As Good As One’s Words

The words we claim for ourselves hold power over how we think and how we act, in a manner more potent than what one is led to perceive.

A joint study by the Boston College and University of Houston revealed that people who say “I don’t” rather than “I can’t” are significantly more likely to repel temptation.

Saying no to something you want can be difficult. Somehow, diversions, temptations, laziness, impulses, habits, emotions, stress, cravings, longings, pressure, and other such factors may hinder you from outright declining an offer you know you should not accept.

“I can’t” and “I don’t” may be similar statements in terms of structure, but their meaning differs drastically. “I can’t” implies that we are constrained in some way, but saying “I don’t” is a more definitive, positive, and affirmative way of answering things. Where one croaks negativity, hesitance, and uncertainty, the other wields willpower and authority over one’s self.

It’s not a major change, but it’s always the slow, minor, and deliberate alterations that build up into something powerful in the long run.

Offering a closely related matter on words, David Sarwer, a psychologist and clinical director at the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania, uses a mirror as one of the earlier tools for his patients. He advises them to stand before a mirror and to use kinder, gentler language to comment on their bodies. For instance, instead of saying “My thighs are abominably huge and disgusting,” one should say “My thighs are large, larger than I’d like for them to be.”

The objective here is to delete “negative and pejorative terms” from self-talk, in this way the patients can positively and more accurately alter the way they look at themselves in their mind’s eye.

Physical appearance may change but if you repeatedly tell yourself you are not appealing or not enough, then you will get stuck in that cycle of negativity and inaccurate mental image. This is why there are people with eating disorders who cannot accept their bodies regardless of how much change they acquire physically. It may not always be the case but telling yourself you are ugly will somehow make you take your word for fact.

The words we use to refer to ourselves hold great influence over what will become of us.

In the end, we are as good as our words – not in terms of vocabulary and verbosity, but in terms of how we use them responsibly.