The Amazing Power Of Words

In 2004 a Japanese scientist named Masaru Emoto  carried out an investigation to demonstrate the power of words. The experiment consisted of boiling some rice and distributing it in three equally sized containers. One of them would carry a positive label, another a negative label and the last a neutral one.

Every day for a whole month he directed positive and pleasant words to the rice with the positive label. He did the opposite to the jar with the negative label,  directing insults, scorn, indifference and hatred towards it. When the month was over, the rice that had received the pleasant, positive messages had maintained its appearance much better and didn’t give off any unpleasant smell. On the other hand, the jar which had “received” the unpleasant words and insults was filled with mold, causing the rice to go black and smell bad.

The power of words

This shows the power of words and the messages we transmit. If this happens with simple food like rice, how much more it could happen to the people around us that we communicate with on a daily basis?

The experiment may only be pseudoscience and we don’t intend to take it as something completely true and scientific, but the message it conveys is that we can use it to discover the wonderful power of words, whether written or spoken.

The importance of the language we use

The language we use makes us see reality in many different ways. Saying “this is impossible to achieve” is so different from saying “it may be difficult, but at least I have to try”. When we use or communicate our messages in a different way, the idea we have had and what we think about it can change completely. It’s all down to the power of words.

It’s important to realize that it’s often not what they tell us, but how they tell us. Words have the power to change what we think, to give us a new way of looking at what is in front of our eyes, and above all, the wonderful ability of giving relief and peace.

It is not about making an artificial use of language just to change what we think and to go from “I can’t do it” to a “I will do it”. Rather, it is about us realising the power of words, and how we should we stop using expressions that only bring difficulties. We should stop using words like “always “, “never”, “I have to “, “I must “, and start using expressions that will help us, like “I may have never been able to do this before, but today is a brand new day and  I’m going to try my best”.

Let’s re-write our own story

Language is a wonderful tool to be able to help and shape our minds and our ideas. Let’s be the script writers of our own lives and let’s write a script full of power and messages that encourage and don’t limit us. Doing so can be very simple, and the difference between putting it into practice or not is very big.

Let’s try to change the words we say to others, and to ourselves, and find the ones that are appropriate and positive, perhaps changing only the way we say it, or perhaps the content. If they help us, inspire us, and they do us good, then they are the right ones. On the contrary, we may see that they drain our strength, limit us and don’t help us at all. They may even harm others. In this case we should then ask ourselves whether we need to change the way we talk to ourselves.

If we can see the power of words on rice, just imagine the effect on the people around us. As we form our words, we have the power, literally on tip of our tongue, of either treating other people well or badly. In just the same way as we have the power over our own lives. We have many choices to make in life, and one of the most important ones is how we use the power of words.