What Are Words For
🎼 What are words for when no one listens it’s no use talkin at all~ Missing Persons, circa 1982⚡️🎸
Words can INSPIRE. And words can DESTROY. Only YOU can choose how you want to use them. The words we speak or write to others can leave a huge impact and create a lasting memory, good or bad, so it’s imperative to choose them wisely.🙌🏻
Words can make or break a relationship, a marriage, a home. Your choice of words and the way you express yourself can speed up or put a halt to your career. “Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble.”~Yehuda Berg
I have learned to ‘Tame My Tongue” by using the following four Confetti coaching strategies 🎉🔸🔹🔺 as a guide to create awareness. At the same time, I am by no means a master at any of this, just a life student trying to continue learning, reinventing, understanding, changing and growing. Here we go:
Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood. 🔹🔺🔸 At my former job, we were trained on Stephen R.Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you are not familiar with these habits, please read them, learn them and indoctrinate them into your daily life. This particular “Habit 5” was the one that I really needed to learn because it had everything to do with LISTENING. Listening with the intent to LISTEN, not with the intent to REPLY. Boom….game changer. We all want to get our point across, right? But in doing so we ignore the other person’s words completely, selectively hearing only certain parts of the conversation but concentrating on our reply. We are so busy listening to ourself and preparing in our mind what we are going to say that we aren’t really fully listening. I try to remind myself of this daily and in doing so it has improved my relationships and my communication skills immensely. I have learned to Talk Less and Say More!
Tone and Body Language Matter. 🔹🔺🔸 Not only do our words matter, but also the tone and body language we use makes a huge impact. Try to be mindful of not using words to manipulate others, or to insult or belittle anyone. Try to speak the truth, and be consistent in what you are saying. Speak in a loving way. We must speak in a manner that conveys respect, humility, kindness, and gentleness. Work on aligning our words with our voice inflection, mannerisms and eye/facial expressions.
Maturity helps. 🔸🔻🔹 The older I get, the more crystal clear it becomes….the loveliest signs of a moral life is right speech. Perfecting our speech is a sure sign of maturity. We are old enough to understand that before speaking we should take a few minutes to contemplate WHAT we will say and HOW we will say it; at the same time considering the impact our speech will have on our listeners.
Pause Before We Pounce. 🔺🔹🔸 So many of us are compelled to randomly DUMP the contents of our minds onto others without regard to the significance of what we are saying. Many people have no filter and give voice to any passing thought, feeling, impression, or opinion they may have. This is when we enter the gossip and unkind zones and let our mouths run wild and free. So much time, emotion, and attention are wasted on all of this.
Words have POWER. Let’s NOT use them to divide, attack, or insult, but to unite, encourage and inspire.
“The tongue has no bones, but it is strong enough to break a heart. So be careful with your words.” ~unknown
