the things we say.

We have a common saying in English, it's something that parents often say to children:


"If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all."
I can't tell you how many times I heard that as a kid. It basically means don't complain, don't gossip, don't... say anything unpleasant. Only say nice things. And if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all. Yes, there's nice repetition for you.

When I was in university, I kind of did an experiment. I decided that for one whole week, I would actually follow this advice. I did this in the middle of a Florida summer. I guess Florida summers are no worse than Tokyo summers. Really hot and humid. So anyway, it was really hard not to complain! So many times I wanted to say, "Agh!! It's SO HOT!" Or I wanted to complain about a coworker (this was in Florida, of course I don't complain about any of my coworkers now:). A lot of things really. But every time I thought of something negative to say I had to stop myself. And you know what? It was a very quiet week for me.

It was incredible really. Until doing this "exercise" I didn't realize how negative I was, and how much I complained. During that time, I also became really sensitive to the negative comments from others. It's amazing how much everyone complains really. BUT, by the end of the week, do you know that I actually stopped thinking of complaints to make? I was naturally saying many more positive things than before. And the craziest thing happened, the heat actually started bothering me less, among other things.

I think that our words really have a lot of power over us. If we constantly complain about the world, I think the world actually becomes a worse place for us (and the poor souls around us who have to listen). Our words create the environment that we live in. I really think that our words kind of control us. That might sound crazy; most people would say that we control our words. I think we can if we try, but most people don't. Here's how I think it works. I just drew that on paint☺. You could arguably add some more steps in the process, other things are constantly contributing to that flow, but those are the important parts. Those are the parts that we're responsible for. So I think our brain deciding what to say is the step in the process that we need to be really careful about. Of course, you could just try to change your emotions and thoughts, and then your words should naturally be different. But I think it's actually easier to change your words, and then your thoughts and emotions will naturally be different.

One of the many outside influences worth mentioning is as follows:

Yes, I should print this stuff. I think the flow of conversation is something powerful. If I'm around people who are gossiping or complaining it's pretty hard for me not to join in. But let's be strong my friends. I think we should all take care of our thoughts and emotions, and that means guarding the words we say, choosing them and not letting them be chosen for us.


This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Because I've been thinking about this I've been more aware of the things I myself and others are saying. I've really started to notice the difference that good news has over my mood versus bad news. One of my friends is actually quite a complainer. But last week she gave me some good news about her life and it actually made me so happy. Happy to hear good news and happy for her that she had some to give.


Yes, I think it's time for me to commit again to a period of time when I just don't say anything negative, only hopefully it'll stick this time!


(And yes, for test prep if you're constantly saying how hard the dumb test is and how bad you'll fail then the test probably will be hard and you probably will fail. So let's watch our words!)


▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Value all parts of life】2010.02.10 (Wed)