We tend to get happy and excited, then angry, frustrated, sad, or even depressed, as an example. That means literally, out of the 3,000 words we have for emotions, most people feel about five or six good feelings and the bad feelings we find over and over again. Ironically, whether the audience is 2,000 people or 30,000 people, 90% of the people write down an average of a dozen words - and more than half of those represent negative feelings. once a month or year), but simply the ones they consistently feel. I have people take five to ten minutes, and write down not all the emotions they feel in a rare while (i.e. Many times we use shortcuts, but these shortcuts often shortchange us emotionally.įor more than two decades, I’ve been testing with live audiences all around the world, asking them to take on a very simple task: Make a list of the emotions you feel at least once a week. As a result, we tend to use the same words over and over again. Our brains are working at high speeds they’re trying to help us to process what things mean and what we should do as fast as we can. With such amazing resources with which to express our feelings and ideas, why should people accept such an impoverished vocabulary? Most people are not challenged by the size of the vocabulary they understand, but rather by the words they chose to use. Isn’t that unbelievable? (By contrast, John Milton’s writings used about 17,000 words and William Shakespeare used 24,000 words, 5,000 of which he only used one time.) Of those 500,000 words total, as much as 3,000 are used to describe emotions - two-thirds of which are used to describe negative emotions. And the number of words we use most frequently - the words that make up our habitual vocabulary? For most people, it averages 200–300 words. Yet the average person’s working vocabulary consists of 2,000–0.5% of the entire language. This is the power of what I call Transformational Vocabulary - consciously using your words to improve the quality of your life today and for the rest of your life.Īccording to Compton’s Encyclopedia, the English language contains some 500,000 words.
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And I can tell you that simply by changing your habitual vocabulary - the words you consistently use to describe emotions - you can instantaneously change how you think, how you feel, and how you live. But do you realize that the words you habitually choose also affects how you communicate with yourself and therefore what you experience?įor the past 40 years I’ve had the privilege of working with more than 50 million people and I’ve observed firsthand the power of changing just one key word in communicating with someone and noted how it instantly changes the way people feel - and how they behave. We all know words provide us with a vehicle for expressing and sharing our experience with others. But what about the ability we each have within us to use words to ignite change, to move ourselves to action, and to improve the quality of our lives? From Winston Churchill’s focus on the “finest hour” to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s depiction of a “dream” we are well aware that beliefs are formed by words - and they can be changed by words. Throughout human history, great leaders have used the power of words to transform our emotions, to enlist us in their causes, and to shape the course of destiny. Andrew Newberg, Words Can Change Your Brain We must carefully orchestrate our speech if we want to achieve our goals and bring our dreams to fruition.” - Dr.
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The right words spoken in the right way can bring us love, money and respect, while the wrong words - or even the right words spoken in the wrong way - can lead to a country to war. “Language shapes our behavior and each word we use is imbued with multitudes of personal meaning.