“Use your words”

Throwing it back to a post from April that feels really relevant right now. Cheering you on, friends!

In a moment of frustration a few months back, a friend shared with me this basic truth: “use your words.”

This simple phrase stuck with me. The idea resonated and seemed to be applicable for many areas of life. Imagine if we all could use this thought with the end goal of developing healthy relationships? How might the world improve if we encouraged loving and candid conversations? Why had I not honed in on this phrase before? (It sure may have been useful when the boys were younger.)

Here’s the question I ask to frame this up for myself: What is the most loving thing to do or say in this situation? In every conversation, be it work, home, or some other relationships, using your words and sharing your heart is often the most loving/compassionate thing you can do. If you don’t, you run the risk of not fostering healthy relationships and likely even causing that uncomfortable tension that happens when we don’t fully share what is stirring in our soul.

Here are a few possible scenarios:

• Claiming ground rules and boundaries. (Yeah, we still need to clean up after we cook in the kitchen.)
• Sharing that you are really scared, that you don’t know how you are going to come out of this financially, physically, mentally or emotionally.
• Telling a co-worker that you need them to communicate better for the greater good of the team even though you know they are feeling stressed.

I’m sure you can come up with several other useful scenarios. I locked in on this topic early in the week. I had never heard anyone else share this truth of “using your words.” I have however always found that the universe has a way of validating if we are on the right track. Just yesterday, one of my favorite blog follows, theartofsimple.net, shared a few poems and one was titled “Use your words.” I love it.

I hope that this insight offers some encouragement and useful thoughts as you embark on another week. Let’s all choose to use our words and LOVE WELL!