Abracadabra: The Power of Words to Transform
How our thoughts and words shape reality - from misunderstandings in a bar to rewriting the story of our lives.
It’s like the summer we never had here in Liverpool and I’m loving it! 🌞
That’s me above (but with a magical no gap in my toofs and perfect nails) wielding a magic wand. Do you know what abracadabra means?
Abracadabra is thought to originate from ancient Aramaic and means: I create as I speak.
Let’s do a little wafting of the magic wand here and look at how our words can shape our reality.
A while back I found myself as tour guide for friends of friends around my home city of Liverpool.
My new friends were from Brasil and Austrailia, and we did all the things Beatles, as one of them in particular was a huge fan.
And so it was on a Saturday evening we found ourselves in Matthew St (the street famous for The Cavern, where The Beatles played back in the day) in a bar/club.
We bought drinks, found a table and I was sat happily, glad to take the weight off my feet. Near to our table there were ladies dancing enthusiastically and I beamed at them - ever happy to see folk letting go.
At this point my Brasillian friend was videoing the scene before us, including these ladies. He was loving it and said this vibe was just like home.
The ladies then huddled together, and all at once, one lady spun round, marched up to us, snatched my friend’s phone, and despite very loud music, I saw her lips say: – and this is the clean version – “Have some respect and tell your friend (pointing at me) to stop laughing at us.” I was relieved that a table separated me from her. 😁
I understood their anger at my friend filming. I wouldn’t like some random bloke filming me dancing whilst I was singing with an invisible microphone to, ‘I’ve had the Time of My Life’. But I also knew that my friend, being gay, had no perverse motives and I definitely knew my smiles had been 100% genuine and actually, the thought that people might think I’m laughing at them horrified me.
I stopped smiling and thought it safe to just look down at my half pint of Guinness and blackcurrant.
Now, what does this have to do with every day life and the power of our words?
Well, one of my favourite things about Neuro Linguistic Programming is a study of the art of language.
You see, there’s the world, there’s our experience of it and there’s the language we use to put our experience into words.
These three things are not the same thing. The models we make of the world around us are not the actual world but simply our representation of it.
What does this mean?
There are 3 different things that we all tend to do in order to simplify our experience in language.
We distort.
We delete.
And we generalise.
These distortions, generalizations and deletions often benefit from being challenged in order for us to grow and expand. By doing that, we commit to not seeing our model or perception of the world as reality. It gives us options.
Options give us choices about how we feel.
The Meta Model, as it is called, helps us to realize that problems are not separate from the way we think of them, our problems ARE the way we think of them.
Let’s take those ladies at the club.
“She’s laughing at me!”Distortion/we’re mind reading.
We can challenge that assumption by saying: How do you know she’s laughing AT you? What else could she be laughing at? What else could be going on for her? What else could it mean?
It also works the other way around, right? Rather than me getting uppity at her reaction and reacting, I can accept that I have no idea of this woman’s life and the the roots of insecurity she was feeling. I can have compassion for her.
Another example might be that we write an article here on Substack, host a webinar, come up with ideas at a staff metting and receive only the sound of crickets. We might say:
“My writing/webinar/ideas suck. No one seems to like me.”
Again, distortion.
How specifically does your writing/webinar/idea suck?
How does your thinking no one has engaged correlate to ‘no one liking you?’
We get to choose our thoughts.
It’s true, we might not always have the circumstances we’d like, but we can sure as heck choose the meaning we give to circumstances.
You see, there’s really no such thing as failure…only feedback
“I’m hopeless!” Generalisaton.
What specifically are you hopeless at?
It’s been said that in every situation there’s at least 30 ways of changing your point of view.
Even if we can only reach for one or two alternative views, it gives us freedom to choose. It gives us more emotional freedom and so therefore peace and more ease.
So the next time you find your self thinking something like: “Everyone was laughing at me”, or, “She didn’t reply to my message, she doesn’t care.” Ask yourself: What else might they be laughing at? What else might be going on for her?
I’ll be speaking a little to the magic of our words one evening next week during Emma’s (of
), Healthy Habits Reset Week - Monday through Friday on FB Live. You can join the group here.If you have sunshine where you are, may you feel those sunbeams this week and if not, I’m sending you sunshine from my heart.
Suzy 🌞
🌹🌻🌸💐💚💜❤️🌼😍🥰
I love your examples so much. This is a wonderful reminder for me. Yes, I do believe that thoughts and words shape reality.