Negative Words: How To Not Let Them Affect You

What should you do if you find yourself caring too much about other people’s thoughts and how they choose to speak? If you let other people’s words affect you in a negative way, change how you feel, rethink how you should act, then you must learn how to not let other people’s words affect you. If you’re curious how to prevent negative words from hurting you, the simple strategy outlined in this post will help you understand what gives power to words, how you are giving your power away, and how to take your power back so that you can empower yourself to think, feel, and act in a way that serves you and is not affected by other people’s thoughts or opinions.

As humans, we attach emotions to certain words. Without even realizing it, words can alter our lives.

Words change the way we feel. How we feel changes the way we act. How we act changes the results we see.

When someone says something to you that rubs you the wrong way, how many hours of your precious time and emotional energy are you spending ruminating on that one thing?

I know I’ve spent anywhere between a few hours to a few days replaying the words in my head and feeling awful about them.

THAT DOES NOT SERVE ANYONE.

That’s why I decided it was critical to share with you how to empower yourself by disempowering the negative words that trigger your spiraling.

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Think about the difference between someone saying vagina and someone saying c***. These words describe the same body part, but the way we react to them is drastically different. You put those words in a negative context, giving them the power to affect how you feel. That word is literally the letter C with three stars beside it but suddenly your breathing changes and your brows furrow and you feel a little bit (or a lot) taken aback.

Do you see how you let ME affect how you feel right now by hitting a key on my laptop 4 times?? You’re giving me your power.

The beauty of this is it means YOU can also take that power away.

Other people’s words and actions can’t affect you unless you let them
DEAN GRAZIOSI

It is your responsibility to disempower the words that make you feel awful when they’re directed at you. If you are letting other people’s words affect how you feel about yourself, you are giving all of your power away.

Right now, I want you to identify the words that you assign a negative meaning to that impact how you feel when they’re directed at you. Dean Graziosi calls these your trigger words.

Trigger words change your physiological state when you hear them. They affect your emotions negatively. From that place, it is more difficult (and sometimes impossible) to accomplish what you originally intended to because your entire focus changes to dealing with the negative emotions that come up.

My trigger words include

It’s not going to happen (because it goes against my values of determination, and it rubs up against self worth)
You dropped the ball (because I’m still working through perfectionism)
Leave me alone (because I always want to fix things)

What are 3 of your trigger words/phrases? Pause now, and write them down really quick.

No really, stop and write them down…

We’re doing WORK to change our lives, not thinking about changing our lives. Come on! Let’s go!

Alright, did you do it? Good. Now, let’s disempower these negative words by flipping the script. What meaning can you assign to the words that serves you better? For me,

It’s not going to happen because you’re not good enough BECOMES it’s not going to happen because there is an even better opportunity waiting for you.
You dropped the ball because you’re incompetent and unworthy BECOMES you are worthy no matter what, and by dropping the ball you will only learn and be even better next time
Leave me alone because I don’t love/want you BECOMES I love/want you always, and I need space to process my emotions

You may not realize how far your brain spirals when trigger words are thrown at you.

You must disassociate the words that were said from the meaning you assigned to them, and choose to assign a new meaning.

If you struggle with this and find yourself caring too much about what other people say to you, or think about you, and you let comparison steal your joy, sign up for results coaching today so that we can do the mindset work to help you manage your emotions effectively!

When you encounter those words again, actively replace your original thought with the new, more empowering thought, and watch the grip of those words loosen their chokehold on you.

As much as we aim to infuse our lives with positivity, there will always be moments in life that are negative.

Your role isn’t to run from them (that is impossible) but to use this tool to take away the power of that negativity and keep living in a beautiful emotional state.

If you found this tidbit of advice valuable, it’s part of the Tactical Tuesday series in the Move Your Mountains community. Join us now, and be the first to receive practical advice you can use to improve your life every Tuesday!

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What are some of your trigger words or phrases? Let us know in the comments below!