Category Archives: Profound Thoughts

The Power Of Your Words, Pt. 1.

Shortly after my hand surgery, I found I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the fact that I had only one hand. This made the formerly simple acts of dressing myself, relieving myself, cooking for myself… a whole slew of activities… insanely difficult.

In one of my audio posts, I referred to my hand as “stupid.” (Probably more than one, now that I think about it…) A friend of mine picked up on that, and sent me a short message that basically pointed out I wasn’t doing myself any favors by talking so negatively.

His comment ticked me off. I mean, who did he think he was? Telling me how to talk? I’m Mr. Positive Thinker, here! And HIS hand wasn’t debilitated! HE didn’t know the frustration of struggling to keep the stream straight in the bathroom! But after I cooled off, I realized he was right. (Turns out Proverbs 27:6 is dead on: Wounds from a friend CAN be trusted.)

So I took a hard look and examined myself. Negative speech? Check. Negative attitude? Check. Negative outlook on life? Check. Huh. He really was right. I had a pretty serious case of negativity flowing in and out of my life.

I had read “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale a few months before, but apparently had forgotten the nuggety goodness within the pages. This time around, however, I decided to tackle the issue from a different angle. My words.

“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”  – Luke 6:45

As the Bible makes clear, our words are just symptoms of what’s going on in our hearts, in our heads. So in an effort to focus on changing my speech habits from positive to negative, I browsed Amazon.com and found a few titles that would help out. And they were:

Charles Capps – The Tongue – A Creative Force

Charles Capps – Changing the Seen & Shaping the Unseen

I’d never heard of Charles Capps before, didn’t know a thing about him, but it seemed he had a good idea of the power our words can hold. Positive or negative, our words have a profound effect on our lives and, quite simply, our future. What we say permeates every aspect of our lives, whether we realize it’s true or not.

So stay tuned for the next entry, when I’ll summarize some of the principles I’ve learned about what to say, when to say it and when we should just Shut Up.

-Kevin

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