instead of saying “I wish I had a better body or I wish I was healthier or I wish my business ran better,” we can change our words and we could replace “I wish” with “I will.”
And feel the difference here. “I will eat a salad today.” “I will move my body and get some kind of exercise.” “I will hire a coach to help me in my business.” “I will improve a process that I know has been causing my business not to run the way that I wanted to run and will improve a process.” “I will implement.” Let’s say you need help with cash management, “I will implement the Profit First system into my business. Or “I will invest in myself and learn something new today.” And hey, because you’re listening to this, you totally are doing it, okay? And Doesn’t it feel good? When you’re like, “I will invest in myself.” “I will learn something new today.”
So this is where we can simply change the word wish to will. And it’s going to have a tremendous impact on our day. When we change our words, we start to change our reality. Because here’s the deal, everything that you say, your mind, takes it and creates a blueprint. And think of your brain, it’s the brains job to take that blueprint that you created, and then to make it real for you. And by making it real, it’s almost like our brains want to prove ourselves, right. So if we say something like, “I just can’t remember anything” or “as I am getting older, my memory is really going to crap.” Our minds are going to take you right there. They’re going to take you right there.
So instead of saying, “Oh, I can’t remember anything.” We want to change those words. And instead, we want to say things like, “My memory is awesome. I swear as I’m getting older, my memory is getting better. I read things and they really stick” or “I remember everything.” The words we use, we want to say whatever it is that we want to be true for us. So when you get up each day, and you find yourself saying things like, “I don’t have time” or “I’m going to get something wrong,” “I have to rush through my day,” “I’m going to make mistakes.” All of those things tend to be realized as we go through the day. And right now we know that we’re going through this Coronavirus, and it’s a bit crazy out there. And if you look into the world, you’re going to see a whole lot of fear and panic going on. And if you decide that you’re going to attach your thinking to that, it’s going to be realized in your own day. And this is where we want to begin to use our words to almost just say the opposite.
So for example, “yes, the world is crazy right now, but I choose to remain calm.” And think of how good that feels when you use those words, “I choose to remain calm, despite whatever craziness might be going on in the world.” Or “I’ve only got 10 minutes to prepare this presentation. But that’s awesome. Because it’s all the time I need.” Or “when I get up every day, I’ve only got 10 minutes to plan my day. But fantastic. That’s the perfect amount of time that I need.” And hopefully you can feel the difference in that. And this is what I mean by just using simple word hacks to bring more happiness into your day. It’s almost like playing a word game with yourself each and every day. Because you get the choice, you can either ruin your day with your words or not. And the truth is, you can come back from anything, because our minds believe anything that we tell them. So every day, we get to choose how we want to speak to ourselves.
And here’s the thing. We get to choose how we want to speak to ourselves. But we don’t get to choose what happens inside our bodies when we choose negative thinking. So think about this for a second, when we decide to be in that negative place and have terrible thinking and use negative words, there’s a lot of damage being done inside your body to yourselves with all of those increased stress hormones. But science has proved this over and over again that our bodies are just not as effective. Our cells don’t reproduce, they don’t make the proteins that we need when we are bombarded with all of those stress hormones. So we do get to choose if we’re going to be negative or positive. But if we choose negative, we don’t get to choose whatever is going on to ourselves and the damage that we’re doing to our bodies on the inside. So please keep that in mind.
So I would definitely want to challenge you to look at your words. When you get up every day. Are you expecting the worst? Or are you expecting amazing things? Think about saying that to yourself every day getting up in the morning, and “I expect amazing things to happen to me today. I expect the very best for myself. I expect love. I expect success. I expect to have an amazing life.” And if we expect those amazing things, they’re going to be realized so much faster, because we’re expecting it.
Now if you struggle with this, a quick little tool is to just simply take any negative thought that you have and flip it. So if you find yourself thinking I’m a failure, just flip that to “I’m spectacular!” You find yourself thinking “I’m frightened or I’m terrified.” Flip that to “I’m delighted.” You find yourself saying “I’m scared,” flip it to, “I’m excited.” There’s really not a whole lot of difference between the feelings of scared and excited. But excited is going to generate all of those good positive emotions and feelings that we’re after. Remember, the mind has a very clear job it wants to do whatever it thinks that you want from it. And it bases that on one thing, the words that you’re using. So you want to start this process of talking to your mind better each and every day.
And the beautiful part about this is that when you change your words, and the pictures that you have in your mind, it’s going to start to change things for you immediately. Now, especially right now we’ve got this global pandemic going on. It’s super easy to let fear just carry us away right on a river of negative emotion. But you don’t have to do this! We can flip it, we can do the opposite. So instead of thinking about all of the horrible things that might happen to your business, you could be saying, “It thrills me to have this extra time right now to work on my business,” or “I’m so excited to rethink all my processes.” “I’ve been wanting to have time to reevaluate my business model, and now I have that,” or “I’m so excited that I get a chance to step up as a leader right now.”
Guys, we need leaders! There’s a shortage of leaders right now, projecting calm into the world. And if that’s who you want to be right now you have a chance to step up and be a leader and project calm into the world. Maybe you’re just really tired. The pace of our lifestyles can be pretty extreme. And if you were thinking “Gosh, I just really would love some rest and now you’re getting it and things are slowing down. And maybe you don’t have to get up so early in the morning, maybe you’re not rushing kids around all over the place. And maybe you get some more quiet family time at home to just relax and be a human. So turn this into something that’s actually good for you so that you can feel gratitude, right?
We want to try to whatever it is that we want, we want to try to link massive pleasure to whatever it is that we want. And again, that just comes from flipping our words and finding the good side of them. So instead of moving towards fear or failure, and everything going wrong, right, we don’t want to do that. Instead, we want to move towards everything going right. Getting up every morning expecting something amazing, expecting things to go right. And getting up in the morning and looking at the words that we’re using and asking do these words reflect love and gratitude and peace and joy or something else?
One of my favorite word hacks is replacing, “what do I have to do today?” or “what should I do today?” Replacing have or should with the word get? Right? What do I get to do today? Do I get to be a mother to my children a father to my children again today? I mean, think about that there are parents that don’t get to be a parent to their child again today, but you do. Do you get to be a business owner? Is this business your dream and you get to be a business owner again today? Do you get to be a leader today? Do you get to take care of your body? Do you get to be alive? Do you get to go outside and breathe in fresh air and sunshine?
So it’s instead of drudgery, “What do I have to do today,” switching that one word. What do I get to do today? can really mean the difference in a positive happy, productive day, or not so much. All right, if we use the word If I have to go to work today, we could replace that with “what’s my contribution today?” “Who do I get to serve today?” “Who do I get to help today?” And if you can feel that difference in the words like, when I think of “who do I get to serve today?” And a question I always ask myself with my clients is, “how can I help make my clients dreams come true today?” And that always makes me feel so good. If I was like, “Oh gosh, who do I have to talk to you today?” That would not be a way to run the day and feel good about it right? But when I say “whose dreams do I get to help come true today” just really inspires me and motivates me and you can do the exact same thing with the words that you’re using.
So instead of “I’m so busy today,” we could replace busy with “how much happiness, right, can I produce today in my life?” So just take a look at the words that you’re using and flip them to your advantage. Now when you start doing this at first, I want to give you complete and total permission to lie to yourself! Yes, you heard me correctly to lie to yourself. Because when you first start doing it, it might kind of feel like a lie. But that’s okay. Just keep telling it to your brain and your brain will make it your truth.
I use this all the time when I’m on the treadmill, you guys or I go out for a run. And I don’t know what it is. But that first mile, mile and a half is so hard. I find my brain going “you shouldn’t really, you really don’t need to do this, or what were you thinking? Are you crazy?” And I literally use this these word hacks and I lie to myself and I say, “I love running. This feels so good. I love the feeling I get from running. I love it. I love it. I love it.” And sure enough, within a very short period of time I start feeling better and I always finished my run.
And so, I’m just going to give you total permission depending on whatever it is that you’re doing. Even if you are afraid right now with what’s going on in the world, that’s okay. Lie yourself in the beginning until you start to believe it. Everything will be okay. Trust in yourself. I love … whatever it is. “I love running.” Write whatever you need to tell yourself to reprogram your brain and your thinking by using your words.
Okay, you guys get out there and have fun with this. And if you enjoyed this lesson, I want to invite you to come and check out my coaching programs. You can find out more on my website, which is Jennifer Dawn Coaching all one word, jenniferdawncoaching.com. All right, you guys, that’s it. Have a Happy Productive day. Get out there and start flipping all those words to your advantage! Love you guys. We’ll talk again soon!
xo
Jennifer