I don’t know about you, but I heard the phrase “Watch Your Language” a lot growing up. There were certain words and phrases that my mother just wouldn’t allow in her home.

Shut up” was a big one that we weren’t allowed to hurl against a sister. Telling someone to silence their thoughts was just not acceptable to my mom. And she was right.

She always knew that how we use words, how we express our thoughts and what those words can do to another is important.  Remember the “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” Mom knew that words do hurt us. She would say, Watch Your Language.

Thoughts and Language

And we know that our thoughts become our language. So how many words and thoughts are we talking about?

Did you know that we have between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day?  Yup, that’s a lot of think’ng going on.

Another interesting statistic is that 98% of them are the same ones we had yesterday.

We’re creatures of habit, aren’t we. We say the same things to ourselves day in and day out. That’s what forms our memories and our cranial pathways. And on some level that’s a good thing. It allows us to get out of bed, make coffee and drive to the bank without thinking. We constantly tell ourselves the same stories, give ourselves the same directions.

Now you’ve probably seen this in action when you introduce yourself to someone, or at a family holiday dinner, or you hear your kids saying to you, “Mom, you already told me that”.

Now this works fine if you’re telling your puppy to sit down, or you’re telling your partner that you love them today, but really this same old, same old thinking can be deadly. Yes, deadly.

Because in monitoring our thoughts, our internal language, what bothers me most is that researchers suggest that 80% of those nearly 60,000 thoughts are negative ones.

We fill our minds with thoughts of I can’ts, I mustn’t and oh no’s so often we set our cranial pathways in our brains to just think poorly about ourselves. We have a host of gremlins that constantly monitor our lives and knock us down.

We hear a lot about bullying in the news these days. Bullying has been defined as being exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions. Yup, that’s what we’ve been doing to ourselves. 80% of our thoughts are negative.

The biggest bully we’ll ever meet is right in the mirror.

So what have you been thinking lately.

Perhaps you say to yourself, I can’t find a new job, I’m too old to try to learn how to swim, the computer is just too complicated for me, I don’t know what iTunes is. Or how about these, I hate those wrinkles on my face, I’m slowing down, I’m too fat, too slow, too downright old.

What’s your Mindset?

Dr. Carol Dweck is a Stanford University psychologist whose research on achievement and success discusses a concept she calls Mindset.

Carol suggests in her work that we approach our lives, our work, our families and yes our thoughts in one of two ways. We can use a Fixed Mindset or a Growth Mindset. Have you heard about this?

Here’s how it goes:

A Fixed Mindset is one where all our thoughts and actions are… well Fixed. You go through life thinking you have a certain amount of intelligence and ability, your personality and your actions are the same way they always were. You are who you are. Your fate in life is to go through life avoiding challenge and failure.

Now in contrast to that, Carol suggests that some folks have a Growth Mindset. Thinking this way about yourself makes your life, your actions and your thoughts fluid, changeable. You are a work in progress. You’re a blank canvas; every morning ready for paint.

How do you look at some new task. A simple one might be opening a new 1000 piece puzzle, or a more challenging one might be getting a new cell phone.

For a person with a fixed mindset they would say, I’ll never get this puzzle done, or I just want my old phone back, I don’t need to learn how to do face-time with the grandkids, let them call me.

For someone with a growth mindset, they look at both of these same events as opportunities to stretch and grown what they already know. To build on something, to become successful. They say: I can’t wait to see how this turns out.

See watch your language.

In Dr. Dweck’s theory on the growth mindset, midlife and even retirement is a phase of life that allows us to look for new challenges, explore new vistas, knowing that our attitudes, and our intelligence can still be changed and grow. This in my work is what I call the “ditch the rocking chair theory”.

3 Awesome Life Changing Words

So in working with Carol’s theory I came up with 3 words to help you develop a Growth Mindset if you want one.

Are you ready? Three words you could try every hour the rest of today and see what you think. Watch your language I say! Here’s the question:

What if I?

Did you catch it… What if I  That’s it…just three words.

What if I learned more about the new piece of software the company is putting in? What if I learned to cook a new recipe? What if I listened to a different radio station in my car today?

What if I….that’s the growth mindset.

Carol asks us to take this growth mindset into our language, to change the way we talk to ourselves, to stop the bullying.

So Watch Your Language

Here’s a few examples. I think you’re getting the idea here.

I can’t do that (fill in the blank, exercise, compute, etc)….instead Watch you language and say What if I just walked for 20 minutes today for exercise? What if I watched a YouTube on learning face-time?

Or  I will never do this, women, VP’s, etc. don’t do this.  STOP watch your language and say, What if I rethought how I think just for today. What if I …believed I could get lighter, stronger, go to the doctor, read that book?

Or I hear this a lot, usually meant to be a joke…I’m having another senior moment, again stop watch your language and say What if I thought about another way to remember my keys?

Our language, our communication of our 60,000 thoughts, our ability to work our lives from a Growth Mindset are critical as we move day by day regardless of the number of candles on your cake.

Each day is not the same as it was. We know that. It’s not the same day as it was yesterday, it’s a new day ready for a new mindset.

So I encourage you to explore more by reading Dr. Carol Dweck book calledMindset: The New Psychology of Success.

I hope you won’t “shut up” and start watching your language so you can change your life into the open mindset of your life.

What if I published on LinkedIn and someone actually commented and liked my words.  Worth a try!