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Did you know that our words are one of the most powerful forces we possess? Words have the ability to build people up, give them pleasure, or destroy them. Sometimes we say words not realizing the impact they may have on others. If you look at the words below, you will understand:
                                                       You’re so smart.                  You’re a dim-wit.
                                                        You can do anything.       You can’t do anything.
                          You’re talented.                  You’re hopeless.
                              I love you.                            I don’t love you anymore.

You can easily feel the strength and power of the words on the left and feel the hurt and sting of those opposite—especially if you’ve heard them before.

Yet interestingly, it is the unspoken words that have the most underestimated power. Recently, I was visiting someone in the hospital. As I came around the corner, I heard the patient in the bed speaking to the nurse who was tending to his needs. He was talking about his daughter and how proud he was of her. He was telling the nurse that she had recently received her diploma for her PhD after seven years of hard work. She was the only person he knew who had travelled to the North Pole to work. She had also recently written a book, although he didn’t understand it; it was on his shelf at home. He added that she was the president of her own company and was extremely busy. He wanted to tell her and anyone else in the hospital how proud he was of his daughter.

As I came around the corner to visit my dad, I realized he was talking about me to the nurse. He looked up a bit confused and said, “there she is, my daughter.” I had tears in my eyes because, for all the years that I was growing up, my dad rarely told me he was proud of my accomplishments and hard work. Yet this day, while he was in his later years and in the hospital, I am hearing his words now. He has come home from the hospital and is now telling all his caregivers the same story. My mother told me he had repeated himself several times over the last few days. I was thinking of hiring him as my promotional agent.

As a note, I was not at the North Pole but in Resolute Bay, which when I showed him on the map, he said “the North Pole?” and the story has stayed that way.

This story took some meaning when I realized that we often do not say the things we want to those we love and admire. Often I hear the regret of people whose loved ones have passed on or left, and they wished they had told them that: they cared about them, loved them, were proud of them, missed them or were sorry.

Yet often, the words we do use are hurtful and wrong.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of our words as positive feedback. We are often quick to point out to someone when they have made a mistake. Sometimes we forget to acknowledge them when they do something right. Giving positive feedback can be a powerful tool for employee motivation, relationship building and team dynamics.

F. John Reh, Management Guide, as some tips on how to use it most effectively.

Do it now. Positive feedback is too valuable to let slide. Say something right away.
Make it public. While negative feedback should be given privately, positive feedback should be given publicly. Do it in front of as large a group as appropriate.
Be specific. Don’t just say, “Good job.” Instead, say something like, “That new procedure you developed for routing service calls has really improved our customer satisfaction. Thanks for coming up with it.”
Make a big deal out of it. You don’t want to assemble the entire company every time you give positive feedback, but do as much ceremony as the action warrants.
Consider the receiver. It is essential to consider the feeling of the person receiving the recognition. For a shy person, thanking them in front of their workgroup is probably most appropriate. For another person, you might hang a banner, balloons, and streamers in the department area.
Do it often. Don’t wait for the big successes. Celebrate the small ones too.
Do it evenly. Big successes need prominent recognition; small victories need smaller attention. If you throw a party for every little success, you diminish its effect on a big success.
Be sincere. Don’t praise someone for coming in on time. Don’t congratulate someone on just doing their job. People will see right through you. Really mean it when you give positive feedback.

We each have the responsibility to the people we care about, our employees and colleagues. Our words, our confirmation and our verification, may and can change the lives of the people around us. So tell them today, “That was a great job. I am proud of you. That was truly remarkable, and I would like to thank you”.

Remember: The words we use do make a difference.

Thinking positively can change your life, particularly if it is attached to goals that are both realistic and attainable.

Want to start using positive thoughts to achieve your life plan? Read on to learn how.

Start with identifying your short-and-long-term goals.

If we aren’t working toward accomplishing, achieving or acquiring something, it is difficult to stay focussed. The mind can wander and that’s when our frailties and vulnerabilities may set it. So, start with identifying goals that work toward achieving your life plan.

We need both short and long-term goals. Things we achieve in under a year help us feel better about what we are doing. It can help maintain focus. And, the confidence it gives us as we adapt and cope with little hiccups in pursuit of success factors into helping us stay positive.

Long term goals are what you achieve by realizing a series of short-term goals.

For example, if your short-term goal is to make more money, having a long-term goal to buy a house or take a once-in-a-lifetime vacation will help you remember why you are focussing on making money instead of chasing any of the distractions that life sends your way.

Keep goals that are value-based.

And remember, your goals don’t need to be things that you acquire. They can be reminders to help you live your life in a certain way. Perhaps you want to help your community. Then a short-term goal may be to research different groups that are helping your town or city in ways that inspire you. Another goal may be to join a group and become an active volunteer. A long-term goal tied to this may be to sit as a volunteer on the board of directors of the group that you choose.

The point is that the goals you make should be about what fulfills you: professionally, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Next, think positively by creating written affirmations tied to your goals.

Creating a written affirmation for your goals is essential.

How do you do it?

An example is setting the amount of money you want to make in your life. It is important that you set a specific amount in a timeline. I would suggest you make this statement as to the value that you are willing to create in the world in return for the money you will receive. Money is simply payment rendered for other people. Money is simply energy, which needs to flow. Money is the form of currency given to you by the universe for the amount of value and goodness that you offer to others.

The more value you create for others, the more money will be available to you. Experience has shown that to be fully capable, self-suggestion or affirmations should be; brief and positive. If they are too long, they will not be effective, and they need to be positive, which is essential. The saying “say as you mean it” is vital.

How to make changes in your life.

Another way to imprint powerful change within yourself is to repeat single words frequently. Words that work for me are enthusiastic, knowledgeable, curious, positive, imaginative, confident, persistent, energetic, dependable, and astute. I have done this before by using strong and powerful words repeatedly in my journal just to imprint them within my consciousness. If you pick a word that describes the characteristics, you want to strengthen in yourself, repeat the word throughout the day. Alternatively, affirm, “I am ___________”. This has been a very effective technique. Make a list of the qualities you would like to develop more fully using or adding to the above list of words. I choose the qualities I need to work on the most. Working on one at a time, starting with the weakest, is a plan that has worked for me.

Our thoughts do materialize.

Our lives are becoming the dominant reflection of our inner image and our regular thoughts. This is why it is so important we pay attention to the quality of our thinking. Only human beings can think about their thinking. We can write about the quality, the thinking processes, and then reflect on the calibre of our thoughts. In doing so, we can then commit to making changes and creating new ways of thinking. If you focus on what is not working in your life, you are literally blocking all things you want to enter your life. If you are focusing on all the negatives in your life, you are living in the past.

By doing so, you are failing to remain open to the present. When you are worried about what is not working in your life, brooding over the past mistakes, you are not living in the present. The present is where the possibilities live. Therefore, if you are not open to the present, you are missing the opportunities to live your best life. However, we need to learn from our mistakes. Spend a little bit of time in the past time trying to figure out what needs to be improved but then moving on.

We need to remember that we cannot move that car forward with one eye stuck in the rearview mirror. Every moment is a new opportunity to recreate your life and to achieve your highest possibilities.

Remember, what you focus on expands.

I believe that what we focus on in our lives grows and what we think about all day long expands. The more you pay attention to what is not working, the more your life somehow does not work, and on the other hand, the more you pay attention to the gifts and blessings that are within your days, the more those kinds of things seem to appear with greater frequency. That is really what appreciation is all about.

If you look at a painting, for example, you can appreciate it. Meaning that it goes up in value for us and the more we can appreciate all the good things that are in our lives; like other people, where we are, our victories, our struggles and what those have made of us, the more they will grow in value in our life as a whole. It is so easy to let the insufficiencies going on and the struggles we face in our lives to allow those to dominate our days and interfere with our positive state of mind.

How do you cope through the tough times.

If you are going through a tough time, I am not suggesting you just need to think positively. “Think positively, and everything will go away” because that is more denial and denial is not just a river in Egypt (humour).

Denial is something that is very unhealthy, and those wounds that we often stuff deep down within ourselves and swallow in the form of denial by not acknowledging what is true is a very harmful thing to do, and it only leads to greater dissatisfaction. I think that anyone who suggests all we need to do is wish that things were better and go into a positive way of thinking is giving ineffective coaching.

If you are going through a tough time, whether it is an illness, dealing with an accident, moving through a divorce or dealing with financial issues, it is healthy to feel the feelings that surround those experiences because that is reality. There is Nothing more detrimental than bottling up all those emotions that want to come out; that want to surface and putting on a happy face to the world instead.

Adjust and pivot to keep balance.

Life is a balance. It is a balance between authentically moving through feelings if you are facing a struggle and, at the same time, remembering that you cannot move that car forward with one eye stuck in the rearview mirror. It is a balanced process in the sense that once you have completed the feelings and have moved through them, a time will come where you must exercise personal responsibility and move ahead with your life.

Experience your feelings to live a robust life.

There is a difference between feeling through your feelings, which is very genuine, and wallowing in your feelings, which is staying stuck in the past. Making it a daily practice to stay focused on what you want in life and what is working in your life is essential.

Every moment that you focus on what you do not want in your life, you need to remember you are blocking what you do want from being present.

Wise men and philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed about many things, but they are unanimously in agreement on one point: “We become what we think about.” Emerson said, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.” The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius put it this way, “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.” William James said, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” In the Bible, we find, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

In his book, Success! The Glenn Bland Method, Charlie Jones writes, “Since ‘we become what we think about,’ then it is most vital that we carefully regard our thought patterns. This is one of the most potent natural laws in the universe. You will find this law to be a two-edged sword, a natural law that can lead a man to a life of inner peace, wealth, enlightenment and physical well-being and a law that can lead him into the gutter, into a life of misery. How the law works for you depends on how you use it, for good or for evil, the choice is yours. Never forget that you live in a world of cause and effect, for every action there is a reaction.”

Adjust your plan

There is a need to have a blueprint present of our lives, which is an incredibly important strategy, a plan of action for the extraordinary life you are committed to creating. Having a plan allows us to direct our energies, stay focused and channel the best within ourselves to make wiser choices and speed us along to our goals much more quickly.

A vital aspect of reaching your potential and creating success in your life is not to allow your failures to defeat you. Many successful people have had failures, sometimes many. Most people never reach success because they give up after one or two setbacks. Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich recounts a story of a miner who gave up after months of prospecting, three feet from the gold. Nevertheless, he applied this lesson to everything in his life after that and eventually became very successful.

In conclusion, a quote from Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

The Power of Our Words