Your words, your choice.

There's a saying in the theater world when someone decides to expand their ways of making money beyond theater and waiting tables.  "He/she's leaving the business."

It's a completely silly saying, filled with quite a bit of subtext and unspoken judgement.  Said in a similar tone to such things as, "oh, they're separated", or "he passed away last year".  In any other profession, you would just say, "so-and-so is moving on to such-and-such".  It's described as a way of expanding one's way of generating income, or moving to a more burgeoning field, not a terminal disease.

In our culture, you often hear people saying things they don't mean to say, repeating an exclamation they've heard someone else say over and over again.  It's been adopted, assimilated into their pattern.  Things like, "oh my God", "that sucks", or "I can't afford that".  When you say and think things over and over again, they come true.  Self-fulfilling prophecy, man.  You start to believe your own story, forever written by the words you choose.

The good news is this - you have a choice, in this moment, to use new words.  Find new language right now for expressing yourself in a neutral and positive way.  Replace old habits, old sayings, with new ones.  Once you start talking, speaking, writing in this more upbeat tone, you'll notice profound differences in your life.  There's power in mimicry; even if you fake it til it's true, it still affects you.

Simply making the choice to use the words "fantastic", "excellent", "wonderful" in your daily speech will alter the way you experience the world.  The more words you have to describe things, the more polychromatic your world becomes.

 And if you can't find better ways of saying something?  There's always my favorite response to anything - silence, open and listening for what's coming next.

Oh, and those people who say you're "leaving the business"?  Don't listen to them.  You're on the right path for you, whatever it may be.  You will always have all the skills you ever acquired, within you.  Learning new things, experiencing new industries only helps you to understand everything else from a different angle.

Relax.  Breathe.  Smile.