How Your Words Impact Everything
On the surface, this may be more of a psychology topic but I have beliefs that it pertains to all aspects of your life; not the least of which is marketing and running a business.
Can anyone disagree with the following?
Your thoughts become your feelings. Your feelings become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your life.
It’s a gross oversimplification, sure. Are there steps I’m missing along the way? Do we sometimes loop around to certain stages and go back and forth a little? Of course. It’s not always linear.
But the point remains:
The way that you think dictates the way your life will turn out.
In his book Think & Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill argues that the very first part of being successful (er, rich, in his mind) is getting into the proper mindset. It is believing that you can be successful that will be the first step towards being successful.
Full disclosure: I stopped reading this book after 50 pages because I started to feel like it was too stupid, and too simple, to actually work.
See, we’re all looking for shortcuts to success (hence reading the book in the first place) and we often do what I did which is walked away from the book when it started to appear that hard work was the only thing that was actually going to work.
We don’t like that! We don’t like being told that:
Success is a byproduct of conscious effort.
And the conscious part of that equation is really important.
Side note: I also believe certain success are byproducts of opportunity and fortune, but I’m quite sure Napoleon Hill would argue that we will into existence these opportunities when we want them bad enough and we work hard enough for them.
So why, if thought and belief are so important, am I fixated on words being what we control?
Words are far easier to control than thoughts.
Agree?
And I believe that this sort of feedback loop happens where:
If we control the things we say aloud, we eventually control the thoughts that shape those words. And when we control our words and thoughts, we ultimately control our lives.
I know I know this sounds all very hocus-pocus and stupid but man oh man, I really believe it.
Confident Pricing
When I started shooting weddings, I was pricing my clients at $1500 - $2500 per wedding. I was nervous and inexperienced, so I started low and worked my way up (as we all do). Eventually, I was getting closer to the industry standard of $4000 or so per wedding, and the first few times I started charging those numbers, I was terrified it was going to backfire on me.
I was able to craft my website to appear confident but, when negotiating on-the-spot and face to face with my potential clients, I clammed up and would appear very nervous to talk numbers.
Sometimes, I was so nervous talking about numbers I would “forget” to mention it during our consultation and just talk about it in the follow up email!
I never had a client mention it, so I have no idea if it came across, but what I know to be true is that I thought, for sure, I was overcharging for what I was actually worth. And in any sort of “negotiation” talks with clients, I for sure did not exhibit confidence in myself or my services.
Thankfully, I don’t think it lost me very much business over the years. But I know for a fact that if those clients could hear my real thoughts about what we were discussing, they’d have lost a lot of confidence in me.
My thoughts were definitely shaping my ability to do my job; thankfully, because of the system itself, I was able to get away with it for a long time. But in many industries and for many people, you don’t have this safety net.
What We Don’t See
As a wedding photographer, I got very good at editing hundreds of photos in one big batch. Before exporting those photos and getting ready to return them to the client, I would always have my wife Leanne look through the gallery and seek out any flaws that I needed to address.
After she’d flipped through a gallery, I’d ask her specific questions about things I felt were subpar. “Did I include too many shots of X pose?" Did you notice I didn’t get a good enough shot of X? Do you think the lighting looks bad in this shot?”
Know what her response was 95% of the time?
“If you didn’t point it out, I never would’ve noticed it.”
Now, there are circumstances in life where we must point out our mistakes, or speak frankly about something, and address it properly. I am not denying that.
But what I am aiming to show with this illustration is that the way I saw something was rarely the way my wife saw it, and only after I spoke about something in a negative light did the other person see it negatively also.
The way we speak about things matters, and I encourage you to consider how the words you choose—and the thoughts you think—impact the way your life unfolds altogether.
The word “unfortunately” & subconscious messaging
I have a speech habit—as we all have speech habits—of using the word “unfortunately” a lot. I say it any time I fear I might be letting someone down by sharing something with them.
This started to become very apparent to me when I helped Old School Pizza Co. manage their social media profiles.
Old School has intentionally opted (at least as of the time I’m writing this) not to offer delivery from their store. There’s plenty of reasons why this independently owned and operated business has elected to do this, but it was still a common thing that customers would ask if we offered delivery.
I realized that if I used the word “unfortunately” when I said, “Unfortunately, we do not offer delivery”, I was sending a subliminal message that it was unlucky that they didn’t.
Why was this a problem?
This was a problem because Old School had intentionally chosen—for many different reasons—not to offer delivery. We believed the product was best served fresh, and anyone who had the means to drive would do so. It wasn’t an unfortunate or unlucky thing: it was a very conscious decision the owners had made knowingly. There was nothing to apologize for.
Soon thereafter, I stopped using the word “unfortunately” when I was responding to these inquiries. By stating more clearly and plainly, “No, we do not offer delivery”, there was a subliminal message being sent that this was intentional and not something we sought to change.
Did that make customers happy? It’s irrelevant. What we were aiming to do was show that we stand behind the decision, and we’re not sheepish about it. No, we do not offer delivery, and that is the end of the conversation.
What are you really saying?
I hope the point has been made here: the words we choose, and the words we choose not to use, have a gigantic impact on many, many different aspects of our lives.
Homework:
The next time I have to deliver bad news, is there any way I can use language that indicates it might not be so bad?
Have there been times in the past I’ve used language that caused someone to overreact and make the situation worse?
How do my thoughts affect my perception of events?
How might I express more wisdom and confidence by choosing my words carefully?
