#18 The Power of Language

Between the Ears - Language
Welcome, I'm Arnold Bekus and I enable you to have a better life between the ears because your inner state creates your outer reality. Today I'm going to talk about the power of language. Essentially, I think language is one of those invisible straight jackets which are limiting us in a tremendous and also invisible way because nobody or at least very few people label language as a straight jacket.

Why do I think it's a straight jacket? Because it really really limits connections between people in one-on-one relationships, in groups, in communities, in countries, between countries. It's all about language because we need language to communicate. Unfortunately, only a few people have the capability to work with telepathy.

Possibly we have it all but we're not used to it. We need to train ourselves but that's for another topic. Our communication is the limiting factor.

Why is that? Well, somehow we live in a world in which most countries and even in larger countries within a country, people have different mother tongues. Every country has its own language and even a part of the world like South America where a lot of people speak Spanish, that's because of the colonization, but they still have in a lot of countries their original language like the Guarani here in Paraguay or look at in the US you might say, you know, it's just American and we speak American English. Well, what about the native Indians? If you look in large countries like India and China, especially India, they must sing many many different languages which they speak but those languages are again limiting our communication.

We have what is called a mother tongue. My mother tongue is Dutch, hence my accent. So that is the language in which we feel most comfortable but I think let's say there are possibly 17 million people in the world who speak Dutch which if you compare it to 8 billion people is basically nothing and I would get nowhere by speaking Dutch.

I need to speak English at least. By the way, I'm currently learning my seventh language. I'm learning Spanish.

I had that school Greek, Latin, Dutch, German, English, French and now I'm learning Spanish. But I feel here quite limited in my communication because my Spanish, I'm following classes but it's rather limited. So language is an invisible straitjacket, especially in communication.

I love the steps for good communication between people within groups, in relationships even. It's called non-violent communications by a man called Rosenberg. You can look it up.

It's very very useful and I'm going to quickly share the steps in there and the steps in non-violent communication are observation, feeling, need and request. So the observation means give a fact without judgment. Well I think we're pretty lousy at that because look at all the social media.

The facts are between quotes are all over the place. Some people say well for instance drink red wine is very healthy for you, for your heart and whatever and there are other studies who say no any alcohol is bad for you. So what's a fact? Then the next one is feeling.

Share the feeling, the emotion that you experience. I think that's the most difficult part because it's not easy to feel because that's what we have. Like I said earlier we have suppressed our emotions so we are not really not good at feeling our own emotions let alone give words to it and then share it with other people.

It's extremely limiting. The next step in the non-violent communication is need. So share what the value is or what the need that is linked to that feeling.

What do you need? Well I don't know and how do I express it in such a way that other people understand it and then request is like give a specific positive action you ask for. So even a process which again I really love it, it's really great but the dependency is on your how capable are you in using language in such a way that someone else understands it and then that is already challenging enough between people who have the same mother tongue. But more and more as we have this global world how do you communicate between a Chinese man, a Brazilian man and a Ugandan woman.

So language is really one of our limitations but we don't recognize it as such and also we by expressing what we want most of the time we express what we don't want. Actually that was my first coach one of the first questions where I really had no answer. I was rambling to him like it was a long time ago shortly after I quit my corporate job and he asked me is it all right and I was saying I don't want a boss anymore, I don't want the company and infrastructure anymore, I don't want this anymore, I don't want that anymore and he said Arnold I understand what you don't want but can you please tell me what you do want and I really had no answer.

I really had not even words. This was the first time, I was beginning of my 40s, the first time someone had asked me Arnold what do you want? What? Well that is part the follow-up for another podcast but it shows that we should focus on what we do want and not what we don't want. I get two examples and well one very very recently and the other one a little bit older.

Probably you might have heard about a man called Brian Johnson. He has been working on longevity and especially like being the healthiest man in the world and from a biological point of view it seemed that his results were totally incredible. Looks like he's beating health and aging but what is his slogan? He even has t-shirts and stuff around that.

His slogan is don't die. Well I tell you your subconscious doesn't hear the word don't. It's just like don't think about a pink elephant.

What does your subconscious do? You see a pink elephant. So the same has happened with this man with the don't die because I think it was last week. He found out that he has an incurable immunity disease which of course is extremely sad but it's based on the wrong choice of words, a wrong choice of language.

So instead of don't die he should have used something like live forever. Another example which is a few years of others from Anita Marjani. I highly recommend her work.

You can google her and while she grew up her father made her very fearful of getting cancer. So in everything she did she was like no I must not get cancer. I must not get cancer.

It's really bad for you. So what did she get? Cancer and when she was extremely ill in hospitals she had some very impactful near-death experiences where she now teaches people about but again it was the wrong use of language. It was the straight jacket of language.

It's like I must not get cancer. So what does he get? Cancer. So really be careful about your language even if it's only your inner voice.

It's also your outer voice. Really really be careful and use language in a good way and understand that communicating especially about our inner world with other people is highly challenging. So language is a straight jacket and needs your work to make it more clear to yourself and to other people.

So we conclude each session with some examples of everyday beauty because beauty and especially moral beauty, kindness, courage, compassion has a very positive influence on your inner state. So when you are stressed it's important to find healthy ways to cope and getting outdoors is a proven way to do so. But not everyone has access to nature.

That's where nature videos might help according to a university professor. Research shows that exposure to nature is beneficial even if that exposure only occurs through a screen and I think that's really really important because not everybody has access to natural views from their office, work, bedroom, home. But there are plenty of online videos on natural spaces that can set one at ease.

The professor's name is Aron Hipp and Hipp says he what he has done is a study examining the stress reducing effects of nature based imagery and specifically videos of forests and streams. And the study found that watching nature videos including those readily available on YouTube can help recover from stress more effectively than watching videos of urban environments. And that adds to the growing evidence that nature-based imagery can positively influence mood.

Please remember we need your uniqueness. Be a better maker for yourself, for others, for the world.