Watch Your Words

Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
–Author Unknown

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.