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"Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."
It’s so easy to say these words and pretend they don’t affect us when in reality, they actually do. More than we’d like to admit, unfortunately. Words may not have external damage but it works its way deep into our core where it really matters. And from there, our whole life is changed.
Words have always had their power. The way we are now can be credited and traced back to the words we have heard the moment we were born. Its effects are generational. It’s that powerful. The only thing that could give us that huge sigh of relief is knowing the fact that the power of words can be used to either bless or curse.
Meaning, if you were surrounded by negative people all your life and all you’ve known are insults and words of degradation, you can turn that around. You can choose not to listen to those negative voices and focus on the positive that can bring beneficial results in your life.
However, it won’t be that easy especially if you’re so used to absorbing negative words your entire life. The truth is, words have no mass and therefore cannot hurt us physically. But when we’ve been hearing and consuming it for a very long time, these words accumulate and slowly becomes this huge mountain that’s very difficult to climb.
Words are invisible to the eye, although we can see the shape a mouth takes when words pass through someone's lips. They have no physical form, and so we are all taught that they cannot do physical harm, yet we feel their consequences.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
In reality, words have the power to build us up or break us down both as a society and as individuals.
Don't believe me?
Google "the Cuban Missile Crisis."
According to the Doomsday Clock, we're currently sitting at 2 minutes to midnight. Yet, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the one single event in our history that could have launched our parents and grandparents into WW3 years before many of us would be born.
Granted, there have been other international incidents and threats lobbed across the ocean via Twitter in the past years, but the Cuban Missile Crisis is the one incident that in and of itself had the power to have devastating consequences.
In the end, it was neither aggressive acts nor visual demonstrations of power that diffused a potentially catastrophic situation. It's said to have been words: A series of conversations between diplomats and world leaders. Yea, they're the ones that probably got us into that situation to begin with, but it was words that ultimately saved us.
Choosing the Right Words
Who knows how many wars inside our minds have been started because of the words we’ve heard. Better yet, how many wars have been won, wounds healed because of words. Life could have been so simple if only we were faced with kind and gentle words.
But no.
Life ain’t simple like that. There needed to be words that tear us apart, words that try to bring us down in order for us to discover the words that would make us whole again and help us get back up. It is necessary to find the right words and apply them to our lives in order for them to manifest and turn into flesh - our flesh.
Why don’t we try to be more selective with the words we speak to others and to ourselves? Why don’t we practice?
✔️ Instead of saying "I'm such an idiot," try saying, "I'm not getting this right now but I'll try to figure it out.”
✔️ Instead of saying, "I'm not as good as everybody else," try saying "I grow at a different pace than them and that's okay. No matter how little, no matter how slow, it's still progress."
✔️ Instead of saying, "It's all my fault," try saying, "I had a hand in the situation and I am responsible for the decisions and actions I made."
✔️ Instead of saying, "I never should have...," try saying, "Next time this happens, I already know I'm not supposed to do that."
✔️ Instead of saying, "They must think I'm a loser," try saying, "Their actions speak of who they are, not who I am."
✔️ Instead of saying, "If only I'm like them," try saying, "I'm glad they're doing so well. I can only aspire to be as good as them that's why I need to be better than I am now."
Use the power of words to bless, encourage, and uplift others. Use it to affirm yourself of all the wonderful things that you were created and designed to be.
I’ll start…
You are a Warrior and you are strong.
‘Till the next blog.
