Mind your language - 5. Are you processing words?

Mind your language

5 – Are you processing your words?

By V.K.Talithaya

Earlier we have said that communication begins in the mind. We continiously process words in our minds. The communication you send is received by the other person for whom it is sent. It is processed in his mind to decipher the meaning of what you said. He in turn sends you the communication based on his understanding. You process it in your mind and decide if he has understood what you communicated to him. See figure below:

We construct our own meanings to words. Words create our own world in our minds through words. Even Darwin, as far back as hundred years ago had found that man cannot think a train of thoughts without words. Words are, therefore, important for our thinking.

Words influence our behaviour, just as our behaviour influences the words we use. We use empowering words and disempowering words. Some words we use frequently as a matter of habit may be highly disempowering, such as angry, stupid, fed-up, tired, given up, gone case and so on. Similarly we use as a matter of habit a number of empowering words like, nice, good show, stimulating, encouraging, very well, happy, pleasant, thumps up etc. The more positive and empowering the words we use the more positive thinking we become.  It will be useful to have a look at the disempowering words you generally use and find out alternative words which are less disempowering.

We have continuios internal dialogue. Most of the waking hours we talk to ourselves on various issues. Should I do this, or should I not do this? Will be right to so or wrong?  Sometimes there will be more than two persons talking to each other within us. This si the process of making choice. But the words and the language we use for this internal dialogue is of graet importance. Use of negative words affects our decisions negatively, and vice versa. The word processing that goes on inside us is important. We can always try to make the internal conversation positive. Once the mind is put on the positive path, our thinking becomes positive and positive actions follow.

How can we process words properly? We can do it by asking the appropriate questions in our mind. For example if the thought in the mind is “these are difficult times”, we may ask: “difficult to whom”, “how is the time difficult”. Vague thinking becomes clear by asking questions. “I could have done better” – can be clarified in the mind by asking “better than whom?”  or “better than what?”  This helps “editing” our internal conversation to obtain clarity, and as a result our communication with others also becomes effective.