The Language You Use

How do you speak to yourself?
 

Sunday musings...

As a student of mindset, and a student of linguistics,  and a student of humankind,  I continue to learn and experience the power of language.  Not just learning to speak, or write, or comprehend, but the POWER of language of the psyche of self.

What do you say to yourself?  How do you treat yourself through language?  Is it time to become more aware about how you speak to yourself?  What your patterns are?  What your loops are?  What's getting in your way?  What's causing anxiety or sabotage?  What's preventing you from the next?

I am not saying you need to delude yourself to motivate.   That language is not helpful either.  

We are often so focused on what we need to do next,  fatigued, disillusioned, what we need to do better,  what we aren't enough of,  and all that language, our self-talk,  may be the most defeating of all.  Our own language becomes our biggest rival, and our largest pitfall.

All is not lost!!

We have control over our language.  

Toni Morrison says it most eloquently: "Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge."

You have a choice.  You can decide how you speak.  What you speak.  When you speak.  The language you use is crucial to your mindset, your mental and psychological health,  your spiritual well-being,  your artistic health and nurturing.

Your language has the potential to be your success.

Your language has the potential to be your demise.

Speak to yourself with care;  with love;  with attention;  with compassion;  with passion;  with intention;  

Speak to create,  not to destruct;  speak to motivate,  not isolate;  speak to truth,  not obstruction;  speak to possibility,  not powerlessness.

Use the language with yourself, that you would use with your best friend.  Use it with authority, use it with energy,  use it with authenticity.  

You are enough.  You are more than enough.  You are a living, breathing human being with possibility.  

Create the language to develop momentum,  to allow permission to be where you are,  to live your life and your journey authentically and individually as you are.  AS. YOU. ARE.

If you even start with "yeah, but"  I am going to lodge one of my many, many stilettos in the middle of your forehead.  Trust me,  I have enough!

Yeah, but....yeah, but, what?  Yeah, but, you aren't enough?  Why?  Yeah, but, you shouldn't? Really?  Yeah, but,  all the things?  Fuck all the things.  What are those things to you?  What do they matter to your journey?

Release the self talk that does not serve you.  Quit apologizing for being precisely where you are.  Stop being potential,  and begin to claim the being of you.  

Too much?

No.

BE who you are;  how you are;  where you are;  

BE your language.  BE the language you use with yourself.

I will share with you a very, very personal anecdote with you here:  A number of years ago,  after I ranted about myself to my husband,  he let me finish,  and then said, very quietly and poignantly: "You realize that if I beat on you,  the way you beat on yourself through language,  I would be in jail."

Wow.  There it is.

My "a-ha" moment.  My pivotal moment.  My clarity of self-talk and time to pivot, step ball change. 

Language IS.

You ARE.

Both are vivid,  both have life, consequence, and motivation.  Both can be destructive, mutilating;  both can create and illuminate. 

It's a choice. YOUR choice. 

Allow yourself the respect,  the love,  the patience,  the courage  to speak authentically; to change the language when it begins to loop into the speak that doesn't serve you;  to challenge the self to pursue clarity and definition and not fall for the easy way out.  

What do you need?  Figure it out.  Speak to it.  Honor it.  Do it.

Action through language begins with you.  You have that kind of control.  It's immense, and it's magnificent!