The Power Of Words

My husband Mark wrote an article (http://nursenancybeck.com/better-grades-overnight.php) the other day about how we used Pillow Talks to remove test anxiety from our son Michael to improve his test taking ability which allowed him to get better grades.

Giving Michael Pillow Talks worked wonderfully to improve his grades and absolutely eliminated his test anxiety and nervousness. In the article I felt Mark left out an important part of the picture though, the part about why I believe Michael had test anxiety.

As I have stated many times, I like to practice a positive parenting style which translates into much involvement, encouragement and guidance in our children’s lives. It also makes it easy to transfer expectations onto our children. In this case, Michael perceived that our desire for him to be smart was expected and that to be smart he must get good grades.

We can only speculate exactly how Michaels connection of A’s=Smart had been made, but it was a result of the words and actions used in his environment and his desire to meet and please us. The result of his A’s=Smart connection meant that every time he did not get a right answer he felt bad, which started anxiety, which made the next question harder to answer, which made him feel worst, etc.. You can see the destructive downward spiral that has been started.

Simple things like rewarding good grades and punishing bad grades, or beaming over good grades to others, making statements like “He is so smart he gets straight A’s” all could wire the A’s=Smart connection in a child. Each child is different and will have a different interpretation of what happens around them.

Words can create a problem they can also remove a problem. With a little investigative work and patience you can find the root cause and then formulate the solution to communicate. As Mark demonstrated, Pillow Talks are an incredible fast and efficient way of communicating the solutions, or should I say words for the changes desired. Now you know the whole story.

In part 2 of my book; Pillow Talk – Loving affirmations to encourage and guide your children. I go over how to use words in a Pillow Talk. I guess you can look at my suggestions as rules to follow when designing your own custom Pillow Talks. While I specifically target words to use and not use in a Pillow Talk, These rules are not unique to the Pillow Talk process.

In the test anxiety story above, I hope you discovered, as I did, that words are important all the time. Whether the words are to our children, spouse, friend or ourselves or whether, the words are given while awake or asleep. Words affect our lives deeply and create the way we respond and feel.

What makes learning how to use the proper words in a Pillow Talk so great is that it makes you stop and think of what meaning you are transferring to the listener. It gives you quiet time to sculpt your desired meaning and as a result, actually anchor it into your own mind, which in return will reflect on your intentions and actions all the time. This is very powerful.

Blessings of happiness;

Nurse Nancy

PS: for more solutions click here!

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