Live Your Life in Language

How do you relate to yourself and others? What do you have in common with the voice in your head and the messages you speak?

It’s language. Some say that ultimately, words are everything. Call it communication, conversation, or articulation—your expression of life lives in language. I say you are your words, and the vocabulary of your life is up to you. You get to choose your view of the world with the internal words you select—you are what you think about most of the time as even your thoughts are expressed in language. When you understand that adversity is inevitable but fear is optional (as is the drama of unnecessary and self-induced suffering), you see freedom of choice as your own personal power…expressed in language. Do you mainly think about what you don’t have and can’t do? More importantly, do you continually tell others what’s going wrong and not working out?

If this is so, you may experience life as unfair and even cruel. You bounce from saintliness to martyrdom to what I call “victimhood.” When real challenges come up, you’re already beaten down because of your internal language. Some form of anger, denial, or sadness flows out of you, hangs over you, and haunts those around you.

The language in your life is not serving you. In some ways, this language is self-induced, and it can be strangely comfortable to complain and rail against the universe. Everybody does it, don’t they?

Yes, they do—and this is an area of your life in which it is best not to fit in, to go along, and to blend in so that you can be miserable along with everyone else. I’m pleading for your awareness. See that you are too precious to throw away your own unique qualities with unexamined self-talk and chitchat. Consider the challenge of the world trying to “change” you when being yourself is the real gift, the real achievement in life. Accomplishing what others see as impossible, if only in your language, can give real satisfaction.

You could say (and therefore think or believe) that a glass is half empty, or that it is half full. I’m suggesting that it is both. For example, one person might declare, “it’s a beautiful day,” when another, with the same day in front of her, says, “yeah, but it might rain.” Choose your words carefully—this is your life we’re talking about.

When you expect a mess, you get one. However, putting possibility into your language gives you possibility. It’s like starting the day with “good morning, Lord” instead of “Oh, Lord, it’s morning.” By declaring your life as rich, it becomes so…and you declare it with language.

Certainly, you will have challenges and obstacles ahead. Your intentions may be thoughtful, yet thwarted. Use the power of language to create what you can do and may have. The quality of your life arises from your language, so make language serve you. External problems are resolved with your internal emotions—be passionately productive for your profitability. Pablo Picasso was reported to have said, “I’m always doing things I can’t do; that’s how I get to do them.”

Let’s apply this by declaring the following out loud. Yes, read these statements aloud—use language!

“I choose my words to create what I want in life.”
“I am accountable for what I tell myself and others.”
“I am capable of shaping my environment to serve others, which serves me.”
“I am committed to the language of positive possibility.”

Start now to examine your choices, freely made, in the context of the language you use…and don’t use. By being aware of what you say, you will deepen your understanding of the power that is yours for the taking.

It’s a great way to improve your life, because language is life.

** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life”, visit http://www.selfgrowth.com/greatways2.html.