What are the words that have been spoken over you? What are the words that you have said to yourself, or others have said over you that you have believed?
The words that are the most insidious are the “not” words. They don’t even have the dignity to be something, they are defined simply by what they are not!
Not pretty, not thin, not happy, not creative, not clever, not athletic, not fashionable, not a part of our group, not marriage material, not a good friend.
What is wrong with our society that we prefer to define people by what they are not rather than what they are?
Words have power.
I am a poet, a linguist, an English teacher, I believe absolutely in the power of words to define our identity.
I used to believe I was not creative. No one spoke that to me. I spoke it over myself, and then one day I realised I had been telling myself lies. And I changed my words. I am creative. I now know it, and I believe it, and as I speak it more and more into my life I grow in my creativity.
The other day my friend turned up with a staple gun (thanks K), and with a piece of fabric we adapted a pin-up board for my study. This is quite frankly something I would never previously have tackled, because I told myself “I wasn’t creative”.
But the other day, I just had a go. I couldn’t believe the sense of excitement and achievement as we hacked at the fabric and stapled the back, creating my fluffy cloud of a pin-up board at the front. It sits out a little further from the wall than before, as the fabric is all bunched up at the back. But everyday as I sit at my computer, I know I did that! There is a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, of embracing somehow a piece of my own identity that I had been ignoring.
Where are the lies in your life? It really doesn’t matter who said them to you, whether it was you or someone else. The point is they are lies. Call them that, and then speak truth. Speak the words of truth and then step out into the reality of those words. And then grow in that truth and embrace your own identity.
Don’t let the ‘not’ words define you,
live free-er,
Jodie