The Sunday Mail
YOU can never be misquoted when you do not say anything. You can also not be quoted unless you say something. Greatness will always demand your opinion.
If you decide to speak, speak to the right person the right words because words are living fissile matter. Guard what you say by saying all the good you know to all the people you know.
Do not dig your own grave by speaking to yourself foolishly and using your own mouth against yourself. Negativity is personal sabotage. Unfounded opinions and guess work should never be paraded as facts.
Keep your tongue and secure your life. Use your tongue as an ally, not your own foe. Face the future and always know that the future is now.
What you say today is birthing your future and clasping your vision.
Words are things — powerful, long-lasting and living things.
Refuse to let your tongue play host to negative, defeatist and hopeless conversations. Let those who prefer to smoke the poison of negativity to indulge without you. Your tongue is a powerful flame and prodrome. Fire up the positive verbal vibes and inspire ability and stroke energy.
Do not join the chorus of despair, despondency, dejection, defeat and fatalism. The choir of complainers and the collective of the unbelieving and reluctant actors is not for you.
Flee negativity, fence out resignation from your mind and fast from negativity in your speech. What you speak, you eventually become.
What you say, it is assumed, you intend and wish to happen. What you verbalise will be the operating verb of your life.
To change your life, first change the words you use.
Speech Patterns
Do not speak according to your emotions; speak according to your faith. Do not speak according to your pain; speak according to your passion for greatness. Do not speak according to your hurt; speak according to the dreams that throb in your heart. When you manage your words, you manage your life.
Careless speaking will set you up for accidents. Be mindful, alert and responsible by speaking what you desire and you want your life to be.
In the midst of your troubles, speak positively to create positive experiences. Until anything is in your mouth, it will never be in your life. Until you speak it, it will never be created.
Until you say it, you will never possess it. Controlling your dialogue is the key to mastery in life. Your tongue toggles your life, flames your faith or fear and agitates the creative power in you.
In learning any language, the main emphasis is usually the grammatical structure. Perfect grammar is not necessarily the vocabulary of greatness.
Words are the clothes of thought and intent. You hang your life’s experiences on the words you use. What you say is not necessarily what is heard and computed by your mind. Use your words responsibly to shape your life, sharpen your focus and shoe yourself up for greatness.
Have the presence of mind to halt your tongue before you spew out negative and unkind words.
Verbalise what you want, not what you do not want. Negative words are not humility. They may be facts but the arena of creating greatness is not about current facts, but creating new facts and experiences using the facility of faith.
Current facts are already history. Do not be so hung up on the fleeting present, create a different future with different words and narratives.
Growing up in Tshabalala in Bulawayo, I used to play soccer for the junior side of Bulawayo Wanderers. In those years, junior soccer in Zimbabwe was vibrant. We used to date the junior teams of the legends of the day like Highlanders, Eagles and Zimbabwe Saints.
A lesson that was engrained in me by our coach was that you do not just pass the ball to where your team-mate is, but to where he is running to.
Such also is the power of words. You do not speak based on where you are, but where you are going to. Post your words to the future you are pregnant with, not the pain your are afflicted by. Translate your goals into things by your words.
Speak to yourself
In ordinary life, anyone speaking to himself is either using bluetooth, or, if not, is usually considered to be drunk, seriously troubled or mentally unstable.
However, in the path of greatness, speaking to yourself is an essential discipline and habit. Speak to yourself intentionally and purposefully. Dialogue with yourself and position yourself for greatness. Whatever you say, your ears are listening, your mind is taking notes and your spirit is catching.
The words you use are the raw materials of your thoughts. Your beliefs and attitude are hung on the hanger of the words you habitually use.
Your words are a powerful stone that you catapult into your life’s evolving narrative. Speak to yourself deliberately.
Before a word is spoken, it is dead. When you speak any word, you initiate life. Speak the negative and you give life to the negative. Speak the positive and you give life to the positive. Speak your dreams as though they are already living. If this is too difficult for you, write out positive things about yourself that you would like to see materialise.
Do not be limited by your present circumstances, facts or limitations. Read out these positive statements and infuse life and faith in your heart.
Speak, declare and read out aloud your desires and positive intentions. You are a life giver. Death and life are in the power of your tongue.
What you speak, you scatter seed. Words are pegs to hang dreams on.
Wake up everyday and tell yourself that it will be a good day, filled with opportunity and abundant possibility. Take charge of your day, with the words you speak. Never allow your mind to just run wild without you giving yourself some good personal talking to. Tell yourself about the future you are creating.
Do not wait for other people to programme you negatively and feed junk into your life system. Encourage and affirm yourself. Do not chide, deride, debase and curse yourself.
Bless yourself and speak a few good things to yourself. Speak to yourself as though you are addressing someone special.
Those closest to you may suspect that you need to see a doctor urgently, but they will soon see what you will become. Be intentional in your words. Misused words generate misleading thoughts and misplaced attitudes.
Use Affirmations
Affirmations fuel greatness. Affirmations are short positive statements that you say to yourself. When you say them repeatedly, with conviction and feeling, you multiply their positive and creative impact.
Take your affirmations in the same way you take your medicine – two or three tablets three times daily.
Be regular and consistent. Write them out, speak them as declarations. Picturise them in your mind to make them concrete.
Words are the most powerful drug that you can use to cure your life’s maladies. Affirmations are a prescription you can apply easily, and quickly on your greatness journey. Do not despair when things do not seem to be changing fast enough.
Once you sow a word, something has just begun, life has been born.
Keep speaking, until you hold it. Keep affirming until it is firmly fixed in your heart.
Words have wings, fly them in the direction of your vision.
Speak to others words of encouragement and say all the good you know. If you are tempted to criticise, bite your tongue.
Always pray and ask God to make your words sweet and tender, because tomorrow you may have to eat them.
A blow with a word, always cuts deeper than a blow with a knife or clenched fist. There is always time for a word of appreciation, a gentle commendation and a little courtesy.
Be generous with kind words, and miserly with negative and acerbic ones. Look at words like tools of greatness. Look at negative words like a dangerous acid. Look at words and give them importance. Use them aright.
As you use your words, do not forget to take action in the direction of your words. Do not be known for too many high-sounding words with little corresponding action. Your words are your weapons of mass blessing. Take responsibility to fire them in the right way. Speak to your greatness and create great things.
Milton Kamwendo is an international transformational and inspirational speaker, author and coach. He is a strategy, innovation, team-building and leadership consultant. He can be reached at [email protected] and on WhatsApp number 0772422634
