The power of words
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 01 Mar 2005, 9:15 PM - 1 Comment
Have you ever been deeply hurt by someone telling you something or
talking something about you? We all have experienced that feeling some
time or the other. How do you handle these things?
One of my mentors suggested an approach that has worked well for me over the years. Here is the concept in a nutshell.
Whenver we feel bad because someone said something to us or something
about us, the important thing to remember is that the words themselves
have no power. They are a bunch of words nothing else. The power is
actually given to those words by our conscious choice. Suppose the same
words were spoken by a stranger or a lunatic, immediately we dismiss
what we heard and strip off all the power from those words. The problem
comes when we hear this from someone that is close to us. Instantly, we
load these words with more power than required. Worse, when we
misinterpret what we heard, we can make our life a mess as the person
who spoke may not even know the kind of impact he or she has caused in
our lives.
I am not saying that you should never get upset with anyone whatever they say. All I want to share is that we need to be aware of the fact that - at all times we choose to give the power to any words that we hear. Words themselves have no power.
Related Articles:- Where is the leverage?
- Blast from the past: My favorite posts Feb-Mar 2005
- Just being nice is NOT enough
- The power is in the interpretation
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Anonymous on June 11th, 2006
Rajesh:
I continue to follow your blog and I love it! Just wanted to say how powerful your article was on the power of words. You’re absolutely right how we can attach importance to the power of words spoken by someone close to us and how we can CHOOSE the way spoken words are interpreted, especially if they were hurtful. Believe me, I’ve had people say hurtful things and I know how easy it is to dwell on what was said.
What I do is pray for that person and I send energy of light and love to that person over and over again until I no longer feel betrayed by the words spoken to me. My problem is I tend to let the situation fester and churn in my head until it is out of control, something I know hurts me more than the person.
For example, I wrote a post in my blog about my experience at a barbershop because of something that happened on a recent visit. You can read more about it by going to: http://adversityuniversity.blogspot.com/
The barber may not have been a personal friend and I know he won’t yet I let his words affect me for several days. It was through the power of prayer for that man that enabled me to let go in peace.
Thanks for sharing Rajesh.
Stephen