The Power Of Words
If I asked you to go out today and close that sale you’ve been working on or ace that test you’re taking or finish that task you’ve been putting off, what would be your first, immediate response?
For many people, it would be, “I’ll try,” “I might; get around to that,” “I should do that, shouldn’t I?”
Folks, those are wimpy words–”should,” “might,” and “try.” They give us wiggle room. They give us an out if we don’t come through. They practically ensure that we will fail.
This is true, even when we only say them to ourselves. If you say to yourself, “I’ll try to learn HTML,” or “I should really learn to use an autoresponder,” or “I might write an article today,” what you are really telling yourself is that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. If you get to it…great! If not…oh, well…
We have been programmed from the time we learned to say our first words to not only speak this way, but to think this way as well.
If you want to accomplish anything great, you will need to learn to undo this programming. Fortunately, it’s a fairly simple process. You simply replace “should,” “might” and “try” with “must,” “will” and “do.”
Instead of “I should finish that project,” you’ll say “I MUST finish that project!”
Instead of “I might make it on time,” you’ll say “I WILL make it on time!”
Instead of “I will try it,” you’ll say “I will DO it!”
Note the exclamation points in the statements above. It’s not just the words. You have to say them forcefully, with feeling. You have to believe what you are saying. If you don’t, you are lost.
In a scene from one of the Star Wars movies, Luke has gotten his X-Wing fighter stuck in a bog. Yoda tells him to get it out of the muck saying, “Reach out with your mind. Trust in the Force.” Luke says, “I’ll try.” Yoda says, “NO! Either do or do not. There is no ‘try’.”
So Luke extends his arm toward the sunken space ship and begins to lift it out of the water. But before he gets it on to dry land, he begins to doubt himself. He lets the ship go and it sinks completely below the surface of the swamp.
He says, “I can’t do it. You’re asking the impossible,” and storms off. Yoda sighs, extends an arm toward the ship, and after a moment has pulled it out of the water and up on to dry land with nothing but the Force and his will.
Luke turns around just in time to see Yoda setting the ship down and says, “I don’t believe it!” Yoda says, “That is why you failed.”
OK, so there’s a big difference between Star Wars and real life… but the concept of “do or do not” and “all things are possible if you believe” were not invented by George Lucas for his movies. These are philosophies that have been taught on Earth by just about all cultures and all religions for thousands of years.
But we seem to have forgotten those teachings in our new, “better,” modern age.
Change your mindset…change your life. It’s up to you…
- Daniel Joseph Moran
