Words have power
I remember lying on top on my bed. It was early in the morning and I had broken another promise to myself. The night before I had told myself I was going to get up early and go for a walk. Get that exercise done and dusted. Instead I was lying there feeling like absolute crap. Because I thought if I couldn’t get myself to do that one thing, I wasn’t going to be worth anything. My word is my bond and yet everyday I was lying to myself or letting myself down.
I had been writing my disappointments in my diary and the one thing I repeated over and over again was, “I wish I had willpower”.
Willpower…. At that point of my life everything hinged on “willpower”. It was the one thing I didn’t have and the one thing I wanted more than anything.
Willpower… Why didn’t I have it? Why?
For years I wrote in that diary and for years the running theme was how I had no willpower. I felt that everything rested on this “fact”. Yet today willpower isn’t a word in my vocabulary.
What happened? What changed?
It was a realisation I had when I was on a journey to define my life. I felt lost, hopeless and useless. I had all these incredible people around me doing amazing things and I was the single mother who did everything wrong, who wasn’t going to amount to much. I wanted to lose weight and even that had eluded me.
I had based my whole life on what I thought everyone around me thought of me. And the fact that one silly person in particular had told me I had “no willpower”. Everyday I tried overcoming this perceived lack of willpower and everyday I failed.
When I was defining what I wanted to do with my life a thought came into my mind; “Why should I bother trying to figure this out? I have no willpower so I wont be able to achieve it anyway!”
Suddenly I stopped and thought about what I had just said to myself. I remember I was sitting in a cafe and my daughter was only three years old. She was chatting away about her fluffy and something inside me clicked. “What is willpower? I can’t see it, touch it, or smell it. It’s not a muscle in my body. What is this thing I supposedly don’t have?” Suddenly I realised it didn’t really exist. Willpower doesn’t exist! I had blamed everything that I couldn’t achieve on something that doesn’t really exist and it was this false belief that was stopping me from doing anything.
I realised I didn’t even like the word. I must have muttered something as my daughter piped up, “Mummy if you don’t like it I’ll throw it away in the bin.” I looked at her and suddenly I knew I needed to get rid of the word. I quickly got my pen out and wrote the word on a napkin. Miss Three looked confused but she jumped from her chair screwed up the napkin (dramatically and with a cheeky smile) and she threw it away. Plonking herself back down again, she took a sip of her fluffy and said, “Now we can move on”.
I watched her in awe. Can it be that simple?
I chuckled to myself thinking how odd and how crazy people would think I was to throw a word away. But the funny thing was it worked for me. I’ve never used the word again. I took its power over me and threw it away and once I had made that decision it was over.
It was like a new day, a new beginning. And from that day forth, everything I set my mind to do in life I achieved. (The losing weight goal is a work in progress…. but hey, we aren’t all perfect.)
So what words are you using that are stopping you becoming who you want to be? What words do you just want to banish from your vocabulary? Write them down on a piece of paper (or a napkin), and then throw the paper away. Burn it. Chop it up in a million pieces. Get it out of your life.
If you want to share your words please comment and tell me below.
