What determines the quality of your life?
Posted by Wendy Jacobs in Jul, 2013
Here is Part 2 of last weeks Blog, enjoy 🙂
The quality of your life is the quality of your emotions that is it. It is not how much money you have, or where you live, what you know, where you have been, what you have achieved, or anything else you might think. The quality of your life is the direct reflection of the quality of your emotions. And the quality of your emotions is the interaction of only three things which we started talking about last week,
- a pattern of physiology,
- a pattern of language, and
- a pattern of focus.
Today let’s briefly acknowledge language, Language gives meaning to our experience. If we want to change the meaning of something change the language you use to describe that thing.
Your language has the power to limit you or free you.
The language you attach to an experience becomes the experience.
Let me share a brief story, Jamie came to my office because she was struggling in her relationship and was considering leaving her husband. She would often use strong emotive language to describe the last 10 years of their relationship and she would often refer to him by names I am unable to publish here. After listening to Jamie for some time, I was beginning to feel angry and resentful at her husband too. He was selfish, thoughtless, irresponsible, and unreliable and self- centred, just to name a few characteristics. And the more Jamie spoke about him the more angry and bitter she became. I asked her if she remembered what attracted her to her husband in the first place and how she used to describe him back then, she shared words like thoughtful, kind, generous, loving and patient. I encouraged her to share some stories that highlighted these qualities, and she did…I started to like this guy. Jamie was able to not only influence herself but also influence me by the words she was using to communicate her problems. These descriptions may have been accurate but they did not provide her with any solutions to her problem instead they left her feeling angry, bitter and overwhelmed. I suggested to Jamie that in order to get her into a state that will best assist her in making important decisions, she will need to cut a few of the habitual emotive words from her vocabulary. She looked at me a little confused but agreed. I explained how every word has a biochemical influence, which simply means that just by using certain words we can influence how we feel. The problem with is that many people have a vocabulary that makes them feel lousy. This exercise was not designed to minimise her husband’s behaviour or her marital problems but rather an exercise to improve the way she was feeling. To put her in a resourceful state to better manage her challenges.
You see many of us get into habits of using language that is downright destructive and harmful to our happiness. Many times this is done thoughtlessly. Today’s blog is a brief reminder of how our words have power, the power to hurt, the power to heal, the power to imprison and the power to free. Take a minute to think of the words you habitually use, list and remove the 3 most destructive words out of your vocabulary today, and notice how it changes the way you feel. Now choose one ridiculously outrageous, out of character word to add to you vocabulary this week, I recently swapped the word serious to cereal, it still makes me laugh today, and reminds me not to take anything too seriously. Oh and Jamie was asked to refer to her husband as “my Prince’ just for one week, she rolled her eyes at this suggestion but agreed, the next week Jamie was in a very different state when she came back and shared what had happened. The angry bitter feelings had started to disappear. Remember you only truly learn by doing, so don’t just take my word for it, do it and please share your experience.
Lots of Love,
Wendy