The Power of Words to Change your outcomes

Words captivate me. For many years of my life it was from an intellectual perspective they fascinated me. Whether it was a crossword or other word games, or understanding where a word originated, I felt secure about my command of language and words.

In my role as a hypnotist words continue to play an important aspect in my life as they help other people overcome challenges or be a better self. The sentences I form using carefully chosen words now help to heal or aid change in others. So words are now important to me in the work I do.

There is only one thing more powerful than the spoken word heard by others… and those are the words you speak to yourself.

What words do you use to describe or talk about yourself? What words are you using to create your realities?

Remember, thoughts eventually become things, spoken words are thoughts. Are you creating your life wisely?

 

WHAT DO YOUR WORDS SAY ABOUT YOU?

If you had to describe yourself in a couple of sentences, what would you say about yourself?

Would you use words that are positive or neutral, or perhaps even negative and self-deprecating?

Interestingly, people too often talk about themselves as others have described them, or what others have ‘accused‘ them of being – in negative terms. When you’re told you ‘are‘ something long enough, you start to believe it.

Unfortunately, what many people are taught, or told as children, stick with them (negative appraisals, put downs and false accusations) and they carry them into their adult lives, never changing or challenging them. This then becomes their accepted realities as they continually speak the same negative words, or accept old outdated appraisals of themselves.

Today this thought process is known as ‘stinking thinking‘, which leads to low self-esteem and feeling insignificant!

Your life and achievement is all about your attitude and perception of yourself.

Way too many people adopt the ‘puppet‘ attitude in that they believe they’re being controlled by some supreme puppeteer who continually yanks on their strings, or tells them what to do or what they should say. This often times is related to the experiences of the past that people carry with them in the present, leading them to the future.

You are and become your “I am!”

Everyone carries around with them an inner voice.

When you’re awake, your self-talk is often of a conscious nature, but there is also unconscious self-talk which at times takes over, or reminds your conscious mind of something that happened in the past, and which now makes you dwell on it in the present moment.

Too often it’s the negative memories people focus on, as it’s been said negative memories take up more space – not surprising as it comes with more baggage! When you sleep, your mind shifts from an active state (conscious) to a passive state (unconscious), and your ‘self-talk‘ then becomes one of being in a state of overdrive – your unconscious mind does all the talking for you in the form of dreams.

What is important is your conscious self-talk often filters through and becomes your unconscious self-talk. When this happens, often times you ‘literally‘ speak without putting in much thought.

Have you ever found yourself saying something, only to ask yourself seconds later, “Hmmm, why did I just say that?”

Many people carry around with them negative self-talk because they spend too much time focusing on it, and dredging up reminders from negative experiences from their past. Furthermore, so much of this negativity is a by-product of having low self-esteem, and if that’s not enough, it further contributes to them developing lower self-esteem.

You see, when you pattern your unconscious mind to think negatively, it’ll allow your mind (conscious mind) to function on autopilot and feed you with the negativity you’ve become accustomed too.

Whether right or wrong, your unconscious mind doesn’t care; it only validates what you’re thinking about most often.

When you don’t shift your conscious mind to think and say things that are different, your unconscious mind will automatically assume you want more of the same – recurring negative thought patterns to focus your attention on.

A lot of people get used to functioning in the negative rather than focusing on the positive because to do the alternative would mean they’d have to work at shifting their mind set. Shifting your mindset means you have to do some work and even doing this kind of “work” for monitoring your self-talk might appear to be too cumbersome for most.

This focus on negative self-talk is the seed for many of the excuses we make to not change. You get comfortable living with the reasons why you can’t do something. But the fact is “you can” it’s just work and well… excuses are easier and keep you in your “comfort zone” even if your self-talk “excuse” is detrimental to your health and well-being.

So when you say something and wonder why the heck you said it, especially since you really didn’t want to, you can attribute it to your past and unchallenged unconscious mental scripts.

 

GREAT WORDS COME FROM GREAT MINDS:

Have you ever listened to someone speak and wish that you could not only speak like they do, but live the same way they live based on their expressed words?

There have been great orators who went on to become great leaders because their words had the ability to influence people into believing in them.

The reason they were able to speak such powerfully positive words was that inside of them this is who they believed they were, and this came out in the power of their words.

Abe Lincoln was able to capture the attention of Americans, especially Black Americans and make them believe they were equal, even though they had come through generations of slavery.

Martin Luther King Jr. did likewise when he shared that, “I have a dream!”

Both men inspired people who suffered to not only believe in themselves, but asked and inspired other people to believe in them. It worked! These two men single-handedly, as a result of their words, were able to get others to believe. It only worked because deep down people believed in themselves, but just needed their ‘inner spirits‘ to become awakened, and their unconscious minds to come up with new positive scripts for thinking about themselves, their importance, and their place in the world.

The great author James Allen who wrote the landmark bestselling book “As a Man Thinketh“, describes the state and power of words that people express not only outwardly, but within their minds.

James put it best when he asserted that, “A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

What it means basically is your thoughts are actually words, unspoken verbally most times, but they’re still spoken if even silently all the same because you thought them into existence. What are your current thoughts saying about you?

Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) is a study of communication that occurs with the self, and also what people project outwardly based on their patterns of thought. NLP looks at how you communicate with others on a daily basis, as well as processing the communicative information for yourself.

You see, people communicate two ways, both verbally and non-verbally.

Verbal communication refers to speaking and listening, while non-verbal communication refers to reading body language and the context through which words are spoken. Over a period of time, we communicate out of habit whether it’s positive or negative. We function on ‘autopilot‘.

NLP helps people to understand the mental aspect of their behaviors through better understanding their thinking patterns (how and why they think the way they do). Your thoughts and perceptions lead to your cognitions (thoughts).

The ultimate goal of NLP is to change irrational people’s destructive thinking, while modifying and enhancing positive and productive cognitions.

In a nutshell, you learn to speak positive words about yourself and others.

NLP teaches and encourages self-control whereby you can recreate your perceptions on how you see things, as well as the perception you have of yourself. Once you begin to do this not only do you start to see life differently, but you also live differently. You can become the ‘you‘ you want to become.

The key premise is that, the ‘you‘ you’ve always wanted to become already exists within you, it’s just dormant. NLP teaches people how to get the person they want to be out into ‘the real world.’

Many hypnotherapists use the techniques of NLP in their work with clients.

 

CHANGING YOUR THOUGHTS TO CHANGE YOUR WORDS:

If you change your thoughts, then you’ll change the words you speak.

It all starts with modifying and/or managing your thoughts and self-talk. If you want to change the way you think then you can achieve this in two basic ways. Interestingly, once you engage in either of these methods, it will also redefine and create how NLP is working in your mind/brain.

The two different approaches you can take to change or modify your self-talk are self-monitoring and hypnosis.

The first method involves monitoring your moment to moment thoughts. You need to identify what you’re telling yourself is negative, and figure out why you’re telling yourself these things. Your goal is to identify the negative thought first and then to figure out why you’re doing it.

There is some reason you’re doing it.

Perhaps you believe it’s the truth about you. Maybe it’s just a lazy thinking pattern disguised as an excuse which you got caught in and now need to get rid of it. Once you’ve identified it and answered the “why“, the next question is “What?“…What are you willing to do to change it?

If you don’t like the negative thinking, then you know you need to change it.

This means each time you think a negative thought, you immediately identify it and replace it with something positive. The easiest thing to do sometimes is to quickly think about a vivid past memory that makes you feel good. What this does is instantly stop the negative thought pattern. It’s called pattern interrupt. See my post about pattern interrupts here >>>

Don’t dwell on the negative thought; rather just shift your mindset to something positive, even if it’s a happy memory or thinking about something you really like to do.

My choice for the best and efficient method is hypnosis for replacing negative self-talk with positive self-talk.

In the past your unconscious would identify a negative thought and give you other corresponding negative thought patterns and feelings to compliment and reinforce it. You’d get caught up in old ways of thinking that’d lead you to destructive thinking when speaking of yourself or others.

Using post-hypnotic suggestions whenever you get the negative thought, your unconscious mind immediately identifies it and then replaces it with a positive self-talk… one placed in your unconscious mind during hypnosis. These suggestions for example of common in my smoking cessation programs as I find smokers are quick to slip back into their old thought mindset that slips them back into smoking.

In essence, new neural pathways are created and bypass the old ones which fizzle out with their inability to be eventually recalled.

Hypnosis can be put to great use in helping you put positive thoughts forward… fast.

When referring to ‘positive‘ thoughts, these are the ones that focus on what you really want. Remember, thoughts become things! Your spoken and/or unspoken words have the ability to create, destroy or keep things at status quo. It’s up to you to determine if you truly want lasting change.

The goal is to create a new mindset or appreciation for the way you’ll think about things.

Hypnosis can help you to replace the old, lazy mindset which basically used to operate on autopilot and which kept you where you were at – in a status quo holding pattern.

Hypnosis will help you to create thoughts and words which get you excited and stimulate your intrinsic self to not only make changes, but keep you saying good things about yourself and others.

If discovering more about self-hypnosis interests you then check out my group FREE Self-Hypnosis workshop I offer here >>>. Or if you want to consider working directly with me through my online or in-office sessions then check out my Special Hypnosis Services Programs.

I hope my words here have given you some impetus to change and use them to be more kind and compassionate to yourself. Ask any happy person what makes them happy and it will quickly turn into a discussion about how they feel about themselves. How they feel is controlled by the words of their thoughts in the moment.

As you control your thoughts, then you also control how you feel with the words you say to yourself. After all – garbage talk in… garbage talk out. It’s time to throw the garbage out.

Let me know how I can help.

 

FURTHER READINGS FOR POWER OF WORDS:

As a Man Thinketh – Public Domain Free Download

Importance of Keeping Your Word

Pattern Interrupt – Breaking the Habit

Stop Smoking Hypnosis Session – What to Expect for Success >>>

Library of Self-Hypnosis Downloads Products >>>

 
Erika Slater CH
Director
Free At Last Hypnosis