Growth: Words that Lead to Action

My take-out from yesterday’s sermon was that “People are not lazy; they’re just uninspired”. This has really clicked with a point that my boss keeps advising me as one who is terribly ‘task-oriented’: “That it’s not what you say – it’s the way that you say it”. [Similarly, Dale Carnegie wrote “that you need to create a desire in a person if you want to prompt them to action"].

But I’m finally learning to think before I speak.

I know it sounds corny but today I had the opportunity to put it to practice. My six year old jumped into my lap and asked me to read him a book. Thinking that this would be a good time for him to demonstrate his reading ability to me, I said “No – I think that you should read the book to me”. He replied that he didn’t want to. Thinking that he was being lazy and also about yesterday’s message, I then consciously rephrased my words to say “if you read these words yourself - then they will stick in your brain and you will get smarter”. Amazingly, he immediately started sounding out and reading words like ‘plastic’, ‘dresses’ and ‘chicken’ – words that I hadn’t seen him master before.

Such is the power of words.