Good Ol' Zig

I have to thank my husband for introducing me to Zig Ziglar although at first I wanted to resist liking his speeches...if you've never heard him, his way of speaking is a whole lot like a Southern Baptist preacher. On one of my discs Mr. Ziglar talks about the power of the spoken word and the language we use on ourselves and others. On that disc I was astonished to hear that the average 16 year old has been told "no" or "you can't do that" approximately 17,000 times....17,000! As I mentioned at first I was totally blown away by that number, but the more I considered the countless times I myself was told the same things, I realized perhaps that number is not quite so unbelievable. Over the following days after listening to that particular recording my mind gravitated repeatedly to that one bit of information. I found myself hearing parents telling their children the very things Zig mentioned in his speech with the addition of my personal favorite "don't do that, you'll hurt yourself".

I've thought a lot about this...it fits so perfectly into what I already believe. Words are power. They are very strong conveyors of our feelings, thoughts, emotions, of our essential being. Self fulfilling prophesy is a very real thing and in that same vein it if you hear something often enough it becomes second nature to you therefor fulfilling the prophesy of those words.

Its easy to ignore or just be unaware of the language that we use. I Googled the top 500 most commonly used words just out of curiosity. "No" was #84 and "Yes" was #486. Holy cow! No wonder there are so many people walking around as Zig says "looking like the picture on their drivers license." We are by far quicker to tell ourselves "no" than "yes". We say "no, I could never have that" or "no, I don't deserve that" instead of "YES, I would love to have that" or "YES, I can have that if I want".

My point is this, if we could just become more aware of the words we use (inner dialog included) and turn even just a fraction of the negative words into positive ones, our outlooks and self images could be infinitely greater.

As reinforcement I would like to give a short list of my favorite "positive" words. I am sure that if you can work a few of these words into your day you'll not only feel better but also there is a very good chance you will uplift those around you too.

Exceptional Delightful Sensational Serene Thrilling Valued
Wise Zeal Love Best Awesome
Beaming Abundance Amazing Righteous Spectacular Fun