Cars, planes, bicycles and feet can take us where you want to go with varying degrees of speed. But words.... words.... words can take you even faster to places you do or don't want to go.
"She's not helping with the dishes."
"He's bugging me."
"Stop that!"
"I want it closed!"
"Won't you ever clean this up?"
Hmmmm.............. Did you feel it? It doesn't take long to be in a dark place that gets darker by the minute. A few words and you have traveled to an unhappy place. Repeated over and over, these words create miles of sad feelings, walls and distance that can easily grow larger over the weeks, months and years. Relationships can be lost in the negative distance traveled over the same ruts in the road for too long.
True, loyal, unquenchable, techy awesome, disciplined, perserveranceful (we reserve the right always to make up words that should exist), determined, pure heart, brilliant and splendiferous. Feel that floating on balloons over your head.
Can moments, days and weeks of kind words, positive labels and looking for the good place us on a road of where we want to be? I don't believe all problems will be solved with positive words; but I do know that chasms of bitterness and difficulty arise if our words are habitually negative. I know that at times difficult things must be said. Even then, especially then, when done with love, words have power. Words have power to change thoughts and hearts and minds and lives. Words can move mountains of difficulty or make mountains of difficulty.
I love these words from President Monson:
"Like
the leprosy of yesteryear are the plagues of today. They linger; they
debilitate; they destroy. They are to be found everywhere. Their pervasiveness
knows no boundaries. We know them as selfishness, greed, indulgence, cruelty,
and crime, to identify but a few. Surfeited with their poison, we tend to
criticize, to complain, to blame, and, slowly but surely, to abandon the
positives and adopt the negatives of life.
"A popular refrain from the 1940s captured the thought:
"A popular refrain from the 1940s captured the thought:
Accentuate the positive;
Eliminate the negative.
Latch on to the affirmative;
Don’t mess with Mr. In-between.
Good advice then. Good advice now."
Eliminate the negative.
Latch on to the affirmative;
Don’t mess with Mr. In-between.
Good advice then. Good advice now."
The psalmist said in Proverbs 15:1
A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.
I want to be somewhere wonderful....
I'll start with choosing kind words.
