LANGUAGE, BELIEFS AND PEOPLE’S IMPRESSIONS.

There is no way around it – you are what you believe and what you believe dictates your behaviour. Language is a part of that behaviour and will reflect those beliefs. Some of you may already think that this is ‘wishy washy’ stuff and doesn’t apply to you but it’s what drives you – it’s personally important and in business it’s absolutely critical.

I believe that the outcomes you experience are a result of the decisions and actions you have taken. The responsibility and accountability is with you. To maximise your effectiveness be clear about where you want to get to, and where you are now.

All those decisions and actions you have taken are based on the beliefs you have and we all have them, positive and negative. We have gathered them from a number of places and people, sometimes without knowing it, other times accepting them gladly. The process started as soon as you were born and has continued ever since. Remember the time someone told you that you couldn’t do ‘something’ and after being told so often you came to ‘accept’ their view as actual fact? Or perhaps you have always been told from an early age how well you have done something and continue to be good at it without doubt. These are ‘given’ beliefs and ones, which you didn’t realise at the time, you chose to accept. Even now we hold onto some of these beliefs for no other reason than we ‘just’ have them and believe we ‘can’t’ do anything about them. Why does this happen?

It is human nature to notice anything that acts as evidence to support our beliefs (negative and/or positive) and to ‘screen out’ anything that may contradict them. Consequently, once a set of beliefs have been accepted and embedded, the process of evidence gathering concentrates purely on supporting those beliefs. Part of the reason for this is that humans are selection and deletion creatures. We don’t have the capacity to take in every single piece of information that is available to us in any given second. Therefore, we accept the pieces we want and delete those we think are irrelevant.This selection/deletion process allows us to take decisions and make choices. However, those choices and decisions are based on the selection/deletion criteria we have set, criteria set on our beliefs.

Let’s look at the effect of a negative belief. You’re given the opportunity to do a presentation to a group of fellow business people – what’s your first reaction? It depends on your previous experience and how often you’ve done them before. However, you may be someone who has the fear of speaking in public as the number one fear of all fears (Book of Lists, Irving Wallace). The fear of dying is number seven and over 41% of people have some fear or anxiety about speaking in front of groups.

There maybe a number of reasons for this. Someone once told you were rubbish at reading out loud in class – another pupil, a teacher perhaps? After the shock of being told this at the time you then had to do it again later, what happened?

Because you believed what you had been told you started to worry about it. You developed sweaty palms, felt an accelerated heart rate, suffered memory loss and even experienced difficulty in breathing all of which meant that your next performance was either the same as, or even worse than the last time. Even though no one ‘really’ said anything about how poor it was, you ‘knew’ it was rubbish. You collected evidence from the looks on other people’s faces, the reaction from the teacher, your own view(exaggerated by your body’s reaction) as well as anything else you could find. You had gathered all the evidence you needed to support your new belief that you were rubbish at reading out loud. You deleted any ‘good’ feedback from those around you, a smile perhaps, a nodding head, all designed to be supportive were either ignored by you or misinterpreted by you just to prove you right. Since then you have done absolutely everything possible to get out of presenting in public. The times you have had to do such a presentation you experienced all the symptoms you had before. At each stage your selection criteria was working overtime.

What you have is a really nice and well established ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. What better way to create a damaged level of confidence. The thing is you believe that you CAN’T do anything about it (you can replace the above example with your own – it’s still meaningful). If you have this type of belief and you also believe that your business depends on you ‘selling’ by presentation I can predict that you’re stressed a lot of the time, although you may not really know why. The reason is simple – you have a significant conflict between some of your beliefs.

What can you do about solving a beliefs conflict? One area to begin to consider is language. If you have a negative set of external words it can imply that you have a set of internally negative beliefs. Certain words are destructive and undermining whilst others are empowering and motivating. Some imply you have no control over your life whilst others make it clear that you always have choice. The negative words identify a level of internalised pain whereas the more positive words identified a level of power.

In her book ‘Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway’, Susan Jeffers suggests that by changing your language, you can move from Pain to Power. Here are some examples:

I can't I won't
I should I can and I will
It's not my fault I'm totally responsible
It's a problem It's an opportunity
I'm never satisfied I want to learn and grow
Life's a struggle Life's an adventure
I hope I know
If only Next time
What will I do? I know I can handle it
It's terrible It's a learning experience

It’s a learning experienceFor me there are others, the word TRY for example. TRY says ‘try in vain’, ‘attempt and fail’ and ‘not bothered’. Saying what you will do rather than what you will try to do is a more positive way of conditioning your thoughts to create the reality that you want to achieve. It gives a sense of Self-pity which gets you nowhere. You cannot rewrite history. Take the view “Today I learnt… so next time I will.........” This builds a more positive belief at the expense of the negative. “Can’t” is an unassertive word. “Can’t” is a self-doubt word implying you have no control over your life. It assumes you have no choices. Either you can and you will, or you choose not to. The more times you say “Can’t” the lower your self-esteem goes.

Other words to eliminate: IF, BUT, PERHAPS, NEVER, ALWAYS If it’s one thing I want you to remember is:

“TRY NOT. DO OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY.” Master Yoda

Here is another aspect to think about. Somebody says to you “don’t look now, but….” What happens? Can you feel your head starting to turn, to do exactly the thing you have just been asked not to do? Our subconscious brain doesn’t recognise negative words like ‘don’t’. What happens when I say ‘don’t think of a blue monkey’ – what happens? You thought of the blue monkey. What happens if you use it in some advertising, i.e. ‘Don’t drink and drive’. How effective is that?

You will have recognised some of the words you use and I can guarantee that other people you talk to will also have noticed, albeit, subconsciously. This is what forms part of the ‘first impression’ response. So what impression is it you want to give?

What course of action do you now take? Identify what BELIEFS are getting in your way and DECIDE to CHANGE them NOW. We can, or more specifically YOU can CHOOSE right now to keep, amend or delete any belief you have which you find is unhelpful to you. How? DECIDE to change it now and do something about it!

To summarise - beliefs are the things that drive you. We can see what they are because they form the basis of our behaviour which everyone can see. A key part of that behaviour is language. The words we use can show what our beliefs are which form part of the impression people have of us – what do you want that impression to be?

Peter Mackechnie