Category: Words and Emotions

In my last post, I introduced you to the atomic power of words to elicit feelings.  

Feelings, in turn lead to behavior.  It is the connection between words feelings and actions which give words their power.

The downside of this relationship between words and actions is that the words we use can be misunderstood by others. Misunderstandings can elicit behavior we may not want.  Consequently, it is critical that we use words that are less likely to be misunderstood and, therefore, are more likely to generate the responses (behavior) we would like.

In this post, I want to address what I call “stop” words and replacing them with “go” words.

Stop words are words which when used tend to leave others feeling deflated, unmotivated and stuck. The same end result occurs when we use these words and direct them toward ourselves.

Go words are motivating.

It is important to note that the specific word you use is less important than how that word is interpreted on a feeling level.

Specific stop words are: “can’t” as in “I can’t…”, “problem” as in “We’ve got a problem.”, “should” as in “You (or I) should …” and so forth.

Let’s take the word “can’t”.

What we mean when we say we “can’t do something” is usually that we may see obstacles in the way of our accomplishing the task.  While there may be obstacles, the issue with the word “can’t” is that your brain may interpret the word as “impossible”.  If you say “I can’t do this.”, what you may feel is that it is impossible for you to do it.  If you truly were facing an impossible task that you felt compelled to overcome, you might get depressed, feel overwhelmed, stop trying, lose motivation and so forth.  When you tell yourself you “can’t” do something, you react as if the task facing you is, indeed impossible.

Another way around the word “can’t” which both acknowledges the difficulties the event you are facing represents and elicits a feeling of motivation is to say, “This situation is admittedly difficult but it is doable.”  “Doable” is a go word. Emotionally, your brain is satisfied that the situation has been correctly labelled as requiring great effort and you remain motivated because you believe you have the ability to persevere and overcome.

If you tell someone else they “can’t” do something or you are told that “you can’t do something”, the reaction you may get is defiance or resistance.  In this case, the word “can’t” is perceived as an unfair imposition of power and might elicit the emotion of anger.  The message of anger is that a threat is perceived that can be overpowered.  In trying to deal with a threat you view as “unfair”, you, or someone else such as your kid, may be motivated to rebel, look for ways to get around the imposition and so forth.

In both cases, the word “can’t” is a stop word because it impedes forward progress and weakens motivation.

I am not saying you can never use the word “can’t”.

I am saying that if you do use it, explain what you mean by looking at the obstacles that exist or the issues which prohibit another from taking a specific action.  You might say, “You can’t do this because…”

You get a similar reaction when you use the stop word “should” as in “I should go on a diet.” or “You should be more….”.

The initial reaction is resistance as in “Why?”, “Who is gonna make me?”, or “Who says.”  Think about your own reaction when someone like your doctor or your spouse tells you that you “should” do something like lose weight, stop smoking or exercise more you tell yourself that you should do something like your New Year’s Resolutions.

Another stop word is “problem” as in “We have a problem.”

I don’t know if you remember the movie Apollo 13 but it is a true story about an American crew whose space ship explodes.  While the crew is alright, their ship is severely disabled and there is a real possibility that they might not be able to get back to earth.  The captain of the mission, played by Tom Hanks, radios the command center back on earth and says,
“Houston, we have a problem.” In this case, the problem was a life threatening, potential disaster with no immediately obvious solution. The word “problem” implied potential catastrophe.

It is the emotional connotation of catastrophe that makes the word “problem” a  potential stop word.  Someone tells you that they have a “problem” or you tell yourself you “have a problem” and the emotional reaction is anxiety, disbelief, or, possibly, inadequacy.  The message of anxiety is that the situation you are facing might be a threat that might “kill” you.  The emotional behavior elicited by anxiety is stress or withdrawal.

Instead of labeling an event as a “problem”, you can call it a challenge or even a very difficult challenge. The word “challenge” is a go word. When facing a challenge, the emotion elicited might be excitement or enthusiasm, or motivated.  The ensuing behavior is solution focused activity designed to meet and beat the challenge.

When you are aware of the strong emotional impact that words can have on the behavior of others and on your own actions, you can begin to master the atomic power of words to motivate yourself and others. Stop words can result in inhibition, withdrawal, or resistance. You might want to avoid using stop words, replace them with go words or, when you do use them, provide a context in which the word you use makes sense and doesn’t elicit emotions and reactions you do not want.

The word emotion comes from a Latin word meaning to move.

Emotions have, over time, evolved to move us to action. As I discussed in the emotional cycle, the primary emotions of mad, sad, fear and disgust are primitive threat detectors which subconsciously alert us to and prepare our bodies to react to a threat which could have a negative impact on us if not addressed.  We manage an emotion when we validate it, adjust our arousal level and stop the initial emotional reaction before we act on it.

We go beyond emotional management to emotional mastery when we assess the nature of the emotion, decide if the emotion does, indeed, match the situation in which we find ourselves, and choose how we want to respond to that situation.  If the emotion matches the situation, we choose to let the emotion motivate us to take effective action.  If we have misperceived the situation and the emotion does not match what is happening, we can choose to change our perception of the situation and let the emotion subside.

With this in mind, I want to make you aware of what I call the atomic power of the words you use to generate feelings (same as emotions) which in turn motivate you to take specific actions. We master the power of words when we are aware of the emotions that specific words can elicit and choose the words we use to match the situation we wish to create.

Most of us spend too little time thinking about the words we use both in our conversations with others and in our “conversations” with ourselves.

All communication starts with an idea that you may have which you attempt to put into words. The challenge is that we try to compress the multifaceted picture we have into a static, often oversimplified word. The person to whom we are speaking has to decode the word using his, or her, own set of filters hoping to recreate the same “picture” we originally encoded in the words we use.

Use the word “breakfast” as an example. Maybe you are thinking of an American meal of steak and eggs and someone else is thinking about a continental meal of yogurt and pastries.

Same word… different pictures.

Or, you go into the office and you ask someone “How are you?” and they tell you all about their recent medical issues and the arguments they recently had with their spouse instead of responding “Fine, how are you?”.

They heard you request a detailed description of their life circumstances instead of just an acknowledgement of their presence.

Oftentimes, the other person does not accurately decode our message.  This leads to a misunderstanding which can elicit emotions we did not intend and would rather avoid.

By the way, because words can be misunderstood, you need to be careful when you send a text, a letter, or an email to another person like a boss. You may know what you want to say but what that other person “hears” is very different.  The emotions your words elicit in that other person may be very different, and sometimes detrimental, than what you intended to convey.

There are words which leave you, or someone else, feeling excited, energized, and ready to act.  These words are motivating and move us forward.  I call these “go” words.

Examples include:  “You can do it.”, “I’m proud of you.” and “Good Job.” or any example of positive self-talk such as “I got this.”

There are other words which leave you feeling turned off, overwhelmed, unexcited and stuck.  I call these “stop” words.

There are other words which can have unintended effects.

One example is when a parent tells a child, ” You’re a bad boy (or girl).”  The issue here is that we are (unintentionally) telling the child what we think they are as a person when in fact we are attempting to tell them what we think about what they have done.

Because we often only “see” what we intend to communicate, we may miss other ways our words can be interpreted. When this happens, the atomic power of the word can backfire.

We will talk more about “stop” words in the next post.

In my previous posts, I have focussed on understanding emotions and the emotions process.

In this post, I want to revisit the topic of communication and how words can effect us.

The goal, here, is to refocus your attention on the words you use in “talking” to yourself and others because these words will elicit emotions which will impact your life as I addressed in my previous posts.

The reference to the “mic” refers to situations in which celebrities have made comments in front of a microphone which they thought was turned off, or  dead, only to have those comments show up in the next day’s news  because the mic was live.  

When you attempt to communicate, someone is always receiving the message. You just may not know what message is being received!

The title of this blog post may look like I added an extra word.

The extra “NOT” is intentional.

The point I am making  is that we are always communicating something whether we intend to or not.

Indeed, most people believe that communication is a fairly simple process.

This is an unfortunate myth.

The process of communication (while simplified in these examples) can be illustrated as follows:

Example #1: Think back to the days of the telegraph.  If you wanted to send a message, you had to write out the message, the telegraph operator had to convert it to Morse Code, the wires had to be in place between you and the place to which you were sending the message, the receiving  operator had to get the signal, decode the message, and write it down so that your target person could receive your message.

This first example illustrates the verbal communication process.

Factual or “basic” information. 

Most of us can easily encode an idea into words, deliver the words, and expect the receiver to accurately decode the message and understand what we mean and intended to say.  And, in most cases, when it is factual information we are communicating, this process works.

There are some underlying assumptions here.

• Both of the participants speak the same language and can understand the words being used.  Words can be thought of as one “filter” through which ideas are processed. (One way to understand the idea of a filter is to think about what happens when you take a black and white picture with your camera or smart phone. The filter takes out the color.) Words can have a multitude of meanings and, therefore, can be thought of as a filter in that you choose the words you eventually use based on what you want to convey.
• The message is clear, does not involve emotional issues in either party, and is not easily misinterpreted. (Emotions are another “filter” through which ideas are processed.)
• Both participants are paying attention to each other, are not distracted by “noise” in the environment (think about having a conversation in a loud lounge), and are “actively” listening with the goal of receiving and understanding the message.  They are not  “passively” listening while engaged in some other activity such as texting or planning tomorrow’s schedule.

Emotions or “complex” issues.

However, if we are dealing with issues involving emotions (or complex issues), the process becomes more complicated.

Example #2: Think about the last time you sent a text or an email thinking that you were being very clear only to have the person to whom you sent this electronic message get upset because they misinterpreted the message they received.

The second example illustrates a situation in which the message has several different “layers” but the only layer of information that is “available” is what is “written” down.

There are several possible complications here:

• The message may contain implied emotional overtones. For example, you are upset with the person and have not directly expressed your feeling.
• You may have directly expressed your feelings but the meaning of the emotional words you have used were misinterpreted when “decoded” by the recipient of the text.
• You tried to use humor in your text or an emoji.
• And so forth.

By the way, the above process is why we are frequently advised, and warn our kids, to be very careful about what they send in an email or a text.

There is a quote from the Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) literature that says: “The meaning of a communication (to the receiver) is the response that you (the sender) get regardless of what you intended to say.”

The receiver’s (upset) response clearly suggests that he (or she) viewed the message as “threatening”. This is the “real” meaning of the message to him.

If the communication process is to be successful, you will need to determine where the “disconnect” is. Perhaps, the misunderstanding occurred because the message contained implied emotional overtones that were included in the message (either intentionally or unintentionally) or the receiver read emotional overtones into the message that were not there.

When you are involved in a face to face conversation, there are additional complications that can take place because of the nature of non-verbal signals.

• Non-verbal signals comprise a significant (perhaps, major) portion of the communication process and involve your tone of voice, the expression on your face, the way you are standing and so forth.
• An important part of the emotional process is the constant scanning of our surroundings that our senses engage in, our Amygdala monitors, and our bodies unconsciously react to if there is a threat.
• Our primitive brain is programmed to “read” non-verbal signals because they are often a more accurate (though not always so) indicator of possible threat. This is because humans are not very good at modifying their non-verbal signals (unless they are trained to do so).

Consequently, you are always communicating non-verbally and your listener is always tuned into your non-verbals.  Hence, the title of this blog: You cannot NOT communicate.

An example of this potential conflict is  the saying “Your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear what you are saying.”

Communication problems can arise for at least two reasons:

1. The meaning of non-verbal signals is not always clear and can easily be misunderstood.
2. The non-verbal signals you are communicating with your tone of voice or body language are not consistent with the verbal message.

You master your emotions (and the emotions of others) when you are aware of and utilize the nature of non-verbal (and verbal) signals.

• In your own communications, take extra care to insure that the message you are conveying non-verbally is consistent with the words you are using.
• Be aware of the non-verbal signals your receiver sends to you, the emotions indicated by those signals, and the message those emotions tell you about how he or she has interpreted your communication. Using this information, you can seek clarification if what you see in their response is different from what you expected and you can clear up any misunderstanding.

I will continue this discussion in the next two posts.

Have you ever said (or did) something only to have the person with whom you are interacting, react in a way that totally surprised you?

Of course you have.  We all have. But you may not know why this occurred.

There is a quote from the NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) literature that says: “The meaning of a communication is the response that you get regardless of what you intended to (say/do)”.

Another way to put this is that the emotional meaning of a word is in the person not in the word.

Let me explain.

While it seems to be a simple process, and sometimes it is, communicating with another person can be very complicated.

Each interaction involves you (the sender) and the other person (the receiver).  Your job as the sender is to pick the best words to convey what you want to say.  This is called  encoding. The job of the receiver is to listen to you and get the meaning you are trying to send. This is called decoding.

Several different processes can complicated the encoding and decoding of words. These processes serve as obstacles to successful communication.

1. Do each of you have a sufficient vocabulary to pick the best word?
2. Are both of you engaged in the communication process such that you are focused on each other, avoiding external distractions, and concentrating on the message?
3. Are both of you paying attention to insure that your own emotional issues do not interfere with the message being communicated?

While there are more issues that can interrupt communication, these three give you an idea of the potential obstacles that exist to successful communication.

Emotions become relevant in obstacle #2 and #3.

In every case, you respond to another person based on how you interpret what they are saying (or doing).  Your interpretation of another person’s words depends on your emotional state.  This is obstacle #3. If you are “primed” for anger because you are thinking of a previous incident in which you were mistreated or you have a history of incidents with the other person, the filter through which you will perceive what they say will be one of self-defense and you will more easily get angry.

If you have had a good day or you have a positive or neutral history with the other person, you are more likely to give them the “benefit of the doubt” and possibly reserve judgment on any questionable communication.

A similar process goes on for other feelings.

The same is true for another person whose reaction to you suggests that they have misperceived what you said because their reaction does not match the words and emotional tone you were trying to communicate.

Let me give you an example:

You go into your office to start your workday and you say to one of your co-workers: “How are you?”

A. If your co-worker says “Great, how are you?” then you have had a successful interaction.  In most cases when we say “How are you?”, the meaning of the words are simply “I acknowledge you.”  Saying “Hello”, “How is it going?” or “Good morning.” all mean the same in this context.

B. But, suppose, your co-worker says: “Wow, I am really glad you asked. I had an argument with my spouse, the dog had an accident on the rug, and I had trouble starting my car this morning.  Oh, and did I mention…..”  In this case, he (or she) interpreted your question as meaning ” I really want to know about your life.  Give me all the details.”

C. Or, if your co-worker says: “Why do you ask?” or “What’s it to you?”  In this case, your co-worker has interpreted your question as unnecessary prying or intrusive.

With examples B and C above, it is not what you said but how the other person misinterpreted what you said that led to the unexpected response. The other person put their own spin or interpretation on your words and reacted “as if” you meant to say what he “heard” you say.

Or, to put in another way, the meaning of a word  is in the person or the meaning of a communication (to another person) is the response you get (from that person).

Using the Emotions as Tools Model, you can infer how a person perceives you based on the emotional tone of their response to you and the message of that emotion.

If they respond in an angry manner, then you know that they have perceived you, or what you said (did) as a threat.  You know this because the message of anger is that a threat has been perceived that the angry person believes they can eliminate.

If the response you get suggests that the other person is anxious or cautious with you, then you can assume that they perceive you as a possible threat that might hurt them. This is the message of anxiety.

With this knowledge, you can ask them for clarification.

You can say: “I am surprised by how you responded to what I said.  What did you hear me say?”

Be sure not to label what they said, take offense, or blame. Your initial goal is clarify what is going on with them.  It is possible that you did not use the right words or that you had an emotional overtone in your voice. Or, maybe, the misinterpretation is totally on them.  It doesn’t matter at this point as, for now, your goal is clarification.

There is always time later on to seek additional clarification, if needed, apologize for any misunderstanding or respond to their emotion, if appropriate, or rephrase what you said.

I welcome your comments.