Here’s to words that save you when the world is on fire

Ever notice how you feel more connected to certain words, like they belong to you?

For me, words like books, bread, and reading feel like home. We’ve known each other all my life, and they feel as comfortable and natural as breathing.

Your words can be someone’s name, or your favorite place. It’s like a homing signal; your ears perk up even when you hear them in a crowd, like when your child says ‘Mom!‘ in a room full of people and you tune in and turn toward it on reflex.

Some of your words might trigger deep emotions. If you’ve seen what Marty McFly does when he hears the word chicken, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Mom.

Dad.

Paris.

The Beatles.

Introvert.

We all have our words that stir something deep within us, bring a sense of comfort or joy, or just feel like they’re OURS.

Words like DMV, taxes, or Pluto? Perhaps not so much. It’s not easy to love the DMV.

The call of the dark

On the shadow side, there are words you might be intimately familiar with that fire up your darker emotions.

NO.

Divorce.

Failure.

Career.

Eggplant.

Far from comfort or joy, these incite fear, self-judgement, or anger. I know people who quiver in rage at the mere suggestion of eggplant.

When your words trigger these dark or negative emotions, they do so because you’ve had them in your mental and emotional vocabulary for years. Like water over a rock, decades of use creates grooves and channels that now feel like instinct.

Sitting in those deep grooves, we forget that in a world of so many words, we can replace the ones that makes us feel less-than and make new, better words our own. We can use them to build bridges over and across those very grooves where we stall in despair or hold back from our true potential.

Or we can entirely change what they mean to us.

Foreign affairs

I didn’t learn words like empower, grit, or resilience till much later in life. They just weren’t on my radar, and their frequency was low. Only recently have I come to understand how powerful, capable, bridge-building, ME-building these words can be.

Words like these don’t feel like they’re yours compared to those you’ve heard, or told yourself, most of your life.

Can a few years of hearing resilient stand up to decades of your mind chanting inadequate?

Can a handful mentions of the word creative go up against a lifetime of not good enough?

Capable vs impossible.

Try vs why bother.

Failure (normal) vs failure (I’ll lose everything and everyone will hate me).

These better-for-you words often feel like they’re in a language that’s too foreign or not yours or too distant to ever be yours. They don’t stand a chance becoming part of your internal vocabulary, part of YOU.

At first.

But they will if you:

– use them more often, even if they don’t feel yours . . . yet.

– get to know them, slowly, surely, meaningfully. This takes time.

– use them on purpose. This takes intention.

– become friends before something more. This takes patience.

Like in any good relationship, it takes time, effort, and frequency before things feel familiar and your understanding goes deeper.

And before you know it, words that once felt distant and strange begin to feel like good friends.

Friends who have your back when times are tough.

Friends that encourage you to reach higher.

Friends who lift you up when you’re feeling down.

The elements of home

These better-for-you words become your new language, helping you shift the lens with which you see the world.

These words—now yours—can help you evolve and expand, re-frame your limitations and take you further.

Can’t? I think you mean you did.

Go hug a new word that lifts you up today, and make it your own.