The most powerful word...

I have a friend who has this peculiar problem - everytime he travels by train, he finds a cockroach. Atleast one. Everytime while boarding the train, he thinks - I shouldn't find the cockroach, I shouldn't find the cockroach... and guess what... whether he travels in normal class, economy class or first class, a roach shall be found...

My brother has this strange thing with hair. Everytime something special is cooked in the house, he will find a hair in the food. Even when we go to eat outside, in the best of restaurants... a hair will be found... Infact, everytime he says - "Today, I shouldn't find any hair in food..."... I don't think I need to say what happens next...

A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues was typing an official mail, he ended the mail with - "Please let me know if there is any more confusion"...

I have never been good in sports, whenever I was given fielding in cricket and the ball came towards me, my friends would shout - "Don't let it go... Don't let it go...". I always ended up missing the ball.

Now I understand the logic behind the whole thing... everytime someone told me - "Don't drop the ball", my mind has to process all of this - what's a ball, what is dropping a ball, how not to drop the ball, do what is required to stop the ball from dropping... Of course, all this happens in nanoseconds, still the ball has already passed by...
If only, I had received the instruction "Catch the ball"... my mind would have to process lesser instructions, therefore increasing the speed.
But, the most powerful word in the statement was "Drop" so that's what happened.

Check this pattern -
Whenever you leave home thinking "I shouldn't be late... I shouldn't be late..." you will inevitably be late...
Whenever you enter a game thinking "I shouldn't lose... I shouldn't lose..." its a fat chance you might lose...
Whenever you enter the office thinking "Boss shouldn't fire me today..." guess what??
Whenever you enter the house thinking "I shouldn't fight with her today..." trust me, neighbours won't sleep that night.

Understand the pattern, the mind only processes the most powerful word in the statement, it doesn't have time to process every word "shouldn't", "be", "don't want" etc are all trivial words... the powerful word in each of the above statements was - "Cockroach", "Hair", "Drop", "Late", "Lose", "Fire", "Fight", "Confusion"... each of these words was the most powerful word in its respective sentence.

While boarding the train you can instead think, "I should find a clean berth today"...
You can very well pray for a clean plate of food...
When coaching a kid, you can rather tell him to "Catch the ball"...
You can leave house thinking - I want to reach on time...
You can play thinking - I want to win...
You can enter the house / office thinking - I will have a great day...

I told my colleague the same thing - instead of writing a mail saying - "Please let me know if there is any more confusion"..., why not write - "Please let me know if you need further clarity..."
Trust me - only further clarity will come from that mail and no confusion because the most powerful word in the statement is "clarity"

Infact, so far I have been sharing only my experiences, what I'm sharing now was recently validated by a friend of mine - It was a drizzling morning, my friend left the house thinking - "My bike should not skid today", he crossed the area safely and reached a dry area, but somewhere on the dry road, there was a big hole in the road and my friend lost control of the bike... it was a pretty close call, but thankfully my friend was fine". Later that day my friend share this incident and said - "Gulshan, what you had told, happened with me today"
My point is - You could have left home thinking - "I should reach office alright..." it means the same but works much better...
More importantly, do you really have to fall to realise the importance of languaging...

Please... Please... Please... don't read this sharing as another "Positive languaging" "Inspirational" "worth forwarding" message... this is something I have validated over my lifetime on this planet...

I know what you are thinking - "Gulshan, do you mean my success is guaranteed if I change my languaging"

My answer is - "No... I cannot guarantee success with powerful positive language... But, I can guarantee you failure with negative language" If you say you want to be successful and continue sitting on the couch, I can't guarantee success... it has to be backed by efforts... But, why waste your efforts by using negative languaging...

Think about it...