The Power of Vocabulary - Leverage Words To Affect How You Feel
The words you use affect how you feel, think, and act. Choose wisely!
I hope this finds all 91 of you well! If you enjoy reading this newsletter share it with others who you think would value being an early adopter of this growing community of humans looking to thrive!
Words have an extraordinary effect over how you feel. You're going to have to bear with me on this one but it is crazy that the words you choose on a daily basis will actually have a meaningful effect on how you feel in real time. I came across this idea of “Transformational Vocabulary” in Tony Robbins book "Awaken the Giant Within" (I know, the title is a bit much, but there is a lot of great stuff in there).
When I first read this I was wildly excited to try it because its so easy to put into practice. No giant commitment, no long term habit you have to stick to, no awkward or vulnerable new experience that requires you to muster up courage. Just focus on the words you use and experiment with new ones.
Before diving into stuff you can try, I want to walk through what I've learned about why the words you choose affects how you feel.
Words Are Made Up
At the end of the day, words are made up abstractions that we use to represent the world and how we experience the world. This was an important concept for me to grasp and one that, for me, was not super intuitive to understand at first.
When you look at a table, for example, the word table is made up, the only thing that is real is the fact that there is a structure in front of you, its got four things that hold it up and the surface is flat. Words and ideas such as - "table", "that table is pretty", "that table makes me happy" - are tools we use to represent what we see in the world and how we experience the world.
This idea is obvious at first but it's not one that I was conscious of in my day to day life - i.e. we are actively choosing our words and our choices are not always objective.
When I realized that words were abstractions used to represent our experience I wondered what is real about our experience in life and how do I make sure that what I say is congruent with what I am experiencing?
We Experience Life Through A Multitude Of Senses
We all know about the five senses and at any given point in time they are taking in the world around us. What I see, hear, taste, touch, and smell actively brings in information into my body and the way my body interprets that information is through a feeling. The way my mind makes sense of those feelings is through words and ideas.
Multiple Ways to Take In Information, One Way To Express It
What I found crazy as I thought about this is that you have all these tools that bring in information - ears, eyes, mouth, touch, and nose but you only have one tool for how to organize that information, interpret it, and share it with others. That tool broadly speaking is language.
Sensing is Innate, Language Is Learned
As I reflected on this, I realized that I think in English, but I was not born knowing English. I was born with sight, with hearing, with taste, with smell, and with touch, but I was not born with the language to translate those sensations into something I can use to communicate my experience. That is something you learn as you grow up.
The Words We Use Are Imperfect Descriptors of Our Experience
I reflected on the process of how we experience and make sense of our experience. First, we take in information through different senses, then often times that information makes us feel a certain way, we then interpret that information and feeling through language, and the language we use is made up.
I realized that expressing how I feel and how I experience the world rests on two things:
The Language Exists - Language is made up and its used to communicate amongst a huge portion of people. As a result, it is of course going to be imperfect in capturing how every individual experiences each moment.
My Interpretation of What I Feel - We actively choose how to interpret the way we're feeling and our experience through our choice of words. Our choice of words is subjective. For example, when I go to a restaurant I can choose to describe my meal as good, incredible, decadent, satisfying, etc. There are many interpretations for that one experience and they are all trying to capture a feeling I have.
This blew my mind because it helped me realize that words are imperfect and our choice of words are not absolute.
For those of you that are more in touch with what you feel (i.e. unlike myself who has often had the emotional nuance or understanding of a brick) this might be obvious. However, for me, it has made me more thoughtful and careful with my word choice as well as cognizant that often times words will just not be sufficient to express what I'm feeling.
Choosing Our Experiences
Once I realized that words are made up and as a result can sometimes be an imperfect tool to represent our experiences it became more obvious that I am actively choosing how to interpret what I experience.
With this in mind, I started paying attention to the words I use and the words the people in my life use. What shocked me was there was a huge correlation between the words I chose and how those words make me feel.
Here are some examples of how this showed up in my life and in the lives of the people around me.
Words I Was Using
Scenario: Isabella would ask me to do something in a certain way.
Common responses I would have:
Thought: “Why does Isabella have to try and control everything”
Response To Isabella: “I don't like when you try control what I'm doing”
The effect of this is three-fold.
My Interpretation is Made Up - I'm interpreting Isabella's request as an attempt to control me, which is a made up idea. The only thing that actually happened is she asked me to do something in a certain way. This idea of her exerting control is something I've made up.
Made Myself Feel Worse With How I Chose To Interpret Her Words - I now feel like she's trying to control me because that is how I chose to interpret what was said to me and feeling controlled does not feel good. A whole bunch of other words pop up with that one - caged, restrained, not trusted, no ability to be independent, etc. Pretty quickly I start to feel "constrained".
Make Isabella Feel Worse With How I Chose To Interpret Her Words - I've now made Isabella feel worse because I made a judgement on how she was acting vs. simply noting what she did and how it made me feel.
The takeaway here - the words I pick determine how I experience what is happening, how I feel, and how the other person feels. The funny thing is as we talked about it we noticed that Isabella did the same thing with me. The word she would choose for me was obsessive. Here she was commenting on a tendency of mine to pour all of myself into the thing I am excited about. However, being called obsessive, in my opinion, was not a picture of myself I enjoyed or agreed with, and so it made me feel “irrational”, "crazy", "erratic", "self-centered" - all of which did not feel good.
As we started to pay attention to our own words we became more aware of how other people chose theirs.
Words I Noticed Other People Using
Some examples of words my loved ones were choosing that typically made them feel worse:
I'm completely lost and don't know what to do with my life
I feel like I've hit rock bottom
She is driving me mad
Those people are *&$(%)#
The common theme here is people were actively choosing to interpret their experience a certain way and I noticed that some people consistently chose different words than others - i.e. some people leaned negative, some people leaned more positive and gentle. This is anecdotal so take this bit with a grain of salt but the people that were kinder with their vocabulary generally seemed to be in a better mood than the ones that were not.
Some examples of words my loved ones were choosing that typically made them feel better:
I've hit a a slight snag, or a bump.
He has been a tad challenging to talk to
They have been oddly silent in following up
Before diving into the science behind how words make us feel - even just repeating those phrases to myself it was clear that the second choice of words made me feel better. With that in mind, I wanted to understand the science of what makes that happen.
A Use Case: Words Affected Patient Recovery
Norman Cousins, an American political journalist, author, and professor was an advocate for positive thinking as a means of creating more resilience in patients, believing it could markedly improve the betterment of illness.
In one of his research studies with UCLA, Cousins worked with cancer patients to understand how patients' thinking and mental attitudes affected their illness. His studies found that a patient's sense of well-being could positively affect the function of their immune system and the production of T-Cells in fighting cancer.
Cousins was a pioneer in the space of positive thinking and its effects on health as there was little research and evidence at the time of how thoughts could affect well-being. After Cousins' own battle with illness and his documentation of how he used laughter and positive thinking as therapies for his recovery, tons of research into the link between positive thinking/positive emotion and well-being followed.
Since then - the links between the nonphysical (thoughts and words), disease, and the functioning of our vital systems have been validated. Thoughts and emotions affect our ability to recover from the flu, the course of cancer, and our likelihood to have a heart attack to name a few examples.
The Science of Words
The bottom line is words have the power to affect your well-being and they do this by affecting your brain anatomy and biochemistry. This idea is flushed out by Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, and Mark Robert Waldman, a communications expert, in their book “Words Can Change Your Brain.”
Here are some key takeaways:
Negative Words Make You Feel Worse Both In the Short and Long Term - When you use more negative words your brain releases stress and anxiety producing hormones in the moment they are used. Additionally, studies show that people who engage in more consistent negative self-talk (i.e. using negative words to describe yourself, actions, and experiences) experience more long term anxiety.
Positive Words Improve Cognition And Well-Being - Conversely, the consistent use of positive words has a number of different effects such as boosting your cognitive functioning, driving you to take more action, and influencing your view of self and others (positively) over time.
Your Words Change Your Brain Structure - The words you use will literally change pathways in your brain so these effects and ways of thinking are more natural as well as change the structure of your thalamus, which scientists believe affect the way in which you perceive reality.
So our word choice becomes an incredibly important component of our well-being and something we should pay close attention to. When you start to pay attention to your words you start to have fun and get creative with what words to use.
What Words Should We Use?
In Tony Robbins' book “Awaken The Giant Within” he points out that the english language has about 170,000 working words. The average Americans knows about 20,000 and college educated Americans know about 40,000. Of those, there are about 5,000 words that are used regularly in day to day conversation. It's fascinating to think that we use only .2% of the words available to us in our day to day. What limited range!
It takes practice to expand your range but its something that is possible and fun to do. For example, Isabella and I thought about what words we wanted to use to substitute controlling and obsessive - when we described each others behavior.
I now tell Isabella that she is - optimizing and she lets me know that I am passionate. This is 1) nicer to hear and 2) funny for both of us. As a result of that we've been more careful and playful with the language we use with each other, ourselves, and the people in our life. When it comes to expanding your range there are a couple of approaches that can help:
Cultivate awareness over words you're using & how they make you feel
Transform existing words into ones that make you feel better and use modifiers to heighten or soften intensity of feelings
Expand your vocabulary range
An example of all three of these in action is when someone in my life was on the job hunt and used words that made them feel bad. They would say things like:
Previous Vocabulary
"I'm so lost"
"I'm not qualified or experienced enough"
"I keep getting ignored."
When we would catch up we talked about how the job hunt was tough and what they were having a hard time with. As we continued to talk, I could not help but ask what made them describe their experience in the way they were describing it. As a result of that prompt, we started to discuss words and the power they had over how people feel. Soon after this person got curious and decided to experiment with their own words to see the effect it could have on how they felt. They started to say things like
Empowering Vocabulary
"I'm on the hunt or I'm searching" - which was more action oriented, concentrated power with them, and was a more positive interpretation.
"It's an ambitious application or it'll stretch my abilities" - which helped them visualize the challenge and what it would take to overcome it.
"I'm sensing they have a lot going on and they might need me to reach back out or I'm excited and want to talk to them again" - which again placed agency with them on reaching back out.
The words never changed the reality but it changed that persons interpretation of their reality. This in turn affected how they felt, which affected how they thought, which in turn affected how they acted. We chatted again and they were fascinated with the effect - they felt more confident, more resilient to setbacks, and took things less personally, all in a matter of weeks!
To me, no matter how you spin it, that is a powerful effect and demonstrates the importance of choosing our words with care .
Next I'll dive into how I’ve applied these ideas to my day to day.
Awareness and Transforming Existing Words
My first step was just to pay attention to what I was saying and how it made me feel.
Next, as I started to find words that affected how I felt negatively and affected the people in my life negatively I started to brainstorm how to change those words. I found an amazing word chart (source) that gave me inspiration to transform the words I use regularly into better ones.
Now, anytime I am not thrilled with a particular word I have fun figuring out what word might suit me and my experience more completely.
Use Modifiers
Another thing you can experiment with is if you want to soften or heighten the intensity of how certain words make you feel experiment with using modifiers.
Soften Intensity Examples
I'm a tad irked
I'm a bit disappointed
That was slightly challenging
I'm a touch confused
Heighten Intensity Examples
I'm extremely excited
I have an abundance of energy
I'm really jazzed
Expanding Vocab Range
Another move I've started to experiment with is looking up words and expanding my vocab range of positive ones. Here is an example word chart you can play with that I got inspiration from
Pick Your Words Wisely
It's pretty amazing how words affect how you feel. I want to caveat everything we've talked through with I am by no means advocating that you should avoid feeling certain emotions - only that you play an active role in shaping how you feel with how you interpret your experience.
There are plenty of times when being frustrated or sad or bewildered align with how you’re feeling and are useful to express.
What I am advocating is that we get to choose how we feel by how we interpret our experiences. Consciously making those decisions gives you enormous power over how different experiences make you feel and what you choose to take away from them.
As a result, pay attention and choose with care!
Feedback Time 😁 - Share Your Thoughts & Journals!
Would love your feedback (two questions only!) so I can better tailor this newsletter to you all in the future → Feedback Form
Lastly, if you enjoyed this newsletter you can use the link at the bottom to easily share it with others that you think would like it as well.
To Living Well,
Alvaro
Weekly Live Well Recs
Read of the week 📖: Awaken the Giant Within: Transformational Vocabulary (Chapter 9) - By Tony Robbins