What’s In a Word?

Elgin Davis

Published in

Winter Hearth Studios

6 min readJul 5, 2019

Volume 1, Issue 12: What’s In a Word?

(Originally Published April 20, 2019)

What’s New This Week

Welcome back and thanks for joining us again in the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook, where each week we explore the human experience through different mediums, gleaning useful and practical insights to become more socially and emotionally powerful.

Following last week’s digest, U nder Construction , the theme of this week’s content is “What’s In a Word?”. Many of us grew around the phrase “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Boy, was that ever false. Every word that flows from our mouths influences the world around us, and many people tend to take this fact for granted. Whether your words influence your own mind or those of others, know that your words have power.

The idea of thinking before speaking is more difficult than many of us realize, but training this habit will take you very far in terms of developing emotional intelligence and empathy. Since this playbook deals with social and emotional learning, this week we’ll take a look at how the power of words comes into play with respect to mental health and mental illness, so be sure to take your time engaging with the content as you make your way through the digest.

Listen

This week, we’ll kick things off with a TED Talk that serves as a great start when talking about the actual process of conversing about mental health. Listen carefully to the words that Delle uses to describe his situation with coming to grips with his health. One of the most insightful quotes from the talk is this: “Being honest about how we feel doesn’t make us weak — it makes us human.” Check out the rest of his talk below.

Learn

In this week’s Learn section, I’ve come across a deeply moving talk from Elyn Saks, a university professor who struggles with two mental illnesses. Imagine how difficult it must be to not only have schizophrenia and psychosis, but also to then get on stage in front of hundreds of people and talk about your journey, struggles, and life managing both of them simultaneously (taking the time and energy to try to place yourself in that position will definitely increase your empathic abilities).

I strongly suggest you find the time to watch this TED Talk, but if you are unable to, there are a few major highlights for you to grab:

Choose your language carefully — In the talk, Saks notes that she would rather be called “someone who has schizophrenia,” rather than “a schizophrenic,” or, even worse, “a schizo”. People throw around terms like these often, but we should be aware of how that makes people living with those diseases feel (from the voices I’ve heard so far, it doesn’t make them feel good at all).
Don’t criminalize mental illness — In today’s society, the main place we hear “mental illness” blasted on the media is in cases of violence (most notably gun violence). We must understand, though, that most people struggling with mental illness, as Saks noted, are not violent. Just as the U.S. went through the phase of painting all Muslims as violent people after the actions of Al-Qaeda, the U.S. is going through a similar associative phase right now as it pertains to mental illness. Not all Muslims are violent, and not all people with mental illnesses are violent either. In fact, in both cases, and the cases of most other categories of people, the majority of the populations are nonviolent, as we’d expect.
Seek to understand — This is a core tenet of empathy. Seek first to understand. People have the tendency to label those with mental illnesses instead of choosing to seeing them clearly, honestly, and compassionately. Judging them based on things we do not understand (or at all, really) is where a hefty majority of the problems we face with the topic remain.

Level Up

This week’s Level Up section presents you with a quick article from NBC’s Today about what really happens when you call people “crazy, OCD, pyscho,” or any other variation of epithets concerning mental illness.

On a personal note, I’ve been told on far too many occasions that I “have OCD” or that I “am OCD” due to certain nervous (as in nervous system, not the state of being nervous) mannerisms that I have. Not only does the misuse of these terms show a lack of understanding of what these mental illnesses actually are, but it actually trivializes the situations in which an individual actually does have one of these mental illnesses and weakens our potential for deeper understanding.

One of the worst perpetrators of this is music. For example, musicians (and many other people, for that matter) still use the word “retarded” in their music and speech patterns, though it is an offensive term for people with intellectual disabilities and is used to bully children and adults around the world. There are plenty of other examples in pop culture, so just be aware how these phrases affect others before you use (or do not use) them. Check out the article to learn how you can be the difference.

Fireside Spotlight

Two weeks ago in the Fireside Spotlight, we saw our first character — Westro, a witty outlaw from the south side of town who loves robbing ice cream shops for popsicle sticks. This week, we’re back with another character (another villain, nonetheless) named “The Scrambler”:

Ask him if he’s soft-boiled

Walk It, Talk it

Thanks again for joining us this week in the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook! In the words of Dale Carnegie, “Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.” How can you apply the ideas in this digest to your life? How can you use it to gain power in living a more epic story? Talk to your friends and family this week about something you found interesting in the digest.

This weekly personal development playbook is a labor of love, so if you enjoy reading it each week, please share it with your friends to assist us in reaching our goal of helping the world achieve a better human experience :)

Your Greatest Chapter Awaits

Until next time,
Elgin

Hey, I’m Elgin, and I love to create. I’m the creator of Winter Hearth Studios and the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook, a space where we explore the depths of the human experience, discovering the keys to crafting a better life and inspiring you to Live An Epic Story.

I’m currently a 4th year student at Harvard University studying computer science and design, and in my free time I love to travel, draw, read, and pursue bold, exciting adventures.