Use Your Words

The power of language is just one of the many things that have put us humans in the position of the current dominant species on the planet. Our words enable us to form our thoughts, our emotional concepts, our ideas, dreams, visions, and goals. They enhance or make worse our communication between one another. Our words and capacity for language is so important yet so taken for granted.

The words we use and hear prime our subconscious behaviors. Numerous studies have shown this and it is somewhat scary if you are a cynic. Advertising and marketing professionals have known this for a long time now. Consciously choosing your words works in thane manner but most people do not consciously choose their words let alone actively build their vocabulary.

I am a keen observer of all things behavioral. Children in particular fascinate me, probably because I don't have any. I observed a child yesterday communicating with an adult. The adult was using words and the child was using sounds. The adult understood very well what those sounds and accommodating bodily gestures meant but I couldn't help but think to myself why this child of approximately 5 years of age wasn't using words instead of sounds.

Only twenty four percent of the population in the United States read one book this past year. Forty percent of those who have Bachelor's degree never read a book after graduating and thirty-eight percent of third graders never read a book after the third grade for their entire lives. There is no other way to develop and build a vocabulary unless you read books.

Words expand the range at which we can develop our emotional concepts and feelings. If all you know is silence and rage then that is all you know. It is estimated that the average adult actively knows twenty thousand words but may use only five thousand regularly where as a well read person may actively know and use at least twice that amount. This is a limitation, a severe one in terms of your development and possibility to reach for and achieve your infinite potential.

Mark Twain once wrote that the person who doesn't read has no advantage over the person who can't. If you are not actively increasing what you know then the best you can do is static as well. Reading books are not only necessary to increase our vault of words but it is cognitively heavy lifting. The physiological, emotional, and psychological benefits of reading are not debatable. Investing in your growth and improving yourself doesn't cost anything but a commitment to do it. Words will open up portals for you to step through you never knew existed. Knowledge changes your world once you start to actively accumulate it.

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