Knowledge is the same way. To really know something is to experience it, otherwise our knowledge is based on assumptions and speculations connected by a loose conglomerate of related ideas.  The idea of India is quite different from the experience of being there. The idea of sushi is quite different than the experience of eating it. The idea of the pain of childbirth is radically different from the bloody, gut wrenching experience of it.

Shared experience give words weight. When we are experiencing a particularly difficult time, there is a major difference between words spoken by someone who has had a similar experience and one who has not. The one who has, can make one simple knowing statement or give us a certain look or touch on the shoulder and the comfort is immediate. The one who hasn’t, may attempt the same thing, but the result isn’t the same.

On their own, words have no power to convey meaning or bring comfort. It is rather the tone and intention with which they were conveyed that imbues them with that. Backed by experience, whether direct or shared, adds color, meaning and weight that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

All of us have the experience of being spoken at or listening to another’s monologue, held hostage by that person’s need to hear his or her own voice. There is no exchange here. We are simply witnesses to the internal ramblings of another made external.  Nothing more than being an innocent bystander to a person who happens to be thinking out loud.

Words then, are what we make of them. They do our bidding as they move from us into the air or onto the page, which is why it is preferable to be conscious when we communicate. Words can destroy just as easily as they can create. They can wound just as easily as they can heal. They can change everything in an instant. It is we, the gods of our own universes, who decide their fate.

Perhaps if we really understood what a powerful tool words are, we’d handle them with more care and respect; we’d practice more silence; we’d think before we speak; and we’d cease and desist adding more empty words to an already noisy world.

Imagine that.

(From: Burns, David D., MD. 1989. The Feeling Good Handbook. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.)

We all tend to think in extremes…and when traumatic events happen we think that way even more. Here are some common cognitive distortions. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way.

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

o Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check it out.

o The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”

7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with “should” and “shouldn’ts”, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct “should” statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, “He’s a damn louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

Most, if not all of our problems in life stem from this failure. To address this, I’ve come up with a short list of guidelines that, in my opinion, increase the odds of success:

1. Listen more than talk.
2. Acknowledge and validate what is being said.
3. Be present.
4. Let go of your agenda.
5. Don’t give advice unless asked.
6. Speak from your experience.
7. Ask questions.
8. Share resources that have worked for you.
9. Be brief and to the point.
10. Allow for space and silence between the words.
11. Breathe.
12. Don’t get caught in the details; look for the bigger picture.
13. Stay away from gossip and judgment of others.
14. End the conversation on a high note.
15. Remember that everyone wants the same thing: to be loved.

Some others I might add, include making eye contact, touching someone on the arm or shoulder, using receptive body language and gestures, etc. However, cultural differences will influence the best approach in these areas as each culture interprets non-verbal signals differently. Regardless, it is important to use culturally appropriate gestures to stay connected, and when in a new culture, to learn what those gestures are.

Our world needs healing and how we communicate with each other is a great place to start.

Words, like daggers, have lots of power to maim and harm. They pierce through the heart splaying it open and creating a spin in the mind. The same words can be used to heal or harm depending on the context or tone in which they are spoken.

Words can be used to seduce, hypnotize, manipulate another to our whims. There are actually people called persuasion artists who are masters at the use of language in this way. They know how to embed language to achieve certain aims and use words to covertly change the way people feel about something. These are word magicians who have chosen to take the medium we use everyday and elevate it into a dark art.

I find it baffling that a medium I see as a tool for connection can be seen by others as a tool for manipulation. None of us like to be duped or tricked into something. We like to believe we have chosen to act freely. However, the media has seen to it that we are well tuned to subject ourselves daily to an onslaught of embedded messages. In my opinion, this cheapens the medium of language and calls for a vigilance around the information we so readily accept.

I urge you to put yourself on an information diet — a word fast so that you can give your mind a rest. This will enable you to better discern the incoming stream of ideas coming at you, so that you can establish better boundaries around your consiousness. You mind is not a truck stop where any stray idea can simply stop by and inundate you. Rather, see the mind as a sanctuary, where there are guidelines that must be met in order to enter.

Treat your mind as you would a child. Give it space and freedom, within reason. Monitor it and keep it free of clutter and debris. And most of all watch who and what you allow to cross the threshold of your being. There is absolutely no good reason why you shouldn’t question the intentions of everyone who wants access to your mind.

The way I see it is the mind is sacred and it deserves to be treated as such. Let it play. Let it explore. Let it discover new things. But when it’s time for supper, call it home.

PROCEDURE
Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image.

METHOD
No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas-but the vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musician drawing breath between outblown phrases)–”measured pauses which are the essentials of our speech”–”divisions of the sounds we hear”-”time and how to note it down.” (William Carlos Williams)

SCOPING
Not “selectivity’ of expression but following free deviation (association) of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of thought, swimming in sea of English with no discipline other than rhythms of rhetorical exhalation and expostulated statement, like a fist coming down on a table with each complete utterance, bang! (the space dash)-Blow as deep as you want-write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning-excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind.

LAG IN PROCEDURE
No pause to think of proper word but the infantile pileup of scatological buildup words till satisfaction is gained, which will turn out to be a great appending rhythm to a thought and be in accordance with Great Law of timing.

TIMING
Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time-Shakespearian stress of dramatic need to speak now in own unalterable way or forever hold tongue-no revisions (except obvious rational mistakes, such as names or calculated insertions in act of not writing but inserting).

CENTER OF INTEREST
Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in subject of image at moment of writing, and write outwards swimming in sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion-Do not afterthink except for poetic or P. S. reasons. Never afterthink to “improve” or defray impressions, as, the best writing is always the most painful personal wrung-out tossed from cradle warm protective mind-tap from yourself the song of yourself, blow!-now!-your way is your only way-”good”-or “bad”-always honest (“ludi- crous”), spontaneous, “confessionals’ interesting, because not “crafted.” Craft is craft.

STRUCTURE OF WORK
Modern bizarre structures (science fiction, etc.) arise from language being dead, “different” themes give illusion of “new” life. Follow roughly outlines in outfanning movement over subject, as river rock, so mindflow over jewel-center need (run your mind over it, once) arriving at pivot, where what was dim-formed “beginning” becomes sharp-necessitating “ending” and language shortens in race to wire of time-race of work, following laws of Deep Form, to conclusion, last words, last trickle-Night is The End.

MENTAL STATE
If possible write “without consciousness” in semi-trance (as Yeats’ later “trance writing”) allowing subconscious to admit in own uninhibited interesting necessary and so “modern” language what conscious art would censor, and write excitedly, swiftly, with writing-or-typing-cramps, in accordance (as from center to periphery) with laws of orgasm, Reich’s “beclouding of consciousness.” Come from within, out-to relaxed and said.

Whatever the cause, I see a slip of the tongue as a window that reveals something profound about human behavior.

In an article I read yesterday on a study of the human brain and behavior, it was suggested that human beings are wired for conformity. Measuring brain waves while conducting some very simple group exercises, it showed that our brains actually put up a red flag of warning when we even consider disagreeing with the rest of the group. According to the article, this response is based on the ancient biological need to stay connected to our tribe in order to survive. In the early hunting and gathering era, going it alone was simply not done, because the risks were too high. It was imperative that no matter how much you may disagree with a group decision, your survival depended on going along with it.

The study revealed that we still carry remnants of this codependent thinking and behavior with us, but to a significantly lesser degree. The seemingly random “slip of the tongue” may actually be evidence of an inner (and perhaps even evolutionary) rebellion against conformity. There is ongoing pressure to “fit in” to the society, culture, and world we inhabit. However, there is also a strong innate desire to see ourselves as individuals with our unique expression and contribution to the whole. These two motivations inherently create conflict within us, because at times they are in direct competition with each other, forcing us to choose either to go along with the crowd and be accepted or to follow the beat of our own drummer and risk being rejected and alone.

Of course, it is not always so black and white. The gray range in between–that muddy place of doing what it takes to fit in most of the time with a bit of creative self-expression sprinkled in–is where many of us reside most of the time. Hanging out in the middle is safer. It means we draw less attention to ourselves and rock the boat less. But the middle can also mean high levels of compromise in our lives, resulting in a kind of unsatisfying world of mediocrity, in which our true individuality is reigned in to such as an extent that it renders us invisible, even to the few people closest to us.

Too much conformity has it’s price. But so does too much individuality.

We’re all familiar with the feelings that come up when witnessing someone  expressing their uniqueness full out.  Sometimes we feel awe and admiration and perhaps even a deep longing to have the courage to do that ourselves. Other times though, we may feel anxiety and discomfort at what we feel may be too foreign or strange and the urge toward rejection comes up.

It’s a slippery slope indeed, this balancing act between fitting in and authentic self-expression, which brings me back to the idea of words escaping from us like rebellious teenagers. I see a slip of the tongue as a kind of pressure release valve, a way to let off steam and also an indication that the conformity thing has gone too far.  Repression of our real feelings in the long run doesn’t work, and eventually the truth will come out, with or without our permission. So if you find yourself saying something you didn’t intend, see it as a messenger that your being is crying out for balance and that it may be time to honor your own drumbeat.

This little poem, attributed to various authors, has been floating around the internet for years. It simply and beautifully illuminates the power of our thoughts and our words to create our destiny. Wow. No small statement there. You’d think given that realization, we might be a bit more mindful of what comes our of our mouths or spills onto the page. And yet, very few of us make ourselves accountable at the level of our thoughts and our words.

The heart of the problem is making that connection between what we think and say and what eventually shows up in our lives. The gap between those initial thoughts and a specific outcome can seem vast and unrelated, lulling us into a state of complacency and laziness, leaving us unprepared for what’s to come.  Better to begin right now assuming that EVERYTHING we think has an impact — no exceptions — than to continue to randomly throw ideas and words around that may come back to bite us.

Given that we have millions of thoughts a day, the idea of becoming accountable for them is rather daunting, to say the least. Obviously, anyone who has ever tried to meditate knows that we cannot stop our thoughts. At best, we can watch them, the way one would watch a ticker tape at the bottom of a television screen.  We can also choose which ones to pay attention to and invest in. THAT is where their potential to impact our lives begins. You feed and nurture and give life to a thought by paying attention to it. You starve it by ignoring it. Your accountability starts when you make the decision to feed or starve a thought. Once you invest in it and then communicate about it, you’ve given it life — that is when is moves from a random stream flowing through you into the arena of creation. That is where the potential to do good or harm begins.

Once you know this, there is no turning back. You are not responsible for the thoughts that exist in your being; you are responsible for what you do with them. The origins of your destiny are found right here. To restate it simply: your life is about what you put your attention on. At all times, in all circumstances, we have a choice about how to shape our destiny.

So watch your thoughts. Choose carefully. And if something slips by, by all means, watch your words.

Years ago, I remember someone used the metaphor of opening a vein to describe the creative writing process. It is a simple, yet graphic way to describe this tapping into the most vital fluid in our body and letting it pour out.

In accessing something deeply internal, we are also accessing the vast stores of the collective. Once you know how to tap into this keg of infinite intelligence, there is no need to struggle to come up with content. The writer’s challenge then becomes the daunting task of choosing which stream to capture. Not that it matters. It is all available for the taking and when the creative flow is filtered through our particular vessel it is then imprinted with our unique signature and therefore becomes ours. We claim it, but ultimately we didn’t create it, we got out of the way so that it could be created through us.

All creative expression, whether it be writing, music, dance, or painting is so much easier when expressed that way. We are the vessels, not the authors. It is a privilege to open ourselves to that, and when viewed that way takes all the pressure and judgment and competition out of it.

It’s all about showing up. Being there and being willing to receive what wants to come through in that moment. It is the same with life. Being present makes us available to receive so much more than we ever have to give.

Strange, this isn’t what is taught in school. Instead, when we’re taught to write or create, there is a great emphasis on generating content and performance, all geared toward outside approval and validation. This is crushing to the creative process, as it cuts us off from the wealth of ideas and material that is available to us.

Many people come to this realization through journal writing and now, through blogging, both mediums that encourage free flow writing. Blogging is where I discovered the process of capturing a flow of ideas, and now I cannot return to the old way of generating content. It just feels wrong. I have also applied this to other areas in my life: teaching, coaching, giving presentations, etc. I’ve found that when I just let the ideas flow, there is so much more freedom, and what comes through is often something I wasn’t even aware of until it came out of my mouth or onto the page.

It’s more like listening than talking and so much more fun.  Unlike many writers out there who believe that only hard work and effort create worthwhile content, my personal motto is: if it isn’t fun, don’t do it. So what if I don’t receive accolades or win awards with my work, I am enjoying the journey. Right now, that’s what counts. Suffering for one’s art, just ain’t worth the cost.

What we send forth in our words is only as good as the meaning derived from them by the person or persons receiving them. We have no control over how our words will be interpreted. Most of us make assumptions that people will understand our words in the way we mean them. But how often have we had to correct or repair damage done by words wrongly interpreted?

Communication is so much trickier than we assume it is. Most of the time, we operate on automatic pilot, letting words fly out here and there, trusting that they will be received as we intend.

We take communication for granted and get lazy in both our speech and our writing, resulting in messes that we’re required to clean up or suffer the consequences. This is especially true with the short hand used in emailing and texting. The room for mis-interpretation goes up exponentially because the subtle nuances of tone and gesture are missing. Plus, both are often done on the fly in the midst of multi-tasking our way through the day, and blunders happen often.

I have been on both the generating and receiving end of such mishaps, and it’s not fun to have to read and re-read our words to see what may have caused such offense in the first place. Lately, I seem to be committing less and less content than I used to, to emails. I prefer the phone. With vocal tones, you can at least hear some subtle hints at mood and meaning. Not as good as being with someone and seeing each other’s eyes, but still one step closer than the flat two dimensional world of cyberspace.

I think it behooves us all to slow down the pace at which we emit streams of words that we cannot take back. Better to say very little, (although this can also be interpreted wrongly), then to say too much. I have sometimes gone back and deleted several paragraphs from an email when I’ve taken the time to re-read it before I hit send. Yes, it’s time consuming, but not nearly as much as cleaning up the fall out from someone’s hurt feelings.

I’ve always wondering at the tendency for us to apologize when we think we’ve written an overly lengthy email. If we truly think it’s too long, why not cut out some of the extras instead?

This holds true in all of our communications. Overwordiness can be due to deep insecurity that gets covered up by long drawn out explanations. Rarely, however, do people apologize for speaking too much.

I personally think it’s better to err on the side of too little than not enough, unless of course, your intention is to let someone into your head, giving them an insider’s view of how you think. This can be valid, up to a point. It is usually something reserved for people we are getting to know. By the time we become close friends, our communication takes on a short-hand familiarity which allows us to streamline our ideas into smaller bite size chunks.

For the most part, brevity and clarity are a good rule of thumb, personally and professionally. Less to generate; less to translate; less to clean up later.

1. White Lies – what we tell others to make them feel better.
2. Rationalizations – what we tell ourselves to make us feel better.
3. Lie of Omission – what we leave out to hide the truth.

He also says that if you don’t know how to lie, you don’t know you’re being lied to. I jotted all of this down as I watched the show, because the idea of lying fascinates me. Apparently, it fascinates House as well, because he is constantly coming up against his core belief –that everyone lies — with his patients. In fact, it is his patient’s lies of omission, which create much of the tension of the show. House’s well developed gut instinct and bloodhound capabilities, allows him to catch his patients in the act of lying, and doing so is often the only way he can save them.

This leads me to question our need to lie. Lying seems to be a self-protection mechanism learned at a very early age through observation and trial and error. As children, we discover how lying can serve as a tool to avoid consequences, to manipulate situations and people, and to avoid being uncomfortable. It also works well in tandem with negotiation and sales. The phrase stretching the truth comes to mind. When does stretching become boldface lying?

Lying is habitual. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Lies also breed other lies. They multiply until it becomes difficult to sort through the layers and keep the stories straight, especially if told in collusion with someone else.

Years ago, in a communication workshop I took, we were told that there was a ripple effect around lies of omission, because for each bit of truth withheld, there were other bits of truth related to it that could not be spoken about, for fear of revealing the original lie. It takes a lot of energy to protect a lie, requiring lots of eggshell walking to avoid speaking about it. Is it any surprise that when we communicate, we are tripping over our own feet?

The fear of ridicule, rejection, abandonment, or having to witness another’s pain are all major motivators that prompt us to lie. Over time, most of us have learned painful lessons around telling the truth, often convincing ourselves that others don’t really want to know the truth anyway. So we create ways to soften the blow or avoid the conversation entirely, skating along the surface of superficiality instead.

What is the cost of all this lying? A culture of poor communicators, wreaking havoc on all of our relationships. A society of people who are evasive, indirect, and passively engaged. Masses of people complaining of feeling depressed, disconnected, lonely, and hopeless.

Our lies have alienated us from our deepest desire: to love and be loved, to feel as though we belong and are a part of a community.

How do we unlearn this tendency to lie? The obvious place to begin, of course, is by being honest with ourselves. Once you establish a sense of trust in yourself, it is easier to trust others. Then from there, common sense would tell us to put more attention on the relationships our lives that support us to be ourselves and limit the time we spend with people and circumstances that want us to be someone we’re not.

Beyond that, we can always take more risks. Speak your truth and be willing to accept the consequences. You might find it far easier than you think. Who knows? Perhaps once you give yourself permission to put down the lies, maybe people around you will be inspired to do the same, as will the people around them and so on…maybe we’ll even start a trend.