A more positive vocabulary

As a man thinketh in his heart so is he

It’s an aphorism that explains the condition of man. He is who he thinks he is. His character, his identity and his perspective with respect to circumstances around him are all dependent on his thoughts.

One thing that stuck out to me was the way we think. How do we think? How do we make sense of it all? Words. We make sense of it all when we attach meaning to everything via our learnt vocabulary — along with the nuances and connotations that we ascribe to each word.

I have set out a very simple task for this month, which is to improve my immediate surroundings and place myself in a happier, more positive, and nurturing environment. Yet, I did not notice that the adjectives that I used to describe what I have envisioned for myself made an incredibly huge shift in my thinking. Whenever you’re in a tough situation, you could describe everything around you as hard, tough, frustrating and anger-inducing. You could, instead, describe it as challenging, new, adventurous, and growth-inducing. The latter makes it so easy to act as if the former is a completely different situation when they are in fact the same.

Vocabulary can be expansive but our use of it is a learnt habit. By Zipf’s law, we only have a few hundred words that we use to describe daily events out of the thousands that we can understand. We don’t even think about it; it’s automatic. To change this habit, we have to start small and chip away.

The words that we use are formed based on how efficiently they represent reality for us. It’s not an easy task but it doesn’t mean it can’t be chipped. For today’s improvement:

I will start complementing people more.

This might seem trivial because it is. A little shift here forces me to be aware of the adjectives I use towards people. Once I’ve tapped into how I use words which used to be subconsciously done, I will be able to slowly pick and choose which ones to use. Further down the road, since these are going to be words used towards people, it’s going to start influencing the words to a specific person as well — me.

The more positive words I use to describe myself, the more I can start thinking positive about myself. Then, I become who I say I am because that’s exactly what I think I am, along with other benefits that will blossom down the road.