DiarThe Power of a Single Word
June 17th 2008 12:04
There is a story in the Buddhist teachings entitled “Eight Earthly Winds” , which is retold below...
There was a well-known scholar who befriended a Buddhist Chan master. Thinking that he had made great a stride in his cultivation, he wrote a poem and asked his attendant to deliver it to the master who lived across the river.
The master opened the letter and read the short poem aloud:
A smile broke up on the lips of the master. Picking up an ink brush, he scribbled the word "fart" across the letter and asked that it be delivered back to the scholar.
The scholar was upset and went across the river right away to reprimand the master for being rude. The master laughed as he said, "You said you are no longer moved by the eight worldly winds and yet with just one 'belch', you ran across the river like a rat!"
The master opened the letter and read the short poem aloud:
"Unmoved by the eight worldly winds,
Serenely I sit on the purplish gold terrace."
Serenely I sit on the purplish gold terrace."
A smile broke up on the lips of the master. Picking up an ink brush, he scribbled the word "fart" across the letter and asked that it be delivered back to the scholar.
The scholar was upset and went across the river right away to reprimand the master for being rude. The master laughed as he said, "You said you are no longer moved by the eight worldly winds and yet with just one 'belch', you ran across the river like a rat!"
There are many ways in which to interpret this story but I like its simplest and possibly deeper message ... the power that can be held within a single word!
There can be tyranny and genius in words …
A recent research paper out of the United States, reporting on how people process words that express emotions, claimed that half of all the words that people produce from their working vocabulary are used to express negative emotions, compared to a mere 30 percent which are used to express positive emotions and 20 percent that have a neutral context. Although the magnitude of the statistics may be questionable, the relative proportion of negative to positive words in our working vocabularies should be of concern to all of us because there is a substantial body of research that relates the words we us in our ‘self-talk’ to our emotions, moods and relative levels of achievement.
Positive words seed optimistic thoughts which in turn generate positive actions. While, a single negative word can be like a sharp pin quickly stabbed into a balloon; it can breed pessimism and pull us down. This is because negative words evoke negative thoughts which in turn require greater deliberation as we slow down our processing in order to think more carefully. Whereas, positive words tend to tell us that things are benign or safe or everything is ‘OK’. So processing of those words and subsequent emotions is more script-like, hence we don't do a lot of word processing in these instances.
Within the continuum between positive and negative words there also exist what I refer to as ‘limiting’ words. These are not necessarily positive or negative, they are simply words that act to vale, misdirect or channel our thinking in a way that prevents us from opening our minds to the understanding and wonderment of what we know and discover, as well as the possibility that there may still be something incredible waiting to be known. For instance, it is natural for many of us to think through ‘problem solving’ situations in terms of choices between this, OR that. Yet there is a certain tyranny in the word ‘OR’ because of its tendency to limit our thinking to existing, and probably unworthy, resolutions of the problem with which we are faced and as such can be an unproductive way of looking at the world. Whereas, there is a certain genius about 'AND', that empowers us to expand our horizons and challenge the boundaries that tend to limit our thinking to mere alternatives.
Using self-talk to take control
The bottom line is that words can either be destructive or enriching to our relationships and our achievements. Hence, the ability to think clearly about a situation depends very much on the words we choose to process it with. This in turn affects the degree to which we commit ourselves to resolving the situation, and ultimately the outcome that we settle upon.
There exists within each of us the power to turn the tyranny of negative words into the genius of the positive, as well as the ability to place a new spin on those words that limit our thinking. For the most part, this power emanates from our ‘self-talk’; this is our internal dialogue – the words we say to ourselves as a result of the endless stream of thoughts that run through our heads every day. Harnessing our self-talk in this way is simple although it does take determination, time and practice to stop and evaluate what we are thinking.
The practice of exchanging a negative word for another with a more positive connotation is generally easier for adults than for children because of the relative difference in the size of our working vocabularies. As an aside, one could also argue a strong case for cultural differences between the generations – how often do we hear words such as wicked or sick to describe something positive? We can help our children use their self-talk more effectively by assisting them to broadening their working vocabulary, particularly within the domain of positive words. For instance,
a PROBLEM becomes a SITUATION
A problem seems as though it is stuck to you and will always be there. A situation, on the other hand, seems temporary and solvable.
ALWAYS and NEVER become OFTEN and SELDOM
Used in critical and negative contexts always and never are rarely true and exaggerate a situation.
SHOULD have becomes COULD have
The words, should have, create guilt and shame for something that has already been done and cannot be changed, whereas the words, could have, don't condemn anyone. They let us know we had a choice, and this experience then becomes a lesson for making better choices in the future.
MISTAKES become VALUABLE LESSONS
This is similar to the example above. The first way makes others feel ashamed of what they did, and will probably inhibit them from trying new things in the future. The second way gives others something positive to do – to learn from their actions, thereby encouraging learning and experimentation.
too HARD becomes somewhat CHALLENGING
To say that something is, too hard, implies that the situation is impossible to resolve and that we resign ourselves to failure. On the other hand, to say that a situation is challenging, recognises that there are as yet unrecognised pathways to a solution, we just need to find them.
So, before we allow the words to take control of us without considering what they mean, remember this one very important word - THINK.
Lasting accomplishments come when we change our behaviours as well as our thinking. These are important skills that we also need to model and reinforce with our children.
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