The words you consistently select will shape your destiny

Earlier I said that the way we represent things in our minds determines how we feel about life. A related distinction is that if you don't have a way of representing something, you can't experience it. While it may be true that you can picture something without having a word for it, or you can represent it through sound or sensation, there's no denying that being able to articulate something gives it added dimension and substance, and thus a sense of reality. Words are a basic tool for representing things to ourselves, and often if there's no word, there's no way to think about the experience. For example, some Native American languages have no word for " lie" —that concept is simply not a part of their language. Nor is it a part of their thinking or behavior. Without a word for it, the concept doesn't seem to exist. In fact, the Tasaday tribe in the Philippines reportedly ^as no words for " dislike, " " hate" or " war" —what a thought!

Returning to my initial question, if Bob never feels bored, and he doesn't have that word in his vocabulary, I had to ask further, " What's a word that 1 never used to describe how I'm feeling? " The answer I came up with was " depression." 1 may get frustrated, angry, curious, peeved, or overloaded, but I never get depressed. Why? Had it always been that way? No. Eight years ago, I'd been in a position where I felt depressed all the time. That depression drained every ounce of my will to change my life, and at the time it made me see my problems as permanent, pervasive, and personal. Fortunately I got enough pain that I pulled myself out of that pit, and as a result I linked massive pain to depression. I began to believe that being depressed was the closest thing to being dead. Because my brain associated such massive pain to the very concept of depression, without my even realizing it, I had automatically banned it from my vocabulary so that there was no way to represent or even feel it. In one stroke I had purged my vocabulary of disempowering language and thus a feeling that can devastate even the stoutest of hearts. If an assemblage of words you're using is creating states that disempower you, get rid of those words and replace them with those that empower you!

At this point you may be saying, " This is just semantics, isn't it? What difference does it make to play with words? " The answer is that, if all you do is change the word, then the experience does not change. But if using the word causes you to break your own habitual emotional patterns, then everything changes. Effectively using Transformational Vocabulary—vocabulary that transforms our emotional experience—breaks unresourceful patterns, makes us smile, produces totally different feelings, changes our states, and allows us to ask more intelligent questions.

For instance, my wife and I are both passionate people who feel deeply about things. Early in our relationship, we would often get into what we used to call " pretty intense arguments." But after discovering the power of the labels we put on our experience to alter that experience, we agreed to refer to these " conversations" as " spirited debates." That changed our whole perception of it. A " spirited debate" has different rules than an argument, and it definitely has a different emotional intensity to it. In seven years, we've never returned to that habitual level of emotional intensity that we had previously associated with our " arguments."

I also began to realize that I could soften emotional intensity even further by using modifiers; for example, by saying, " I'm just a bit peeved, " or " I'm feeing a tad out of sorts." One of the things Becky will do now, if she starts to get a little frustrated, is to say, " I'm beginning to get a smidge cranky." We both laugh because it breaks our pattern. Our new pattern is to make a joke of our disempowering feelings before they ever reach the point of our being upset—we've " killed the monster while it's

little."

When I shared this Transformational Vocabulary technology with my good friend Ken Blanchard, he related to me examples of several words he uses to change his state. One is a word he adopted in Africa when he was on safari and the truck he was in broke down. He turned to his wife, Marge, and said, " Well, that's rather inconvenient." It worked so well in changing their states, now they use the word on a regular basis. On the golf course, if a shot doesn't go the way he wants, he'll say, " That shot just underwhelms me." Tiny shifts like these change the emotional direction and therefore the quality of our lives.