my sister's talk "Words that Inspire"

My sister, Denise, was asked to speak at a Relief Society Retreat. This is what she presented. It is awesome. She is awesome.

This talk was given at the RS Retreat on Mt. Charleston in September 2012

by Denise Stoehr, Lynbrook Ward

Words that Inspire

I was lucky enough to have been able to attend education week last year and I went to many amazing classes but one in particular has stayed with me for over a year now, and it has changed my life in so many positive ways. I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t think about the things I learned in this series of classes. Much of what I am going to share with you today comes from those talks given by a BYU professor named Dr. Sherrie Johnson, Ph. D.

This morning we are going to talk about a very simple thing….WORDS.  If you have you ever been deeply wounded by words, or inspired by them; if words have ever motivated you, if words have ever healed your wounded spirit, or your physical body, then you understand the power of words. 

I learned of a researcher named Dr. Emoto. He wanted to investigate the power of words. He conducted an experiment, where he would freeze water and he would photograph the microscopic crystals that would form in the frozen water. He discovered something very interesting. He exposed some of the water to what we view as positive words, words like joy, hope, happiness, peace, love, etc. and he found that the ice crystals that formed in this water were beautiful, perfectly formed crystals, like snowflakes, in beautiful patterns of whites and blues. He also exposed some of the water to negative words, such “I hate you, you’re ugly” etc. He was amazed to see that these crystals were deformed. There were pieces missing; they were asymmetrical, and were ugly and misshapen.  He was convinced that words in and of themselves have power; either power for good or ill.

Now, there are a lot of scriptures that back this up. This concept really shouldn’t surprise us.     

                        -Think of what we read in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the Word was God.” Words are so significant to Heavenly Father. that His Son is called the Word. That is one of the titles he has chosen to give his son.

-How about Genesis:  “God said let there be light and there was light.”

-Think of the ordinances in the church: Baptisms, blessing of the sacrament, temple sealings. These all have exact words that must be said in a certain order, in a certain way.

Words matter. Words are important.

Words have the power to actually influence our physical, emotional and spiritual state.

Read page 9 of You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought (it speaks of picturing yourself biting into a lemon, and noticing your physical reaction. Also, speaks of thinking of nails on a blackboard, and even worse…imagining taking an emery board, putting it in your mouth and then pulling it through your teeth). Awful!!! These THOUGHTS (which are just WORDS in our head) cause us to have an actual physical reaction, as though it was really happening.

So, with these examples, I think we can all agree that thoughts and words have power to influence us.

It is not new to any of us that we should use kind words to others. That’s not what I’m going to talk about today.  I want to talk about the words we say to ourselves.  If words have power, then we need to be aware of the words we are telling ourselves, about ourselves. We have to be careful. Words have a powerful effect your body, your health, your mind, your spirit. Words have the power to create your moods and your attitude and your reality.  

There is a story of two Zen monks, one older and one younger: In their travels one day, they came across a beautiful woman. It had rained and there were deep puddles everywhere. The older monk graciously picked up the young woman and carried her across the puddle. This greatly disturbed the younger monk. He was upset the rest of the day. Finally at the end of the day, the older monk asked what was wrong. He said, “You have been so quiet and seem to be upset. You have not been enjoying this beautiful day and this beautiful scenery that is all around us. Why?”  The younger one said, “You carried that woman. We took a vow never to even touch a woman and you picked her up.”   “Ahh, that’s true,” said the older Zen monk, “but I put her down at the edge of the puddle. YOU have carried her all day.”  

Sisters, what do we carry around all day that we don’t have to? What unnecessary burdens do we carry because of our thoughts? Do we carry negative thoughts about ourselves? For some of us that is a constant habit. Please, think deeply about this: If it is not OK for you to constantly barrage your children, your neighbors, your co-workers, your husband, your friends, with complaints and name-calling and put-downs, then why in the world do we think it is Ok to do this to ourselves? Do we really think that our Father in Heaven is perfectly fine with this? It is just as wrong for us to do this to ourselves as it would be for us to do this to someone else.  YOU ARE A CHILD OF GOD AND YOU SHOULD BE TREATED THAT WAY, EVEN BY YOURSELF!!

 Do you ever feel that you are wearing a mask, because if you let the real you show, others won’t like you, love you, appreciate you??  Do we tell ourselves that we are not good enough? That we will never be good enough? Are we exhausted trying to hold this mask up? It takes a lot of energy to hold this mask up all day long, every day.  Do we compare ourselves to others and never measure up? Do we live out our days in angst and vexation? These are such a great words, angst and vexation. So many of us live life like this.  Are we anxious and fearful? Are we “careful and troubled about many things," as Martha is the New Testament?  Sister Hinckley once said, “We woman have a lot to learn about simplifying our lives. We have to decide what is important and then move along at a pace that is comfortable for us. We have to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something. We have to be content with what we are.”  Wow! This is powerful. If we could learn to do this, we could at last put down our mask! 

If we are living our lives in angst and vexation, then we have to take a careful look at the words we are telling ourselves…it starts there. We have to look at the words that we are using to create our reality.  

As mortals, we do feel pain. There really is no way to avoid pain altogether on this earth. Some of it is necessary pain (our bodies can become sick, or injured; we live with the effects of the fall every day. We live in an imperfect world and things can go wrong that cause psychological pain, spiritual pain, social pain, etc.).  But, a lot of the pain we experience is UNNECCESARY pain. This is the kind of pain we feel that comes from words that we tell ourselves. This kind of pain comes from focusing on the “should” in our lives (which we’ll talk about in more detail in a moment).

We’ve all heard that thoughts (words in our mind) lead to actions, and actions lead to habits, and habits lead to character. The words in our minds and the words that we say out loud about ourselves influence who we are becoming. We cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought. If we really knew the effect that negative words were having on us, we would stop.  If you watch your words, your actions will take care of themselves.

Alma 32 compares the word to a seed.  Alma 32: 31: says that “every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness.”  If we replace the word seed with “word,” it states that, “every WORD bringeth forth unto its own likeness.”  What goes around, comes around! Self-fulfilling prophecy!  I am a big believer in Karma, but was a little nervous about whether or not Karma is an LDS doctrine.  I was recently doing a deep study of Alma and found this in Alma 41:15: “…for that which ye do send out, shall return unto you again…” What a perfect description of Karma! So the words that we are producing about ourselves will come back…either to hurt us or to bless and uplift us.  Your words/thoughts create your reality. What kind of reality do you want to create for yourself? An environment of warmth, forgiveness, charity, mercy? Or angst and vexation fear and worry? It's really all up to us. And think about which environment the Lord would want for you? That’s an easy answer…which environment would you like for your loved ones?

In D&C 93:24 it states that, “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, as they were and as they are to come. “Notice it does not say that truth is knowledge of things as we really, really wish they were or as we think they SHOULD BE. We have a lot of SHOULDS in our lives and I think we torture ourselves with our SHOULDS. 

Let me clarify something right now, before I go on, so no one will misunderstand. When I am talking about SHOULDS for the next few minutes, I am talking about the things that we do NOT have control over, but there are SHOULDS in our lives that we DO have control over. For example, we should attend church, we should pay our tithing, and we should have home evening. These are good “shoulds” as they guide us to happy living. If you get a prompting that says “You should go to the temple this weekend” that’s probably the Holy Ghost trying to help you and influence you to do something that will only bring you happiness. THOSE “shoulds” we must listen to and try to get better at heeding. The kinds of “shoulds” that I am talking about now are the kinds of “shoulds” we have no control over. 

We cause ourselves a lot of UNNECESSARY pain and vexation, and anxiety, and fear, sadness, and worry when we focus on what we think SHOULD be that maybe isn’t. Think of all the “shoulds”   in our lives. Some of them are mere annoyances, not too serious, such as “Why does there have to be a traffic jam today of all days? This should not be happening. This lady in line should not be taking so long. The waiter should not have gotten my order wrong.   My friend should not have hurt my feelings; my boss should appreciate me more."

Some are more serious in nature: “My son should have gone on a mission, my daughter should have gotten married in the temple, my husband should not have lost his job. I should not have gotten sick.” “Should” is a dangerous word …WHY? Because the spirit resides in truth (and remember, truth is things are they ARE, not as we think they SHOULD be).  If we want to be where the spirit is, we must remain in truth.  D&C 84:45 says, “For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light and whatsoever is light is spirit…”  So, if a=b, and b=c, then a=c:  TRUTH IS SPIRIT AND SPIRIT IS TRUTH…so the spirit resides in things as they ARE. When we insist on focusing on the way we WISH things were, the “shoulds and the “should nots,” we are outside of the realm of the spirit. How often have you felt the spirit when you are in fear, when you are worrying, fretting, murmuring, when you are anxious and complaining? We don’t. We don’t feel the spirit then because the spirit resides in truth. 

D&C 93: 25 says:  “Whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of the wicked one which was a liar from the beginning.” Wow..so truth is things as they are and anything more or less than this comes from the adversary!

When we stop fretting about things we have no control over, we are free to live in truth and then the Holy Ghost is free to influence us, guide us, and to help us decide what to do if anything about a situation.

So, again, I don’t want you to misunderstand me, I am not saying that we stop caring. I’m not saying, “We don’t have control over that person or that situation, so I’ll pretend I don’t care.” We should not live in denial.   What I am saying is when something unpleasant is happening, we can use words to say to ourselves, “This is happening, I have everything I need in this moment to be guided by the Lord,” and then open yourself up to the spirit for inspiration. Use prayer.  Sometimes there is something that we can do, sometimes there may not be anything we can do at that moment, but you will be calm enough to hear the whisperings of the Holy Ghost, either way. 

So, when we are aware that we are giving ourselves unnecessary pain, we need to look at the words we are telling ourselves. Here is some last advice about how to do this:

1)      Follow Elder Wirthlin’s advice…”Come what may and love it,” he said. Realize through self-talk that life is a miracle. Even on a “terrible, horrible, no good very bad day,” life is amazing! Learn to embrace all of our experiences for the miracle it is just to be here. Learn to appreciate all of the learning we are doing here. Develop your faith in God’s plan!

2)      Anchor yourself. This means to be aware of the present moment. When you recognize that you are slipping into negativity and vexing yourself by the SHOULDS, use your five senses to ground yourself in the moment, to ground yourself to the now, to truth. Soak in the sounds you may be hearing, the sights, the colors around you, be aware of the fabric of your shirt. This puts you in “neutral” and helps you to remain calm and helps you to see the big picture.  Everything you need in that moment will be given to you. I know this sounds kind of hokey..but I promise it really works.!! I remember one night, I was in the kitchen preparing dinner and one of my sons came in to talk to me. What he was telling me was not making me very happy, and I was starting to get very uptight and vexed about it. As I listened, I grounded myself in the moment by letting myself become aware of the beautiful colors of the peppers I was cutting up at the time. The bright yellow and red colors against the pure, white cutting board became so brilliant and beautiful to me. In the second or two that that took, I was reminded of the big picture of how beautiful life is and how great it is just to be alive. That allowed me to settle my nerves, listen more calmly to my son, and allowed me to hear the inspiration of the spirit that helped me with the rest of that conversation. If I had let myself continue to grow in anxiety and stress, I know I would not have responded in the best way, because it would have been harder for me to feel the spirit.

3)      Re-write the story. This means, when you find yourself getting upset and all worked up about something; make up a reasonable explanation as to why that upsetting thing happened. For example, if someone doesn’t say hi to you in the hall…instead, of thinking, “Boy, why is she mad at me?  What did I do to offend her?” etc., you can say, “Maybe she just got some bad news. I hope she’s OK.”  If someone cuts you off on the freeway, you can allow yourself to waste precious time and energy by getting upset and vexed or you can rewrite the story, “Maybe his wife is in labor and they are trying to get to the hospital.” This is one of the most powerful techniques (and my personal favorite) because as soon as you come up with a more charitable reason for something happening, it instantly changes your feelings about a situation.

4)      Affirmative self-talk.  Instead of saying to yourself things like, “I can’t believe I did that or said that. What is wrong with me?  I am such an idiot,” we can say, “I made a mistake. I should not have done that. I have learned from this. Next time, I will____.” No longer allow yourself to beat yourself up. When you find yourself doing it..STOP IT!!

5)      Gospel principals-Don’t forget about true gospel principals that we learn about every week! Live your life in gratitude! Strive to develop faith, learn to forgive (yourself and others both), repent, come to the sacrament table with a broken heart and a contrite spirit to renew your covenants, pray, feast on the scriptures, etc. These are tools given to us by the Lord to help us stay in truth. To stay where the spirit is!

Sisters, we must be aware of the words we are telling ourselves. We cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought because it is too costly! We will catch ourselves many times falling out of the realm of truth into the illusion of the “shoulds” but we can learn to use the tools that will help us break this habit and to stay in truth, where the spirit is. I know we can, because the Lord loves us and will help us to do so! I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.