Watch your words

A student came into the place I work this week. Once we recognized each other, she had a story to tell me.
"My knees had been bothering me for some time. It's funny, after going to the doctor, I found out yoga is the worst thing for me."
To which I replied, "That seems strange. You mean to tell me conscious breathing linked to movement, or yoga, is bad for you? Perhaps you mean certain poses are not right for the health of your knees right now."
"No, no. You don't understand. My doctor said yoga is bad for me. I won't go to class any more, but I'm here because I still want to wear the clothes."

Your words create your world. Whatever you habitually write, speak, and think constrains your perception of reality. In effect, you are hypnotizing yourself with every word you speak, and to every word you listen.

I first began to understand the power of words many summers ago reading the book "Frogs into Princes" by Bandler and Grinder. The book is a transcript of a three day master class on NLP, or Neuro Linguistic Programming. This field is interested in how words are interpreted by the brain, and how we can use that information to open a person's mind to understand more of its resources.

For instance: imagine Marty McFly from Back to the Future. Any time someone calls him a chicken, he must fight back. Just like a computer program, if this, then that. This is his pattern, his samskara. He is stuck in this lane of thinking where fighting is the only choice when called a chicken. A NLP coach would ask his subconscious to create other possible choices the next time this situation occurs. Then he could choose from 2-3 other actions to take when called a chicken: shrug it off, walk away, or call for backup. Or, if a person is stuck in the way of thinking, "my doctor says yoga is bad for me", you could coach them into understanding, "these select poses done in this way will cause my knees to give me pain. I can listen to my body and modify or omit those poses as I practice".

If this sounds like hypnosis to you, you would be correct. NLP posits that we are literally hypnotizing ourselves with the words to which we choose to listen. That means we are constantly accepting suggestions about what our reality is from: the radio, the TV, books, facebook, email, advertising, and most of all by the words our friends and family speak (our social bubble).

Don't take my word for it. Do an experiment.

First, write a page of words describing how you feel about your health, your personal, and your career lives. This is our control reading.

Then, for the next 7 days, follow these guidelines:

1) When you have nothing kind or constructive to say, say nothing.
2) Eliminate dualistic words from your everyday speech. Good and bad do not really exist. There is only more effective and less effective. Even this is still subjective, but most people I've surveyed have less emotional attachments to the word "effective".
3) Choose the things to which you listen carefully. Words set to music are interpreted by deeper parts of the brain than spoken word, making them more powerful.
4) Spend 15 minutes a day in complete silence.

Now, write another page of words describing how you feel about your health, your personal, and your career lives. This is the experimental reading. Compare both pages.

If that's too big of a commitment for you, try this bite-sized version:
Listen carefully to the words you speak, and others speak. Notice if you make requests in the positive, "Please remember to do X", or the negative, "Don't forget to do X." Reflect on the effectiveness of both. Which statement makes it more likely you will complete the task?

More brain food next week.

P.S.- Let me know how your results.