I saw a video on YouTube the other day of people taking a jelly bean challenge. In the bag of jelly beans were several pairs of beans that looked identical but tasted different. One was a pleasant taste like coconut, one an incredibly foul one like baby wipes. The challenge was to team up with a friend and each select the same bean, pop it in your mouth at the same time and see who got the good one and who didn't. As I watched two girl friends take the challenge, I wondered who in their right mind would do something like that for fun. I certainly wouldn't.
I am pretty particular about how my food tastes, even to the point that I often won’t order something off a menu that I haven’t had before because I want to make sure my dining experience is pleasurable. I know, I am kind of boring. But today I got to thinking about our words. There are some words that we think look or feel just like other words, but when they come out of our mouth or spin around in our head they have a foul effect. I find it interesting that we spend more time worrying about how our food tastes than we do about how our words taste. Lately I have come to the awareness that many of the words that we use flippantly in our English language are foul. But we use them naively, not really understanding the harmful effects they have on our brain, and thus our results. So...today I thought I would share four words and phrases that I personally believe need to be eliminated from our vocabulary.
- I Can’t! I have learned that there is always a how, whether I really like the how or not. Telling myself I can’t do something severely limits my possibilities for greatness, and usually is just simply not true.
- Don’t: My subconscious mind doesn't understand the word don’t, it only hears what comes after it. So when I tell my children “Don’t touch the hot stove,” their brain actually sees a picture of them touching the hot stove and feeds the subconscious the wrong message. Try it…Don’t think about bunnies. Yep, what did you see? So, instead of telling yourself and others what not to do, I focus on what I want them to do instead. “Keep away from the hot stove.”
- It’s a bad day: I firmly believe that God doesn't give us “bad days”. I hate that phrase. I chose a long time ago to see every day as a good day. There are some that have extra challenges (what most would call a bad day), but every day I have been given is a gift and it’s up to me what to do with it.
- Hard: This word is a tricky one. My personal preference is to look at things as a challenge, instead of hard. The word hard has a bad taste in my mouth, a negative connotation. But if I find something challenging, then it feels like something that I can overcome, I can beat. I love a good challenge. For me, eliminating this word made a big difference in how I saw my daily experiences and tasks.
What many of us don’t realize is that the words we speak really affect the results we get in our life. So here is the question I ask you? Do you want to take a chance by using the words that come easily but taste yucky? Or do you want to have a good tasting jelly bean by making the intentional choice to use words that taste and do good? Unlike the Jelly Bean Challenge, the choice is up to you!