Our stories define us: Tone and language - Part 3
Posted on June 05, 2015 by Sandhya Reddy, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
How our stories impact our behaviour – our actions. It starts with the tone in which we speak and the language that we use.
In the previous two blogs I explained the grip that stories have on us and the way they can impact the state of our mind.
In this blog, I will go a little further and cover how our stories impact our behaviour – our actions. It starts with the tone in which we speak and the language that we use. Together, these culminate in behaviour and action.
Our beliefs take us forward. Many of us know individuals who seem to have all the necessary ingredients to succeed – intelligence, talent, humour, creativity, even money. And yet, they don’t seem to get anywhere. We wonder why so much potential is unutilized. When people have limiting beliefs and negative stories running in their sub-conscious minds, the dialogue you hear from them is usually ‘yes, but.’ The tone is one of diffidence. And the language is pessimistic.
When the language is pessimistic, the mind gets into an un-resourceful state and hence there is no manifestation of problem-solving behaviour. There is no action towards goal achievement. In most cases, there is no goal as well.
On the other hand, you may have come across several individuals who seem to have the odds against them, yet they seem to move ahead in life and are cheerful. Nothing can stop us when our beliefs are positive. When people have positive beliefs they cannot be stopped even by their own limitations. They are always in a resourceful state, seem to find solutions and execute them. Their tone and language is always positive. You will hear such people saying, ‘yes, but’ in reverse, i.e. ‘yes, but I can do it’ or ‘I will figure something out’.
Being in a constant state of action is half progress already made. That is what makes such people set audacious goals and achieve them.
Once we say ‘yes, I can’ or ‘no, I can’t’, we tend to act accordingly. Our behaviour is based on our thinking and thoughts. After this, something else happens. The negative story and language impacts us at a much deeper level, impacts our sub-conscious brain. Then it starts to become a default voice. On repeated exposure to this default negative voice, the person is, in effect, self-hypnotizing himself to believe that ‘they cannot do this’, and that the task is impossible. In a situation like this, there is no need for external obstacles. We sabotage our progress and success ourselves. We begin to believe ‘It is not possible’ and ‘I can’t do it’. The dream ends before it begins.
Optimists keep pushing themselves with statements like ‘yes, that’s easy’, ‘yes, it’s tough, but I can work it out’, ‘yes, seems impossible but I will find a way’ and so on. With such statements, the person in effect is self-hypnotizing himself into believing that anything is possible, and that he can do anything. With such a winning mind set, truly, anything is achievable. There is power in believing that the goal is achievable. Then the belief makes the goal achievement easier than it actually is in reality.
So our beliefs and stories impact our emotions, our language (internal and external), and this in turn, affects the language we speak. It ‘fools’ our brain into believing that we have the capability to achieve the goal.
In other words, we become the story we tell ourselves. So, we must tell ourselves the right stories.
This is part 3 of the 4 part blog – Our stories define us – The 4 building blocks of the stories we tell ourselves.
About the Author:
Sandhya Reddy is a leadership & transformation coach based in Bangalore, India. She is the Founder and Principal Coach at Chapter Two Coaching, a coaching consultancy that enables everyone from CEOs to work-from-home parents to achieve their goals by replacing self-imposed limitations with enabling stories. Sandhya’s services include Executive Coaching, Life Coaching and Career Coaching.
