How powerful are our words?

As I was riding my peloton this morning, I was thinking about the power of our words, whether it is with our spouse, kids, pets, or even ourselves.

We’ve all heard the saying that “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But is that really true?

 I don’t believe it’s true, as I’ve seen words affect not only how a person feels, but how they perceive the various events around them. For instance, if I was kind and spoke uplifting words to you, chances are it would make you feel good about yourself, but on the other hand, if I was degrading and spoke negatively towards you, most likely you may feel sad or even angry.

How many of you have had a colleague or a family member look at you and say “You look tired. Are you sure that you’re feeling OK?” If you’re not careful, you may begin to unknowingly receive and dwell on that thought and next thing you know, you’re going to find yourself with a full-blown sickness.  

I have learned a lot about communication, especially the power of my words over the past 26.5 years of marriage. Early on in our marriage, my tongue would frequently get me in trouble until I learned some very important life lessons. 

I recall one situation in particular. At that time, my husband and I had been married for less than two years and we had been living in Northern California. It was Super Bowl Sunday, and we were over at some friend’s house for the game. Shortly after halftime, I got this incredibly painful headache, which felt a little like a migraine. Thirty minutes into it, I could barely stand the pain and my husband ended up taking me home so that I could rest. I told him that I was fine with him going back so that he could finish watching the game, and he did. He said that he would be back right after the game. After he left, I laid down, but the pain was too immense, and so I called my girlfriend, who was hosting the party, to see if she had something for migraines and as it turned out she did. My husband said that he would bring it home with him right after the game.

Shortly after the game was supposed to be done, I started looking at the clock and thought to myself “OK, you can do this. He’ll be home soon so you can take the meds and sleep.” An hour later, he still wasn’t home, and I started to get a bit irritated, thinking to myself “OK, he knows that I have this terrible headache and that I need to take something for it. I know that he loves me, so maybe something happened?”  I then began getting a little concerned, so I called him. He picked up and he was still at our friend’s house. At this point, I reminded him of the pain that I was in. He said that he’d be right home. At that time, we were only living about five minutes away from our friend’s house, so I thought, 10 minutes more and he will be home. By the time the 10 minutes past, I was fuming and began to think about what I’d say to him as soon as I laid eyes on him. He finally walked in the door. I promised myself that I would calmly ask him how the game was, take the meds and then find out why it took him so long to return home after the game.

As soon as he came in the door, and he called out to me, I became even more annoyed, as I felt like he didn’t care that I was sitting here in pain while he was watching the game and having fun with his friends. I’d like to say that I behaved wisely and kept my promise, but I didn’t. My anger took over and I started yelling at him (very similar to how I saw my parents act towards one another when they were upset). He waited until I was done ranting and calmly said only thing to me which was “When you can talk to me in a calm and respectful manner, I’ll be in the next room” and then he left. I was dumbfounded and felt a little like I had been slapped in the face. I started talking to myself and saying, “Did he really just keep me waiting for the meds that I needed for my headache, and because I raised my voice slightly, tell me that he wouldn’t talk to me until I could be calm and respectful?” All I could say was hmmmmmmmmm. Then I began talking to God and asking Him what was wrong with my husband and how could he treat me this way, as he could have come home right after the game and given me the meds, but instead, he was putting me in my place. 

Then, sometime later, as I began to cool down a bit, I started thinking about it more and this thought came to my mind: that my husband has a pure heart, and he wouldn’t purposely try to hurt me. In fact, I didn’t give him an opportunity to explain. I just let my temper get the best of me. Just then I had an image of my mom and dad fighting and realized that I did exactly what I had seen them do numerous times growing up. I also realized that it wasn’t just my thoughts, but God speaking to me. He, along with my husband, used this situation to put an end to what could’ve been a repeatable pattern in our lives. 

I learned a few things from this situation: First, If I am upset about something (especially if I’m not feeling well), the best thing I can do is to 

step away from the situation, pray about it, and allow myself to calm down before I open my mouth to speak. I was also reminded of the verse in the Bible that talks about how potent our words can be. It is in the book of Proverbs chapter 18, verse 21: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Second, although my husband was and continues to be the kindest man I know, it doesn’t mean he’s a doormat. He deserves my respect and dealing with him in a calm and loving manner, regardless of the circumstance. He deserves for me to choose my words and speak, caring words, in the midst of sadness or anger.

As I was looking into importance of our words, I came across a book called Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins, an author and motivational speaker. I have yet to read it, but I have heard that it is about the concept of Transformational Vocabulary, which is that our words shape how we feel and how we act towards ourselves and others.

I was also reminded of the famous rice experiment (The rice experiment - Mind The Solution), conducted by Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese researcher and certified alternative medicine doctor. Dr. Emoto spent many years, studying and researching how human thoughts and intentions could alter physical reality. I won’t go into the specific details, but in this famous rice experiment, he demonstrates the power of negative and positive words, finding that speaking negatively to rice in water overtime caused decay, and speaking positively over time allowed it to thrive. I’ve heard about skeptics who think that the experiment was flawed; however, the result was that water was affected by the powerful words spoken to it (and possibly emotions toward it.) Given this, shouldn’t we be kinder to ourselves and others, as words are more powerful than we think?