They Are Just Words....

Many of us grew up hearing "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I have come to learn that this childhood tease is wrong.

Words matter. This was brought up when I was telling someone about an issue with the cupcakes for the CFMA Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference this year. It was one week before the conference and "Something has gone wrong already and the conference is a week away. The cupcake maker's building is closed and I just received an email informing me they cannot supply the cupcakes." I should note here the flavors and design of the cupcakes were designed to match the Hall of Awards.

"So what did you do?" he asked. "I was finally able to find a replacement, I hope the theme carries over well. "So everything worked out - you fixed it." "Yes, it is working out," I responded.

He went on to say: "Did you hear what you said? You said something went WRONG."

Wrong. In my eyes, in my thoughts, something had already gone wrong and the conference had not even begun. He then told me how it was an issue that had come up during planning. I handled it, found a solution quickly using my contacts (thank you Angela and Fabio), and all is well. Nobody is the wiser that we had to switch caterers at the last minute. Using the word wrong places a negative spin on it and causes self-doubt.

For the next few days, I listened to my words. I watched for the negative connotations. I kept a list of those words and thought about what words to substitute. Then I googled "change your words." You may be surprised at how many blogs, articles, books, websites there are on this topic. Your words do matter. Not only do they convey to others how you feel about yourself and situations, but your use of negative words can hurt your self-esteem, your self-talk. Use of negative words can cause you to believe a situation is worse than what it is and can cause you to dwell on unimportant events.

Dr. Andrew Newbergs in his book Words Can Change Your Brain states:

“Language shapes our behavior and each word we use is imbued with multitudes of personal meaning. The right words spoken in the right way can bring us love, money and respect, while the wrong words—or even the right words spoken in the wrong way—can lead to a country to war. We must carefully orchestrate our speech if we want to achieve our goals and bring our dreams to fruition.”

Try this exercise before reading further. Tony Robbins asks his audience to spend ten minutes on this exercise ( "Change Your Words, Change your Life"):

"Make a list of the emotions you feel at least once a week. I have people take five to ten minutes, and write down not all the emotions they feel in a rare while (i.e. once a month or year), but simply the ones they consistently feel.

Do you have your words written down? Good. Robbins continues: "Ironically, whether the audience is 2,000 people or 30,000 people, 90% of the people write down an average of a dozen words – and more than half of those represent negative feelings. That means literally, out of the 3,000 words we have for emotions, most people feel about five or six good feelings; and the bad feelings we find over and over again. We tend to get happy and excited, then angry, frustrated, sad, or even depressed, as an example. Have you ever taken the time to actually become aware of the habitual words you use to describe the emotions that you feel? Do you think it’s possible that when we feel negative sensations, that those sensations are transformed emotionally by the word labels we put them?"

What do you do to change this? No matter the author, no matter the article, people seem to agree on three steps to change your words and way of thinking:

1. Listen to yourself. Catch yourself using negative type words. Maybe keep a journal of these words and when they were used. When you express something that occurred, such as my cupcake story, what words are you using? I used the word wrong in my story. What do I imply with that word - negativity, self-blame or self-doubt?
2. Once you capture these words, learn to change them. What is a better expression for what actually happened? In my example, Is issue a better word? Or maybe "there was a matter I needed to attend to" is a better way to describe the situation.
3. Increase your use of positive words. Now that you know what words you tend to use and how you tend to describe situations, play up the more positive words. "There was a matter I need to attend to and all is well - it will be great" or "An issue came up with the caterer, but it was an easy fix because I was able to call a contact from my network!"

The cupcakes were a hit. Fabio's Events and Catering, Chambersburg, PA, came through and not only was the display beautiful, the flavors were superb and people just could not stay away from seconds and third!

Make a pact with me. Let us change our words together and in changing our words, we will change our attitude. As we change our attitude, we can brighten someone else's day with our words. One word at a time.

Kimberly A. Hullfish, MBA, CCIFP, CRIS

Immediate Past President, South Jersey Chapter of CFMA