The BOLD (Get at It)
Everyone seems to have settled back in now. My friend, Shanna Kabatznick, pointed out that Monday was the real New Year’s Day because it was when everyone returned—from time off, from holiday brain, from travel. Welcome to the New New Year.
Our society tends to celebrate Friday and dread Monday (though distributed work and always-on tech have diminished, for many of us, the hard cut off these days used to represent). An elevated group, however, has flipped that around. For people engaged in meaningful work that they enjoy, the start of engagement time and the onset of renewal time are welcomed with equal enthusiasm.
As we’ve discussed, words have more than meaning. They have power. Let’s discuss the power of switching verbs to refocus intention, generate energy and spark enthusiasm.
Enjoy a Bold Thought:
The Whisper (Flip It)
The stack of papers perched at the edge of the desk threatened to cascade down onto the small workspace Kelly had bulldozed into the desktop in front of her chair. Another email pinged on her laptop and flitted across the face of her phone. Input piled on input threatened to suffocate her.
She glanced at the post-it notes arranged in a less than festive wreath on the door of her overhead cabinet. “I have to write the report before the meeting. Jan wants the data I promised to compile. I have to arrange the meeting with James and Tanisha for next Wednesday—we need a meeting room and I have to write the agenda. I still have to call to get a dentist appointment and I have to email my son’s teacher.”
You can feel the weight pressing down, can’t you? I have to. I have to. I have to. The combined weight of all those must, should, and have to statements removes all sense of our choice and saps our energy.
An Attitude Cure
We know that words have meaning. We record their meaning in vast dictionaries that capture their nuanced uses and their origins. We use words to describe what has happened and to transmit an account to others. We write fiction and non-fiction stories of ideas, actions and events. We use words to set the fluid details of time into concrete descriptions.
What we sometimes forget is that those words also have power. While we are weaving words into a narrative, we are investing the story with the meaning we have derived from our experiences—both real and imaginary. We use words to capture the flow of our imaginations as well as of our lived experiences. We use words to craft a different future.
Mankind has long understood the power of words. In the Judeo-Christian faiths, God is understood to have spoken the world into existence. In mystical practices, words are the starting point for spells and incantations. The true name of Rumpelstiltskin freed the spinner from her obligations and saved her child. Words, both spoken and written, have always seemed precious to us.
Our modern world is over-printed with words. They sparkle on our screens, adorn our buildings, etch printed pages and throb from roadside signs. What is abundant starts to feel less precious.
We are in danger of losing the power of words. Or, rather, we are in danger of losing sight of the power of words.
Imagine a different Monday for Kelly. She arrives at her desk and sees the neat files with all the supporting documents for her projects. An email notice pings and she smiles. This is going to be a busy week.
She reviews her project and task list. She has the privilege of being the one to present the report at the meeting, an acknowledgment of her experience and hard work.
She will enjoy compiling the data for Jan. Kelly has been curious about the outcome of the experiment that the team decided to run and she is eager to see what they will learn.
She gets to meet with John and Tanisha on Wednesday. It’s been a month since they met in person and she always enjoys the energy boost that their face to face meetings deliver. She’s excited to host them in one of the newly renovated meeting rooms and she’s happy that she has a real-world reason to learn the new scheduling system. She wants to craft a good agenda that will frame up a useful meeting for everyone.
She is grateful to have found a new dentist that she likes and she plans to make her next appointment. She chooses to communicate with her son’s teacher in order to get a head start on helping him prepare for his test. Mr. Keller is a relatively new teacher but he is eager and engaged and has already suggested a few techniques that have improved her son’s study skills.
Privilege, enjoy, happy to, chooses to, gets to, wants to, grateful.
Everything that happens to us is the result of a choice. We chose to say yes to the job and so we have these projects and tasks. We chose to become a parent, to enter into a partnership, to pursue a skill set. We also chose to avoid another job, to break some partnerships and to not take a class. We chose. And sometimes, when the unexpected happened or the choices of others placed us in a situation we did not request, we simply chose our response.
Every choice is framed in words. We define our big choices: “I will move to New York and get a job on Broadway.” We define our little choices: “I’m going to eat chocolate for breakfast.” The words we use to modify how we feel about our choices determine our mindset, our attitude and contribute to our chances for success.
Upgrade Your Verbs to Change Your Experience
You can start small. Pick a verb you would like to upgrade. I suggest targeting the phrase “have to.” You may have another more common phrase that suppresses your awareness of choice.
Next, make a short list of possible other phrases. They can include:
- Privileged to
- Get to
- Want to
- Excited to
- Curious about what happens if I
- Grateful to
- Thrilled to (ok, so that might be a stretch for some tasks)
- Relieved to
- Love to
Set your intention to upgrade your verb every time you hear yourself saying it. You don’t have to be perfect. If you say the phrase you are planning to upgrade, re-state your intention in a way that reminds you that your life is full of choices.
I am excited to hear the results of your experiment. (See what I did there?) How did upgrading your verbs change your attitude and impact your outcomes?
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