Positive Psychology Column for 4-18-04 By Tom Muha, Ph.D. Choose your words carefully Words are what makes the difference between someone being successful or stagnate, feeling delighted or disgruntled, experiencing loving or loathing. The words that run through your mind are what creates your view of your self and your world - and the words you choose to say to other people control the course of your relationships. I used to think that we use words to describe our world, but now I’ve come to believe that the reverse is true. It is the words we use that create our world, because events are meaningless until we describe them. Words bring things to life for us, creating the world as we know it. As we describe our world we are constantly making distinctions that color our perceptions, compose our emotions, and control our behaviors. We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we describe. Our descriptions of the world are run through our own unique set of filters. We select our words so that events make sense according to our pre-existing belief system. If we share the same belief system with other people, then we can easily agree. But if our descriptions differ, conflicts can arise. So republicans explain events one way, but democrats describe the same thing differently, as do Christians and Muslims, labor and management, and husbands and wives. There is a huge potential for problems when people believe that their perception is absolutely right and everyone else is wrong. Couple that attitude with the belief that it’s perfectly acceptable to punish those who are wrong and you have a conflict that will be catastrophic for both sides. But words can work wonders as well. Constructive conversations can build relationships so that we learn from one another, allowing us to move forward by creating and expanding our collective wisdom. I have an interesting job helping people who are unhappy to become happy. What’s most remarkable about my job is that I have only one tool with which to accomplish my mission - words.  Words are what transforms people’s lives, even my own. For example, it’s not unusual for people to say to me, “I’d hate having your job because I wouldn’t want to talk to one unhappy person after another all day long.” But I tell them I’d hate having that job, too. Thankfully, I explain, that’s not my job. My job is to see one happy person after another leave my office all day long.  That change in perspective produces a profound shift  in how I feel about my work. Having learned to be the director of the movies that run in my mind, I can always rewrite the script so that it has a happy ending. I just need to give myself the right words in order to be able to project pictures of positive outcomes. I’ve found that asking questions is the most effective method for initiating a change process, either within oneself, a relationship or an entire organization. Questions direct our attention to a particular aspect of our existence. Therefore, it’s important to focus on words that will produce images of positive outcomes - asking questions such as when have we done our best, felt great, or worked well as a team. Asking such questions can create a dialogue - within ourselves and with others - that is full of rich accounts of past successes as well as vivid images of a future unfolding to its fullest potential. Just recalling the good times will bring back the good feelings, in addition to confirming our confidence that we can recreate those experiences once again. Since we base our vision of the future on what we imagine, hope and dream will happen, it’s important to develop descriptions of where it is we want to be and how it is that we’d like to get there. Of course, different people will have differing views of what they value most for the future. When we accept this fact of life, we are open to having a dialogue designed to find the higher ground rather than the common ground. Encouraging everyone who has a stake in the outcome to communicate their unique perspective produces new possibilities - opportunities for action that would otherwise remain undiscovered. By understanding the whole system we develop both trust and a willingness to move forward. As individuals envision the future they desire, they automatically begin to act in ways compatible with that outcome. To paraphrase Gandhi, we become the change we want to see.   Tom Muha is a psychologist in Annapolis. He welcomes your comments and questions. To contact him call (443) 454-7274 or email him at tom@achievinghappiness.com.