Watch your words...

Hello all, thanks for reading this little attempt at expressing my thoughts about this topic “Watch your words”. Before starting my story about words, I would like to thank Rakesh for inspiring me to start writing blogs, Sagar for the same and Dada(Ravi Shankar) for keeping me on my toes all the time(he used to say “You will always be thinking and you will never write anything”).Thanks guys


Well let me come directly to the subject now, “Words”. Now if you were wondering about the title and trying to make any “intelligent” guesses about the content of the blog, let me inform you before hand, this is not any tutorial on learning vocabulary or such stuff – I strongly feel that the people who are reading this post have a decent vocabulary,right?


So still trying to figure what this is all about? Let me make your life a bit simpler. This “short” post on “words” is just a collection of thoughts and feelings which I had in me for a long time, which I wanted to share with others. Now why only “words” and not anything else on the face of earth? Well, I would say that everything on the face of earth boils down to “words” finally when you start communicating about. So instead of writing about dreamy things like “Love,Family,Relationships,etc.”, I decided on writing about the “words” themselves.


I believe in the power of “words” strongly. The reason being that they are so powerful, they can create and destroy whole worlds altogether! They are ubiquitous and are of course the basic building blocks of any human language. Words are the most powerful way to express our feelings, anytime and everytime. They can be used in a most intelligent way to get things done(what all managers do exactly!), in difficult situations to negotiate, to make relationships and sometimes even break one.


I was going through an article recently which was about personal management in which I came across a section which described the potential of words. It essentially said that every word we speak has a definite effect on what we experience in our lives. It may look strange how words can have such effect. But did you ever realize or notice the feelings of the other people when you talk to them lovingly or may be even rudely? Well in the former case, it’s the words which build the bonds and in the latter case, break them. We might not realize the influence of words on others easily, but the moment we try to, I think this world would be a better place to live.


Ok, enough of lecture, but is it enough to use words as often as we can just because they have influence on others? No way!!! It’s the right word at the right time that would have the most impact on others. To quote a simple example, lets assume you see a beautiful girl. What’s the first word that strikes your mind? Beautiful? Well to say it does to about 60~70% of us. And if suppose you want to describe the girl to your friend. Did you ever know that there is something in English called degree of expression and if you followed that, you would have a tremendous impact? Continuing our previous example, imagine describing the girl as “Gorgeous” or “Stunning” or “charming” or “gracious”. Each of these words has a different degree of expression and they are meant to be used for different occasions. For that matter, the whole point of having synonyms in English language is just that – express your feelings at the “word’s” best. So the next time you use any word, try to experiment with new ones – ones that would have a major impact on others because in today’s world, no one has time to listen to same old words all the time. The essence – “Right word at right time will take you to the right place and at a right pace”.


After having seen the greatness of the words on the positive side, lets flip the coin. As I said, words have influence on others and believe me, they have their darkest and dreadliest influence if used in offending others. Well, we all offend others but we also offend others unknowingly, where the words play the spoilplay. Our intentions might be benevolent, but words do have their chance. And we can see these incidents happen in our life almost daily. If feelings are the flames, words are like fuel to these and you know the end result. But all this could be avoided if they can be used as water, instead of flames…its all in us.


There was a recent commercial on TV which had the caption “Barriers break if only we speak” and how true it is…had it not been because of the great “words”.

Well, I think I ate a lot of time by now, so I sincerely suggest you to get back to work and remember “Watch your words…”