Our Words Create Worlds

Here’s the summary of this entire post: Our words matter. Choose them intentionally.

The words we speak, the words we think, the words we feel - they matter. In each moment of our lives we have the opportunity to choose: speak and think our words intentionally, or repeat the words we’ve inherited.

We tend to think of our words as describing. But our words aren't simply describing - they're creating.

When we speak, we’re creating a world for the person listening to us. And the world we create is contagious.

We complain about a colleague, and the person listening will likely inherit at least some part of our contagious complaint (the ideas of it and/or the energy of it).

A rainy day. Is it dreary? Is it gross? Is it ugly? Is it cozy? Is it refreshing? Is it beautiful? Is it life-giving?

We think our words are describing! They’re not merely describing, they’re creating. 

Do you want more proof of this? Go talk to someone about something that really frustrates you. Feel the energy of your frustration flare up like a fire in a draft! Notice how the other person has their own emotional and energetic response to what you're sharing.

Our language carries with it an energy that we can feel. Speak these two sentences out loud and see if you can feel the difference:

I want to be healthy, but I don’t want to exercise.

vs 

I want to be healthy, and I don’t want to exercise.

Can you feel that difference? If you can’t, say them again - out loud. Even if it’s subtle, It feels more powerful to say AND. 

BUT uses the second part of the sentence to negate the first part - BUT diminishes what comes before the BUT and emphasizes what comes after it. AND makes room for both, validates both, and leaves room for possibility. BUT shuts down possibility in a case like this, where AND leaves room for it.

Here’s another one:

I want to be healthy.

vs

I commit to being healthy.

Try saying those two sentences out loud. Which one feels more powerful?

I’m more interested in impactful. Practical. Powerful. Freeing. Accurate. Insightful. 

This is not theory! I know much of this blog reads as philosophy. I do love philosophy. Please, though, hear this: I only write about what I've tested, felt, witnessed, or used in transformational experiences for myself and others. 

We, as conscious beings, literally are the space of infinite possibility inside of which all experience and all perceptions and all feelings arise. Yes, we build up gunk in our minds, bodies, hearts, souls, and relationships over the years, but we also have self-cleaning features built into us to clean those messes up and to create gold and gems from them.

We aren’t victims to the language of our minds, mouths, families, and cultures. We are agents of our words. Our words do in fact create worlds, and I am committed to being intentional with the words I place into the sacred space of my mind, body, heart, soul, and relationships.

Our words matter. Choose them intentionally.

Much Love. ❤️

Losing the Video Game, Winning Myself

This is my 300th post on this blog! 4 years and 10 months. More than 600 hours of writing.

Thank you for reading it. ❤️

Tonight, I could write post upon post about the depth of truth and wisdom heard in each conversation with a client, each intentional conversation with a friend or student, and each moment of conscious living in my life. I could write about the beauty and the grace and the miracle it is to be alive at all, let alone in an age of such luxury for more of humanity than has ever been true before.

And yet inspiration for tonight’s post actually comes from a video game about Harry Potter’s Wizarding World. Yes, I am in fact writing about a video game based on a fictional world, and I invite you to find the thing in your life that you can relate to this experience. Each of the 300 posts of this blog, after all, are written for you and your life. ❤️

I bought a video game about Hogwarts (Harry Potter’s school for magic) a couple months ago. I play the game for a half hour or so every few days, and for the last week and a half I’ve been stuck on one particular magical battle in the game.

Last week as I lost again and again for a half hour straight, I got very frustrated. It can’t be healthy to get that frustrated, and it’s over a video game at that! I didn't sleep well that night, and I totally blamed the game for it.

Afterward, I considered a couple options to avoid that frustration. I could stop playing the game, or I could cheat and skip that part. But I didn’t make any decisions about it. I just allowed my frustration and my thinking about it to dissipate.

Tonight I sat down again to play, and when I lost the first battle, that familiar frustration began to rise up within me…and it was as if I was struck by a lightning bolt of insight: the game wasn’t the source of my frustration. The frustration was arising from within me. 

At that moment the game became free - it was unlinked from my frustration. There was the game over there, and my frustration over here with me.

(Imagine the gift it is to the people in our lives when we unlink them from our frustration...)

I could so easily see right then many different moments just like it when I was a kid and stuck at a frustrating moment in other games. 

The age of that frustration is young - like 9 years old at the oldest. 

I kept playing the game after that insight, allowing myself to grow in mastery of the techniques of the game while relaxing and calming my inner feelings about it. There was the outer game of mastering Hogwarts, and then there was the inner game of mastering my emotional reactions to that outer game. 

And that’s how Hogwarts Legacy became a powerful life teacher for me tonight.

For 300 posts, isn’t this exactly how this blog has read? Something happens, we react to it, and then freedom is accessed in part by separating "what happened" from our inner reaction to it. 

The birthplace of frustration is still there within me, and it flares up and barks with my voice sometimes. And it’s the same frustration of that 9 year old playing video games, and the 10 year old who didn’t want to walk the dog when I was told to, and the 12 year old whose friends weren’t listening on the playground, and the 26 year old whose classroom of students wasn’t behaving as they should. 

And in each of those examples, true freedom wasn’t found in firing my frustration at others or my circumstances. It has only ever been found by owning what’s mine and letting others be as they are. 

There are many ways to do that, and it’s a miracle every single time.

Much Love. ❤️

Sympathy Is the Booby Prize

Booby Prize: “a prize given as a joke to the last-place finisher in a race or competition.”

What I’m writing here is not the truth - it’s a possibility. If it resonates, use it. If it doesn’t, ignore it.

Sympathy is a connector between humans. It can be powerful and healing. 

However, we often seek sympathy as an end in itself, and this usually doesn’t serve us or what we’re committed to.

When we’re being a victim to life, we’re seeking sympathy as a end. Many of us do this in conversations about: 

• politics

• the weather 

• our past experiences or decisions

• other people’s attitudes

• our boss

• our schedule

• our health

• our emotions

• our thinking, stories, and judgments

Being a victim to life might win us sympathy, but it doesn’t win us a great life.

Sympathy is the booby prize. 

I had a conversation with a student a few years back. He was sharing how he just can’t honor the diet and routine he set up for himself. 

I said to him, “I’m not saying that you should honor the diet and routine. I’m just asking you to tell yourself the truth about it: it’s not that you can’t do it, it’s that you won’t.”

He got a bit annoyed with me. I wasn't giving him the sympathy that he was looking for. Instead, I was honoring his powerful possibility of being healthy.

The next day in school, however, he was in a completely different state of mind and being from our conversation. He got it - the distinction between:

“Communicating to get sympathy” vs. “Communicating to create meaningful impact”

“Being a victim of circumstance” vs. “Being an owner of the spirit”

“Being a spectator complaining from the stands” vs. “Being on the court making a difference”

“Being at the effect” vs. “Being at cause in the matter”

“Life is happening to me” vs. “Life is happening for me”

Throughout the Mind Mastery Experience, we keep a running list of “Victim Language” vs. “Owner Language.” It’s amazing how much of our thinking and speaking is from being a victim, and how empowering it is just to speak accurately as an owner.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with living from victim language! It’s simply selling ourselves short and giving up the possibility of living our best life for the booby prize of sympathy.

Much Love. ❤️