Having breakfast with my friend this morning.

Over oatmeal and coffee we talk about our lives and discuss ideas how to make them better.

We got on the subject of words, and their importance.

Words activate thoughts. Thoughts activate feelings. Feelings give off an energetic signal. The energetic signal you put out to the world is the same energetic signal you will see and experience in your life.

A good way to make inroads in changing your life is to change your language. To some who’ve been around the personal evolution game a while, this makes perfect sense. Yet to my friend — a writer no less — the idea seemed new and foreign.

Through awareness and practice there are certain words that just no longer show up in my vocabulary. I do not use words like hate, awful, horrible, terrible, tragic… and so on.

When I hear people use those sorts of words it strikes me like a piano hitting the wrong key; those words are no longer in tune with where I am at. And the person using them is usually going down the rabbit hole of telling a story, attracting one dark thought after another. They do not feel good telling it, and I do not wish to listen to them tell it.

Some people push back on this idea:

But it’s true! It was awful! She really did die!

or Isn’t it terrible what’s going on with health care?

or [insert story here!]

Events, wanted and unwanted, happen in everyone’s life. The key to an easier, better life comes in how you respond to those events.  I notice that the people who talk about all the terrible things in the world tend to notice lots of terrible events. Look more closely and you’ll notice that they attract more terrible events to talk about than those who focus more on what pleases them rather than what upsets them.

“But I talk too fast to watch what I say,” my friend said.

“If I were to choose my words, I’d have to be aware of what I say all the time,” he added.

“Exactly,” I said.