Shi:
Alright, up next on Word Week, we are talking some of our best pocket tools so make sure you get ready to remember these. We’re talking our best language flips today.
Kay:
Now language flips are a great thing that you can put in your pocket like Shila said because when you catch yourself using one of the well.. I just want to call them canceled. We’re just going to cancel a couple of words today. When you catch yourself using a canceled word, we’ve given you a flip that you can replace it for that might help you be a little more constructive in your communication.
Shi:
Alright up first on the cancel list, if you are a personal growth and development person, you’ve probably heard this one before, canceling the word but. Anytime we use that word, we negate whatever was said before it, and folks that tend to not listen or give any validity to statements coming before it only hearing what’s after. So, instead of saying but, we are challenging/encouraging you to use the word and instead.
Kay:
And is way more inclusive. And gives you an opportunity to find more in, in what you are saying, and let’s take this down to the practical level. Now, one of the examples Shila and I love to use from more of a corporate setting. You all know we’re business owners, we’re entrepreneurs. So, oftentimes the word but can get really sneaky when you’re coming into feedback sessions, especially with an associate that you’re looking to reprimand. So, let’s say someone’s been coming in late and you want to reprimand them for that, and you also want to tell them that they’re a good employee because they are a good employee every other time, but they’re showing up late. So, you might say to them, “You’re a really good employee and we’re really proud to have you on our team, but you keep showing up late and it’s really affecting everyone else.” Now, if you have that but, in the sentence, all of the compliments that you gave right before that are completely gone from their mind. But if you just use the word and in the middle there it makes it more inclusive. Think about, “You’re a really good employee and you’re a wonderful asset to our team and you’ve been late the last few days in a row, and we really need you to start showing up on time.” Now you didn’t negate what you just said, and you got to be more inclusive in the process.
Shi:
You can see how it just helps open it up. More than one statement can be true, but when we hear the word but, you can hear even there, your mind tends to cut out and cut down because now it’s going through a process of this or that. The but means this or that kind of thing. When we use the word and we’re saying two true statements at once and allowing our person to receive the communication better, which has been one of our major themes here on Word Week has been all about. Now, next up on the canceled list of words is the word problem.
Kay:
Now, the word problem shows up quite a bit especially since we live in a world that delivers us challenges at every corner in order to help us grow. Now, many of us can look at a challenge and say, “Well, this is a real big problem.” But when we can attack a problem or a challenge and say, “You know what? This is an opportunity,” and have that view of it not being a problem, but an opportunity we open ourselves up to more solutions-oriented thinking.
Shi:
All of the great tell us that problems really are our opportunities and if we just start off in the beginning, identifying anything that is as Kay used the synonym, we like to use the most, challenge, because there isn’t all of this negative connotation with it. The word problem means that it’s out of the ordinary and needs to be solved. Challenge is in the ordinary and gets to be conquered and you can see the different energy that you come forward with even just making a small shift like that. Take it one step further and call it an opportunity when something comes along and now an opportunity is something to take advantage of. A problem is something to be solved. An opportunity is something to be taken advantage of and within every problem or misdeed or misfortune is that seed of equal or greater opportunity or positive effects. So, that is a really important one and the more you use it, the better you’ll get and the more you’ll see the result in your life start to make a difference for your internal experience which is really that game we’re all playing
Kay:
In fact, Shi I remember when you and I first started this one, we would come to each other and kind of with a laughing face on, we would say, “Hey, I’ve got an opportunity for you.” And it would just create levity around the challenge or the problem that we were facing at the time, and it helped us to attack it with more clarity. So, okay, next up on the cancellation list. Ooh, Shi, this one’s a good one. We are canceling all absolutes.
Shi:
That’s right. Always, never, everyone, no one, always, nothing. These are all words that are absolutes, and they don’t allow for the level of gray that is existent in pretty much every interaction, especially when it comes to language. You’ve got two subjective people communicating subjective points of view from different perspectives. The ability to get lost in translation is vast when we communicate with each other. Using absolutes does not allow our partner to understand that context around the content of the message. If you say to someone, “You always lie to me,” you’re not recognizing maybe the 75% of the time that they tell the truth. Is it really always? “Well, they never take out the trash.” If we just want to run with that example from earlier in the week. Really never? They’ve never not one time ever taken it out? And when we do that to someone, including ourselves, that really hurts the mentality, and it hurts the relationship, and it hurts our chances of being able to continue in a way that’s constructive.
Kay:
When we use absolutes, we kind of lay down our gavel, if you will, on how things are, and we open ourselves up for a lot of room for somebody to poke holes in the things that we are saying. So, if you’re looking to be taken seriously both by the universe and whoever it is that you’re communicating with, get those absolutes out of your vocabulary. Think about something even out of a relationship, in relation to the context of a conversation, an absolute for your thinking patterns can be really, really devastating. A thinking pattern like, “Things never work out for me,” or “People just don’t ever seem to see me,” or “They are always like this,” or “This group of people is always like that.” This can really, really hurt you in the long run because it doesn’t create any wiggle room for maybe an alternative point of view.
Shi:
You know, next, up on the canceled list, we want to talk about words that connotate extreme emotional states. And when we use these words to talk about our everyday experiences, it doesn’t help us again, create that internal experience that we enjoy, and certainly doesn’t give us the kind of context around the content that we’re looking for in order to communicate our messages in a way that’s connection worthy and positive. So, words like, “I’m devastated,” “It’s driving me crazy up the wall,” “I’m out of my mind about something,” “I’m dead tired,” and we’ve got a whole next section about words that are kind of more macabre like that. But thinking about these extreme emotional words that often we use. “I’m crushed by something.” Are you literally crushed? Are you absolutely devastated? I mean, that’s a word I would use after a deep tragedy. Are we really devastated about missing the flight, even something like that, or missing an email or misspeaking on something or making a mistake, or are you frustrated? Are you annoyed? So, thinking about how we describe things in extreme emotional states we would encourage you not to do that anymore.
Kay:
Well, if you think back to earlier in the week, talking about the power of words and how that language is a vibration and that we live in a world that bows to the law of attraction, and when we send out those vibrations, we get those vibrations back. So, when we use words like devastated, crushed, over my head, “I’m underwater”, those kinds of things we’re literally emitting a vibration that is attracting devastation. Crushed, crushed-ness, being underwater, you’re tracking that stuff back to you when you use it, even if you’re using it casually. And this isn’t the only place where we use some pretty extreme words on a pretty casual level.
Shi:
Well, if you are here in the US like we are then there is a particular obsession with violent words. Certainly, our headlines demonstrate there’s also obsession with violent deeds and acts, but we’re not going to talk about that today. We’re going to talk about words and the language. Think about all of the ways that we reference killing and war and violence in our everyday language. “Slay!” “I’m dead.” When you think something’s funny, we say, we’re dead about it. “That’s the bomb!” “You killed it!” “You nailed it!” Think about what those vibrational frequencies are and definitely understand that that is not the intention behind those words when we say them in those contexts and that context and that energetic signature matters. But that word has been spoken in the other context so often it can’t help but resonate with all of the other times that people have talked about being killed or dead or slayed or knifed. Once you start to hear them, it’s really a trip. You will all start to understand how often and how prevalent these kinds of words are, and we would say it’s better to bring a little bit of intention around that and maybe choose some different words.
Kay:
Well, let’s just take slay for example. That’s a very popular example for somebody to say, “Oh, you slayed it.” “Oh, you really slayed your presentation today.” Now, if you say that to somebody, is it more powerful to maybe switch to something more empowering. Maybe saying something along the lines of, instead of “You slayed that presentation,” something like “You delivered a really powerful presentation today.” Now, which of those two compliments has more oomph to it? Now, one of them even has that reference to killing and it might be a laughable thing that we use on a casual basis, but we can bring more intention and more power to our positivity when we use more positive words.
Shi:
Well, we’ve gone a little long on this one, but we can’t help but get passionate and excited. Make sure you tune into the final installment here. We are going to talk about some of our best tricks about how to make something catchy and memorable coming up next on the Kay & Shi Show.
