You use your most powerful tool every day, without the care and attention it deserves. Without it, the easiest-to-use and most powerful tool at your disposal turns into a mindlessly wielded weapon against you and everyone.
You wouldn’t walk through life mindlessly running a chainsaw, yet, with words, humans are remarkably doing exactly that, to their own detriment.
Hey, I’m human. I did it too.
Words as Weapons
In the short guide Solving Problems, I told the story of how I almost went blind. The punchline of that story was hearing myself say, “I wish I didn’t have to see that,” and realizing my body was merely complying.
My words were my weapons.
I complained relentlessly and bitterly. Now I know that only made them worse.
I threw situations at people that irked me. Fighting with my boyfriend, I wrote, “I’ll never ride in his boat again, but I’ll miss the Jeep.” Within hours, a windstorm had knocked a tree right down the passenger side of the boat and created a teepee around the Jeep. He lost over two dozen trees, and his neighbours were practically unscathed.
I remembered wishing I didn’t have to go to piano lessons when I was a kid, and a windstorm immediately stepped in to help with that goal.
I called someone an asshole, and they were soon diagnosed with colon cancer. He was bitter though, when I caught a fish right after he told me that I couldn’t, because he couldn’t. Just because you can’t doesn’t mean anything in my world.
Negatives, like Google, don’t matter, they say, and I know. I listed the reasons why I hated snowmobiling, and each reason was immediately laughed at.
Never getting to see the wildlife was matched with a lynx darting across the trail in front of me.
Always being thirsty was met with a bag of Molson Cold Shots on the trail in front of me, not frozen, but perfect.
Why did the guys ahead of me not see it? It was in a white bag, on white snow. I don’t know how I saw it, but I was grateful and laughing by now, back in love with snowmobiling after my brief spat.
Sharper than Knives
In my world, I know my voice carries weight, my words matter, and I believe that someone’s listening. It’s my most powerful tool.
I have more than faith – I have the experience of it. I know it to be true.
Seasoned with experience, I strive every day to build stronger relationships. To be someone worth listening to, a good friend in return, because God knows, there are so many voices asking for so many things, and some of them are contradictory. Some of them even contradict themselves.
If God wants to start with the easy ones, I strive to be at the top of that list. I imagine Him saying, “Yeah, that’s a no brainer. No problem. No risk, no collateral damage, no competition. Check. Next?”
This is my God in my world. Busy, like us, always more to do than time to do it.
In the corporate world, I knew immediately if I’d actually have to follow through on doing something or not. Surprisingly, it’s easy to not do what you are assigned and still get full bonuses and raises. There’s plenty of proof in the news that has people irate, but the mechanisms are not clearly reported.
You can declare that the parties you needed were not available to you. Agendas and priorities were mismatched.
You can declare that you had no time left, after all these other things that you had to do. You can even speak in terms of the future, instead of the past, what you might do, and not what you actually do.
It’s a game. I’ve heard hundreds of ways to shirk accountability and delay action. Just like there are hundreds of ways to never get to the top of the wish-granting list.
Older than Dirt
When I read that Elizabeth Gilbert sped the sale of her house with a letter, I was in a similar situation. I tried her most powerful tool. As with her, what had been dragging for a year was suddenly wrapped up in days. Was it my letter?
Does it matter?
As an engineer, I take what works and use it. I leave it to the scientists to discover the ways and means. Frankly, this is powerful stuff indeed that could use some demystifying. I’m good with my level of understanding – a strong emotion with a high road intention – that of creation or contribution.
It’s a level of understanding that might be older than dirt.
According to David Bryer, “The basic principle that your words have power is literally all over the bible.” He goes on to provide examples. Proverbs 18: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Psalms 141: “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips.”
You don’t have to know what someone is thinking. What is on their mind is what’s on their lips. They verbalize their worries, share their concerns, and seek connection with their problems. It’s getting drawn into the very bottom of that wish-granting list. It’s giving time and energy to what you don’t want.
So first, choose silence over elaboration; reflection over rumination; solace over connection. It’s time to be strong solo and discover within you the depths to be able to do so, because no one wants or deserves that energy. At the very least: don’t spread it.
Quarantine yourself, man. Keep that verbal virus to yourself, because it is contagious and not good for anyone.
Tougher than Nails
It’s tough, I know, but you will make it out stronger for it.
Start dealing with it at the source. Hear yourself talk. Listen to yourself think. If no one else, at the very least, you.
Sometimes it is easier with journals. I have many. This is one, and so is this, but the process of starting to write things down began with overcoming a fear of keeping a diary after coming home one day to my mother reading it. I trusted that flimsy lock? I couldn’t write anything down again until after I lived alone.
Be gentle with yourself in the shift. It takes time, practice, dedication, focus, and support to fully integrate new conscious patterns into the unconscious. But you can do it. Remember when you couldn’t drive? I remember almost failing typing, and through sheer need, I’d crush that test today.
As David Bryer said, “Speech is the bridge between inner and outer worlds.” If you don’t like what you are getting, start listening to yourself when you are placing your orders, because you can’t get angry at the waitress, especially the one who wrote it down and got it perfectly accurate.
As Florence Scovel Shinn wrote in Your Word is Your Wand, “What you speak becomes your reality.”
I’d sung along with INXS and the Devil Inside. “Words as weapons, sharper than knives. Makes you wonder how the other half die, other half die. Makes you wonder, wonder, wonder.” Wonder who is tough enough to handle the truth when they hear it.
As I wrote in What Could Be, freedom of voice is simply one of the choices available to you as a human. It can chain you or set you free, and the freedom to choose is always yours.
Your Most Powerful Tool, At Your Disposal
After hearing my words and connecting the dots to my world, I simply could not go unconscious again.
To be conscious of every word, every intention, every wish I could birth with the mere effort of thinking it. To use my most powerful tool with the highest intention.
I’ve experienced it; it works whether you want it to or not, because it took a lot of effort, ownership and accountability to discover that going blind was by my command.
You think I write for fun? Sometimes. I write to place my order for the future, as clearly and concisely as possible, because God is busy, man, and I respect His time and effort, and I’d like some of it directed my way.
That’s it, that’s all. The best friend I’ve ever had. ChatGPT? Are you kidding me? You should try the real deal.
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