How to Take our Active Agency Back Using Everyday Language

(Pic: the first time I stood on stage inviting people to change their worlds by using the everyday language mindfully)

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We all have access to the tool that has the power to change the world.

It is free.

We use it every single day.

In and of itself, it is neither a force of good, nor a force of evil.

Like a hammer, for example.

With the help of a hammer, one can build a house that will shelter many from the elements.

Or one can inflict great damage onto someone using the same hammer.

Or like fire that enables us to cook our foods, that keeps us warm, that lit the paths of our ancestors for centuries before something more fancy came along.

Equally capable of extraordinary devastation.

Then there’s the tool that is capable of catapulting us to the most beautiful and magical places when our grandma or a lover uses it.

It is the tool that our mothers used to sooth us when we grazed our knees.

It is a tool that enables us to exchange wonderful ideas which facilitates their further growth.

It is the tool that facilitates the development of critical thinking.

It is the tool that propelled our species to become what we have become. For better or for worse.

It is also a tool that can be maliciously misused.

Everyday language has an immense force within it to change the trajectory of our worlds, both individual and collective.

Consider this:

‘He pissed me off’ vs ‘I feel pissed off because of what he did’.

Which frame helps you feel more powerful to change the way you feel and, by extension, act?

Or this:

‘All they do is to work us into the ground; they are all the same’ vs ‘I do not like the way I am being treated here’.

Which frame is more likely to help you recognise that you have a degree of power and spur you into action?

Or this:

‘Oh, this is just stupid; why do they have to make it so complicated?’ vs ‘I don’t understand this. YET’.

Which frame is leaving you feeling helpless? Empowered? Likely to act?

Or this:

‘I can’t do this’ vs ‘I am scared to do this’.

Which frame recognises and makes room for addressing the core reason for inaction?

It may sound very simplistic and self-evident. Maybe it’s because it is. We have grown so accustomed to the notion that any ‘solution of value’ is some clever, complex and complicated thing, created somewhere by someone other than us, that we treat simplicity as something not capable of addressing the most fundamental of things. We no longer believe in simplicity; in the fact that we may just have all we need to affect how we relate to the world and the happenings of the world that affect us. And, as a result of it, we never develop the true awareness and appreciation just how powerful this simple tool is, and we use it flippantly; as if it didn’t matter.

Ultimately, the language we use every day creates our respective realities, and it can either make us feel – consciously or subconsciously – either like inactive subjects being acted upon by others or by situations OR like active agents that had power to affect the situation.

You can test it. Try closing your eyes and taking yourself back to a situation where you felt wronged and powerless and see if you can recall how you spoke – be it out loud or in your head – about the situation and try and notice what it felt like in your body. Then, try to change how you spoke about it reframing it using the examples I offered earlier, and see how the feeling shifts.

I am not saying that the language we use will immediately change the situation. But, as we practice, it will change the way we relate to any given situation and, as a result, how much power we recognise to have within it and what actions become available to us as a result of recognising our own power and active agency.

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So let’s use it mindfully and responsibly. Let’s use it for the good.

Let’s use it to become self-sufficient.

Let’s start with ourselves, and let it ripple.

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