5 Things You’re Saying that are Holding You Back
“Language is the light of the mind”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”
It’s a nice idea and it’s simply not true. Our words matter, especially the words we speak to ourselves.
I’ve been increasingly curious and pedantic about language since I discovered Authentic Relating. One of the key practices of Authentic Relating is “own you experience”. This is a practice of taking responsibility for your experience, not blaming others or our environment. Like all the Authentic Relating practices, it sounds simple and yet is often not easy to do.
Our brains - or my brain at least - seem wired to duck out of taking responsibility. There’s a part of us that likes to be the victim and to be a passive participant in our own lives. It feels so much easier than having to adult!
Language is key to taking responsibility for our experience. Language is how we shape our thoughts and our thoughts shape our emotions, our responses and our actions.
Here are five things I hear my clients using most often that allow us to duck out of being responsible, response-able adults and stop us living full.
You Have a Choice
Please, for the love of all things good, stop saying “should”, “have to” and “must”. You do not have to do anything.
Seriously.
Nothing. Nada. Everything you do, you do by choice.
Of course, choices have consequences. If you choose not to go to work, there will be consequences. If you choose to go for a run, there will be consequences. And we have to have the ability to enact that choice - I might like to be less reactive with my partner and, unless I practise something like centring, then I won't actually have the skill to respond differently in the heat of the moment.
“Should”, “have to” and “must” are all subtle ways we imply that we don't have a choice.
Try saying these phrases out loud. “I need to go to the toilet” or “I have to go to the toilet”. “I should do my yoga practice this morning” or “I want to do my yoga practice this morning”. “I must spend more time with my partner/child/mum/friend [delete as appropriate]” or “I’d love to spend more time with my partner/child/mum/friend”.
What does your body do when you say these different phrases? What feels more empowering to you?
Every time I say “I should…” or “I have to…”, I notice a tightness in my body. I feel pressure. There is less space. These phrases hem me in and tie me down.
Replace should, have to and must with need, want and love
How Are You Really?
One of my teachers has a ban on people saying “fine”, “good”, or “busy” in response to the question “how are you?”. Or as my friend Andy says, fine stands for F**king Incapable of Naming Emotions.
When we reply with these default answers, we are cutting ourselves off from our own experience.
Instead, if we take a breath, notice and name what’s actually going on, we start exercising the muscle of being honest and nuanced about our experience. We notice that we’re rarely only feeling one thing - as Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes” - and we start to be kinder to ourselves whatever is happening for us.
This very simple switch is the gateway to authentic connection with others. If we aren’t connected to our experience, we can’t open up and connect to what someone else is experiencing.
Replace I’m fine/good/busy with I notice...
Stop Minimising
Ah, "just". Such a little word. A synonym for "with great difficulty".
"Just" covers up a multitude of challenges. "Just" makes things sound easy and trivial when often they are deeply complex and can be incredibly challenging to do. "Just" masks the 'how' of a task. For example, I was talking last week on Delightful Dissent about why Just Be Yourself is terrible advice - it makes me want to scream "but how do I do that?!".
Every time I hear a client say "I just need to...", I know nothing's actually going to change. There's no plan for how they're going to do the thing they "need" to do. They're underestimating the challenge of it because I guarantee if it was easy, they would have done it already and we wouldn't be coaching on it.
Learning to stop using "just" is really challenging. This was a big feature of the operational language I was learning last year on the Embodied Facilitator Course. I noticed how often I was using "just" - it's like a verbal tic. There's rarely a need for it. Occasionally, I might replace it with "simply" if I'm giving instructions but 99.9% of the time, it's totally superfluous and actively undermines what you're saying. The key here, as always, is awareness and choice. Start to pay attention to when you use "just" - you might be surprised how often it sneaks in there.
Replace just with, well, nothing!
You Are In Charge of Your Emotions
When we make other people and circumstances the source of our experience, we dis-empower ourselves. Owning your experience, finding the source of it inside of yourself, gives you power back. Nothing needs to change in the external world; no-one needs to act in a particular way for you to have the experience you want.
Saying to someone, "You made me mad!" is really just blaming somebody else for your feelings of anger. This way of communicating generally doesn't help us get our needs met. It allows us to avoid looking at the true source of our emotions and is likely to lead to conflict as no-one likes being blamed for someone else's experience.
On the other hand, "When you shouted at me, I felt angry" very much owns your experience as you are now speaking from your own experience and using “I” statements. It's almost like putting your experience on slow-motion - noticing that something happened in the world (you shouted at me) and then I had a response - I might even start to notice the stories and assumptions I have about being shouted at.
Moving to so-called "I" statements brings us back to a place where we have some authorship of our experience. It's not to say that we're not impacted by other people - of course, we are and that's the wonderful power of connection. I want to feel when I'm with people; I want to be impacted by their presence. By taking ownership of my own experience, I'm not making them responsible for me, nor am I taking responsibility for their experience.
Replace "you" statements with "I" statements
I Am Not My Feelings or My Job Title
I'm fascinated by the way we create our identities. Those two little words, "I am", hold so much power to define how we see ourselves and how the world sees us.
Identity is important. It's critical for our sense of wellbeing and worth. The ability to describe your self-identity in a way that is clear and meaningful gives you a foundation on which to interact with the world around you.
So you'd think we'd be intentional about the self-identity we create.
We're so often not. We say "I'm sad" or "I'm angry". We say "I'm a coach" or "I'm a teacher". We fix ourselves into these little boxes, confusing our identity with a feeling, an illness, or an occupation.
We are not nouns. We are verbs - constantly evolving and changing beings. Quite literally in fact. On a cellular level, you are not the same collection of cells you were when you woke up this morning; in fact, our entire bodies regenerate themselves every 7 years or so. You've experienced and learnt things today that you didn't yesterday so your neural pathways are different.
"I am" fixes us in place. What would it be like to be more specific with our verbs? I feel sad (or I notice sadness) rather than I am sad. I work as a coach rather than I am a coach. Let's be a little more picky about how we identify ourselves - be more intentional about using "I am" and see what happens.
Use more verbs than "I am" to describe yourself
Final Thoughts
What I notice in all these changes is that they invite me to put my big-girl-pants on and adult in my own life. There’s a part of me that hates that idea and doesn’t want to have to figure life out. And I know that’s not the part I want running my life. So let’s start taking responsibility for our language and stop undermining ourselves before we even get started.