“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word.” — Emily Dickinson

WORDS are powerful: they can be used as weapons of mass destruction or they can be used, with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, to heal wounds and breathe life into people and situations. We all grew up hearing and believing the awful lie that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”. Age and experience have shown us that words do indeed hurt, but they also oft-times contain the cure for what ails us.

It is our awareness of the power that lies within our words that will make us carefully choose and use our words. To be sure, some words are more powerful than others and on their own do not really do much, but it is how they are arranged that will create the impact that they have on us. Consider how a great story (which is really words skilfully woven, together) will hold our attention perhaps with more certainty than a dry sterile lecture. Positive words are said to be able to turn on the genes that will reduce physical and emotional stress while, on the other hand, other words can cause the release of stress-provoking neurochemicals. The everyday words that we use are some of the most healing tools we have cheaply available to us: if delivered truly, authentically, their vibrations have the potential for immeasurably positive impact on others.

I am not sure if sometimes we are fully aware of the impact of our words on others, such as our children, for example. When I was growing up, for a while, we once lived next-door to a family whose stock in trade seemed to be expletives. The parents of this family of seven had apparently mastered the art of conjugating the curse word for copulation and so it was used in every possible sentence, in every possibly way, very loudly. Not to mention the artful use of the common Jamaican swear words: fabric of every cut, length and description were used profusely. The woman of the house in particular was Shakespearean in her delivery. It seems as if the children of that household were liberally dosed with 40-shilling words in the mornings on a daily basis and let loose among us.

As children, though we, were fascinated by the gay abandon with which curse words were so freely thrown down next door and, of course, were warned to stay away from these potential playmates who, from my memory, committed some of the most violent acts against each other. As adults, we need to consider the impact of violently flung curse words on the consciousness of a child, who must certainly feel as if he or she have been splattered from head to toe in mud or filth and will behave accordingly.

In the mid-1990s research at the University of Arizona, headed by Gerald Schwartz PhD, demonstrated that the words used by parents in talking to their children directly affected the health of their children for decades. The study found that regardless of other health risk factors, children from loving parents, who often used positive words had less coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, stomach ulcers and alcoholism than those from parents who were consistently negative.

An article in Psychology Today, “Words Can Change Your Brain: the neuroscience of communication,” by Andrew Newberg, MD and Mark Waldman (July 31, 2012) points to the damage of negative words, spoken with anger. “They send alarm messages through the brain, interfering with the decision-making centres in the frontal lobe, and this increases a person’s propensity to act irrationally”. “Fear-provoking words — like poverty, illness and death — also stimulate the brain in negative ways. And even if these fearful thoughts are not real, other parts of your brain react to negative fantasies as though they were actual threats occurring in the outside world.” Do we understand the potency of the words that we speak so casually about and to each other, not to mention, behind each others’ backs? What we say and write can change the mood of the persons with whom we are communicating and make them either more productive or less productive.

What about the impact of positive words that make us feel great about ourselves, others and our country. Where have all those words gone? Remember them: ‘Peace, love, smile, unity, action’? They seemed to have been replaced with either abbreviations or negative words such as LOL, terrorist, neutral and hate. Positive words and thoughts move the motivational centres of the brain into action and they give us that special push that we need when we are feeling discouraged. Let us try to choose more carefully what we say to others as we pursue our daily chores.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with RO Communications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.