Watch What You Say
“Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.”
In my line of work, I often get to hear the thoughts of senior leaders. Quite often when they are unhappy, they say things like “I had enough of this place, I need to leave, I want to do something else.” And they say it quite often and after a while it becomes an unconscious habit they get into where they can only see what’s not working about their work.
I happen to believe that if you hold a thought long enough and speak about that thought often enough, you give it power to make it a reality. I have seen this happen so often that now when I hear people making these types remarks it sets off alarm bells in my head. And I worry for the individual who is saying it… And I often ask him or her “Are you ready to leave this job now?” “Do you have a clear idea of what you would like to do when you leave this job?” ”Can you do without this work or income now?”
Most often, the answers I get are vague, and that’s understandable. It’s not easy to leave what you are doing unless you are clear about what you are going to do next.
But I have one big problem with the way most people make career or job changes – if they spend most of their energy fighting or resenting what they are doing now and speaking about it, they wont be able to create their future.
Our spoken word is powerful and each time we put our attention or energy on something negative, it shifts our whole being and attracts experiences to us that resonate with our idea of our current reality. So without knowing it, we are creating more of the same. This is why things spiral, when things go wrong, they keep going wrong…but it doesn’t have to be that way.
I often ask the people I work with to stop and take stock, to think about what they want, to carefully monitor their thoughts and words so that everything they put out into the world is focused on creating the reality they want and not what they don’t want.
Watch Your Thoughts
I also ask them to find one or two things they like about their current work and then slowly expand that feeling of gratitude for what is there in their life now – to change their dialogue to “I am thankful for the work I have and I attract many opportunities to me” “I am always at the right place at the right time” “exciting and fulfilling career opportunities are coming my way”.
Some people say that this is like lying to themselves, but it doesn’t have to be a lie – find one thing that is working and expand upon it. Everything cannot be all wrong; if we look hard enough we will find many things that are working for us.
I think many of us just say things without realising that our words hold power and that we are shaping our future with the words we speak.