Principle #2: It’s not about getting the words just right, it’s about getting your energy and presence lined up through working with your words.
Sometime we get a little nuts trying to get our words right.
“Should I say use or utilize?”
“Am I inviting people to make a pivot or reach a milestone?”
“Am I offering support or am I offering guidance?”
I’m a big nerd, so of course I LOVE these questions.
For years, I was known as the Word Lady or the Language Lady. And it’s a title I’ll still accept.
But more and more I realize, it’s the words, but it’s really about much, much more than the words.
Words are the access point. Words are the portal.
Words aren’t the point.
Words are the practical thing we can play with that creates a channel for our energy and our presence to come into the world in its full force and power.
When we write about our work, we are challenged to COMMIT to something (unlike speaking where we can endlessly edit and amend what we say).
When we consider the words we use, we consider the idea behind those words, and the energy behind those ideas.
When we play with words, with the rhythm and tone of the words, we dial in to the frequency of what we bring to the world so it comes out more cleanly, more directly, with more signal and less noise.
So my goal isn’t to get my clients to say just the perfect things every time they open their mouth. Or to say the same thing the same way every time. Or to have perfect web copy. I want them to have such a loving, intimate relationship with their work that they can open their mouths and speak and be pretty confident that what comes out is going to be on point.
I don’t want my clients to agonize over every word on their web page. I want them to develop a strong enough sense of who they are here to be in the world that they develop an internal sense of when the words are good enough.
When we can’t use unlimited words to say what we do, we start to think harder about the words we do use.
And it’s more that act of choosing. That moment of “this, not that”, that process of sifting and sorting through the options to locate what rings true that changes who we are.
That changes how we show up.
That’s why we work on our words.
The words become the channel for the full force of the work that wants to come through us. The words become the channel for the bigger identity we need to inhabit to bring that work forward.