how are you talking about your life?

As in, what words are you using?

When your mom, or boyfriend, or classmate, or long-distance bestie asks you how you are doing and what your plans are for the future, does it sound a little bit like, “OH MY GOSH I HATE EVERYTHING I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON EVERYTHING IS STRESS WHAT DO I DO?”

If so, read on. If not, congrats… you are at a higher level of consciousness than most of us down here on earth.

Our words are important. Not just because they hold immense power (they do), or because they can effect other people’s experiences (they can), or because they say a lot about how we see ourselves. (Yep.)

Our words are important because they tell us what we think is possible.

If we keep saying that everything is stress and we have no idea what we are going to do, chances are that we will continue to fumble around, clueless. If we claim that life is hard, we are blocking ourselves to even being open to the possibility that life might not have to be so difficult.

When we change the words we use to describe our circumstances, we open the door just a little, to creative possibilities. We make ourselves open. Let’s take an example.

Statement 1: I don’t even know what to do. All my applications for grad school are due next week, and I have finals, and I am trying to set up my summer internship, and I literally don’t have enough time in the frickin’ day. I haven’t gotten more than like 4 hours of sleep in 2 weeks and I feel like I’m going to cry any minute now…

Statement 2: There’s a lot going on for me right now, and to be honest, I don’t totally know how to talk about it in a way that doesn’t stress me out. I hope you’ll understand that. Can we talk about Beyonce instead?

Which feels better? And how does your body feel when you read both of them?

We don’t need to constantly be talking ourselves back into our stories, all day long. When you change your words, you make a gap in your panic thoughts. And that gap is where the magic happens. We start to feel better; we remember that, ‘oh yeah’ I am actually really good at math and don’t need to worry about that final. Or, we are alert so we notice that internship advertisement near the coffee stirrers at Starbucks instead of checking our phones. Or, we are more calm and therefore more efficient with our time and suddenly got twice as much done in half the amount of time. Yeah. Magic. I mean it.

Our words are our power. But don’t just take my word for it. Try it for yourself; commit to doing this for 7 days, and then let me know how it goes.