Ep9 EMPHASISING STRENGTHS

When we choose to highlight our strengths, we empower ourselves. And the bottom line is, we achieve more and live a much more fulfilled and purpose-driven life.

I want to leave you with that thought because this Inflammation Superhighway is a long journey, and it can sometimes feel like a rollercoaster. So give yourself that peace of mind, that positive feedback. Create the language that allows you to speak to your body in a healing way. Because when you do that, it also allows others to find solace, faith, and hope in where they are going.

"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." – A.A. Milne (from Winnie the Pooh)

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Transcript

Hey, hey, and welcome to Inflammation Superhighway, recorded in Yarraville, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I would like to begin by honoring the original custodians of this saltwater and encircled country, who lived in harmony with the land and the sea. I'd like to thank the traditional owners of the land where I am recording today. I honor the Elders past and present, and I recognize that this is, was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

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Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm pretty high as a kite right now because I've just come back from a show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It's April in Australia, and this is Inflammation Superhighway. I'm your host, Claire Tierney, and today, because of the level of enthusiasm, excitement, and amazingness that is stand-up comedy, I wanted to talk about some of my own examples—but also just basically the importance of emphasizing your strengths over your limitations.

This idea kind of came to me while I was listening to stand-up comedian Sammy J this evening. It wasn’t so much the content—although it was really funny—as the amazing inspiration I find in not just stand-up comedians, but anyone who can get up on a stage and bear themselves so raw, so vulnerable, and open themselves up to criticism and critique. It amazes me—the limitations they must have had to overcome on their journey to becoming performers.

And how important that is when we relate it back to health—obviously mental health, but also physical health. I think today, I just wanted to have a bit of a shift and focus on what we can do instead of what we can’t do. This is a really powerful shift in mindset. It supports healing—physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Off the back of what I now know about the mind–body connection, where our thoughts and language shape our psychological and physiological well-being, I wanted to focus on that today. Because I now live in a world where people put labels on your unwellness.

Firstly, they label your illness. And while they don’t necessarily want to control the path per se—and I don’t think it’s about control—I do think it’s limited, no matter how you look at it, by what mainstream health specialists and the general medical system (that we’ve been brought up with here in Australia) tell us.

But I feel this changing—I really do. I'm so super excited and enthused by people like Dr. Zach Bush and others who are really shifting their mindset around health and wellness. So I wanted to focus on that—focus on the fact that looking at our strengths is where our power lies.

So I’ll kind of point-form it a little bit. Neuroplasticity: what we now understand is that our brains are able to rewire at any point in our lives. We are not the child of seven years old anymore. We are able—when we decide and choose to make changes—to adapt our brains. We can repeat any thoughts and patterns by focusing on our abilities instead of our limitations. The brain strengthens these neural pathways that promote resilience and recovery.

It's like what I’ve said in one of my episodes: the body is always listening. There are really simple examples. Like I remember in primary school—one of my teachers used to say, “There’s no such word as ‘can’t.’” Which, of course, is a bit simplistic, but it’s a mindset shift. So if you read in the literature that you cannot cure disease X, Y, or Z—you’re telling yourself you can’t. You’re telling your body you can’t. You’re not opening pathways for the chemistry in your body to create solutions and resolutions for your health and your future direction in becoming well.

So instead of saying things like, “Oh God, this is so terrible. I can’t write anymore because of this disease”—which is one of my personal physical complications that I’m currently experiencing—I now change that wording to: “Currently, my right hand is not writing very well,” or “Currently, I’m experiencing difficulties writing, but I have full faith that this will return.”

If you say it out loud, it might be confusing to other people, but you’re not just saying it to them—you’re saying it to yourself.

There’s a lot more to be learned and talked about with neuroplasticity, and I might even do a whole episode on it. But it’s real. It is the current understanding of our brain’s capacity to strengthen neural pathways through repetition. So if you’re constantly saying—or adapting—your language to be positive instead of focusing on the negatives, then you are encouraging and supporting your health and wellness.

Another thing that happens when we change our language and focus on our strengths is that it helps with stress reduction, which ultimately boosts your immune system. We’ve talked about this before, but negative language triggers stress responses, and that releases cortisol, which can weaken your immune system. Positive language, on the other hand, releases chemicals like dopamine and endorphins.

I’ve been thinking about—and reflecting on—language: the language we use and how we describe people, especially those who are faced with various challenges. There’s a term that really stands out for me personally, and it’s whether you allow labeling like “disabled” when you have physical manifestations of an illness.

So for me, going back to what I’m going through with MS: you're told it’s progressive, you’re told there’s no cure, and all of these things are negative language. You’re told it’s a disability. When I think about that word, coming out of 30, 40, 50 years of being able to do anything I wanted—including hiking, climbing, deep-sea diving, running, and jumping—I needed to shift that language.Here is your corrected blog text, with complete sentences, accurate spelling and punctuation, improved sentence and paragraph structure, and no summarization or shortening. The style and tone have been preserved, while enhancing clarity and readability:

So I've started to say things like "I am ably challenged," which doesn’t mean I’m dissing anything. I mean, putting "dis" in front of any word is such a negative turnaround. But really, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t challenged. I wasn’t originally sure how effective or meaningful this shift in language would be.

But as I’ve had more time to consider it, and I’ve read and listened to people who know a heck of a lot in these areas, I really appreciate the depth that it carries. It feels much more thoughtful and positive. So, it resonates with me. I’m hoping that you’ll understand how language affects every part of your life—not just your health, but your physical health as part of the whole program of your mental health. How you think positively, and what that does to the chemical balance in your body, is incredibly important.

So, the term “ably challenged” reminds me to see people first for their abilities, instead of their challenges or restrictions. It’s really just a much more empowering and hopeful way to think.

I believe it’s a more respectful and dignified way of referring to someone. And I just notice that the word “dis” is always so negative—like disaster, disease, disabled. So many of these "dis" words carry weight I’m not comfortable with. I don’t use them very often, and in fact, I try not to focus on them at all when I think about language and conversations of inclusiveness.

Because, look—we all face challenges in different ways. And using the term “ably challenged,” for me, broadens the conversation. It reminds me that everyone has their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses.

I think, for me, it fosters empathy and understanding. It shows me that no one is exempt from facing challenges. We all have our own battles to fight, and they’re not always obvious on the surface when you look at people. It just encourages me to look at others much more holistically and to appreciate the value they bring, rather than focusing solely on my own and others’ obstacles.

So, the shift from “disabled” to “ably challenged” offers us a really powerful way to reshape social attitudes. It helps us promote positive self-perception, which I think is super important.

It’s empowering—you know? It reframes challenges as opportunities for growth and emphasizes the importance of focusing on your abilities rather than your limitations. I think it also gives us a more positive and holistic view of our challenges and our potential. Because again, everyone is challenged, all the time.

When we adopt this “ably challenged” terminology, it can have a really lasting, positive impact on people’s mindsets. And ultimately, it’s not the challenges we face that define us, but the strength and determination we use to overcome them. I just know that the shifts I’ve made over the last five years have come through this change in language—this reframing of how I think about things, how I approach things, and how I actually speak.

I hear it now. I hear it in people and in their conversations—their general, everyday conversations. I hear negative words, and I can’t help myself but try to encourage others, alongside my own efforts, to reframe those words.

I think focusing on strengths really helps create a mindset of possibility. And that leads to action, engagement, and increased energy levels. Emphasizing this creative mindset—like after tonight’s show—had me thinking: comedians are really good at this. They look at their lives, the challenges, the crazy moments of embarrassment, their foibles, their failures—and they turn them into comedy.

It’s such a brilliant art. I’m not expecting everyone to go out and become a stand-up comedian, but it’s so incredible to watch really good comedians often making light of really intense situations. I think there’s a huge amount to be learned from this.

Some of the stuff going on in my body is obvious, but I shouldn’t look at a train full of people and think, “Just because nobody else in this carriage is in a wheelchair, none of them have issues. None of them have limitations. None of them are ably challenged. They’re all just so much luckier than I am.”

But it’s not true. And when you go to a comedy show, you really realize that even the most incredibly magnanimous—often famous, bold, brave people—tell you stories about all sorts of crap that’s happened in their lives, and how they’ve turned that into a strength. So, emphasizing your strengths instead of your limitations—or, more accurately, placing your strengths above your limitations—allows the limitations to become part of what you reflect on as helping you grow.

That leads me to pain perception—or healing responses—which, again, after reading and listening to many people who know more than I do, I’ve come to believe are deeply connected to language and mindset. I know that there are studies showing that people who use empowering language experience significantly less pain in their bodies and recover faster.

This taps into what we’ve talked about before: the placebo effect.

The placebo effect really fascinates me. The placebo effect was defined by—I'll try this—Ani Nicolo. I think that’s who it was; sorry if I got that wrong. A paper was published in 2022, and it discussed the placebo effect as the phenomenon where people report real improvements after taking non-existent treatment. The term “placebo” comes from Latin

I will, please. I never knew that until I read this paper. But basically, what it shows me is that people are having positive effects and moving towards wellness with a tablet that contains none of the active drugs in the experimental protocol

From what I have read about the body’s capacity to create chemicals—and its capacity to respond to thoughts and belief—the fact that a sugar pill can create healing shows that the body must be producing its own pharmaceutical chemicals. To me, it proves that the body has this incredible ability to treat itself when given the opportunity. Therefore, the placebo effect must be due to a patient’s belief.

And that, to me, is the most incredible part of all of this. It was dismissed for a long time. It was given a name to contain it, to minimize it—but modern studies show that placebos can significantly affect outcomes, especially with things like pain and mental wellness.

So I think it's an area I’m going to do a lot more reading in, because it really excites my scientific brain. It’s part of why I emphasize strengths: because in that positive emphasis, there are biological benefits within our bodies. When we're talking about pain and healing responses, studies have shown how using empowering language helps people recover faster.

It’s driven by belief. It demonstrates that words and expectations influence the body’s responses. On a cellular and genetic level, research into epigenetics proves that our thoughts and emotions can turn genes on or off. We've talked about how environmental factors can change gene expression and how this impacts inflammation, immunity—and I think I even read—cellular regeneration.

That’s such an incredibly positive approach toward wellness. It shows that emphasizing strengths can have a cellular and genetic influence. It just blows my mind.

Do you know, I studied genetics in 1985, '86, and '87, and I so wish I could go back and study it now, because the field has expanded like crazy. What I read now about genetics and environmental influences on gene expression is a world away from what we were learning at university. And it is just fabulous. There’s nothing else to say—it’s absolutely fabulous where we’ve come to.

So, I really, really wanted to emphasize how positive words create positive outcomes on a cellular level, because I think it is vital. It’s a summary of the things I’ve been talking about, but absolutely—positive thoughts, positive words, and positive language are going to be among the most important reasons for helping move toward wellness and away from disease.

Your body’s ability to find its best stasis—its best equilibrium—so it can heal itself, is such a focus of my healing. It’s a focus of all of these podcast episodes, because I am a great believer in healing oneself. If we get out of the way and do the best work we can by reading and learning about the best ways to support our body’s internal biochemistry—putting it into its most optimal state—then we have a much better chance of placing our bodies into a state of remission.

Let me move toward finishing. I want to be very clear that positive words can create positive outcomes. Because in the knowledge that everything on this planet is energy—we are energy—we are light energy.

This is a topic I’ll talk more about again, because just saying it in one sentence might make people think I’m a little bit crazy. But we are made of light, and we are made of energy. And words carry energy. They create energy. That affects our body’s biochemistry.

Saying “I’m strong” sends a completely different signal to your cells than saying “I’m broken.” Reframing all of your struggles into growth opportunities encourages a mindset of adapting, rather than defeat.

I can honestly say that I’ve had to adapt a trillion things in my life as my body has become, at times, inflamed or affected by this particular challenge I’m facing. But in those adaptations, I am living an independent, highly functioning life.

One of the other really important aspects of language is using compassionate language toward yourself. You know, I’ve heard many, many times people say, “What do you think of this?” And someone might respond negatively. Then they’re asked, “Would you say that to someone else?” And the answer is usually, “No. No way.”

I wouldn’t say to someone else, “You’re an idiot,” or “You can’t do that,” or “Your life is shit.” But I found myself in the past saying things like that to myself. And that can’t be good when we’re talking about how positive words create positive outcomes.

So, I don’t want to say “I’m broken.” I want to say “I’m strong.” This is a challenge—and I’m strong enough to get past this challenge. I’m strong enough to jump these hurdles. I’m here, proving to myself, in my journey of growth, that I can do this.

To support that mindset, I have to use compassionate language toward myself. This reduces fear and fear-based reactions, which are often our go-to. Fear is a very low-resonating emotion in our bodies, and we really don’t want to be saying negative things to ourselves, because it will create negative reactions.

We want to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which—sorry, let me clarify—compassionate language activates the parasympathetic nervous system. And this is essential for healing.

So, I think in short: words shape thoughts, thoughts shape emotions, emotions shape biochemistry, and biochemistry shapes healing.

By emphasizing your strengths over your limitations, you’re focusing on what you can do. You invite your body to move toward recovery rather than resistance.

Focusing on what we can do rather than what we can’t unlocks potential. It builds confidence. It creates a more positive outlook on life. And for me personally, this mindset shift has not only transformed my self-perception—it has really influenced how I interact with the world, and how I think others perceive me.

So, I really feel like emphasizing strengths is such a positive, positive adaptation—one that we should all focus on. Let’s create language like “ably challenged.” Let’s create positive language at any time. And when you hear yourself saying something negative—and we’ll all do it until we train ourselves out of it—just catch it, and reframe it.Here is your corrected blog text, with accurate spelling, punctuation, complete sentences, and improved sentence and paragraph structure, while preserving your voice, tone, and intent:

Try to just think of a positive way to reframe, and it may take a while. But I think, at its core, it's such a powerful way to live—even without an illness diagnosis. Even without that, it is simply a positive way to live.

I've learned that in any circumstance where you feel like you've been negatively affected by someone’s actions or words, harboring that negativity only serves to interfere with your energy and your life. Fostering this mindset of forgiveness—you know, forgiveness isn't actually for the other person, it’s for you—brings us back to the idea of positive energy. This is the energy we want to cultivate in our bodies so that we can move into healing, whether that healing is of the mind or the body.

I believe they go hand in hand.

I don’t want to transgress too much, but I think this is also part of the conversation around asking for help, which I touched on in the last episode. Asking for help is such an act of courage and self-care that it ties directly into this mindset of focusing on your strengths.

It might seem like a strange way to look at it, but asking for help is an essential skill. It leads to stronger relationships and better outcomes. It’s part of fostering positivity in the body. It allows for collaboration, reduces stress in your life, and often enhances learning from the insights and support you receive from others.

I really appreciate how so much of the literature I’ve read encourages embracing this idea. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It’s an incredibly powerful and positive feedback loop for the body. It’s a sign of self-awareness, understanding, and empathy—not just for others, but for yourself.

This exchange of support between the giver and the receiver really nurtures a deeper sense of purpose, fulfillment, and connection—with individuals and with community.

So I will end here by saying that emphasizing strengths over limitations is transformative. It has transformed me. It has changed how I look at the challenges I face, and how, through all the cycles I’ve been through—the ups and downs, the rollercoaster ride of autoimmune disease and inflammation—I continue to live.

Looking at what I’ve achieved and how I live, and opening my mind and body to situations where people say positive things to me—things like how amazing I am, how brave I am, or how inspirational I am—has truly transformed my self-perception.

I was a confident person before, but this shift has helped foster much deeper resilience. It has allowed me to focus more clearly on what I can do. It’s such a positive mindset. It improves and deepens all the relationships I have in life—whether in work, family, or personal life with my partner and child.

And I truly love the bigger picture: how this mindset allows me to invite in a supportive, inclusive community.

When we choose to highlight our strengths, we empower ourselves. And the bottom line is, we achieve more and live a much more fulfilled and purpose-driven life.

I want to leave you with that thought because this Inflammation Superhighway is a long journey, and it can sometimes feel like a rollercoaster. So give yourself that peace of mind, that positive feedback. Create the language that allows you to speak to your body in a healing way. Because when you do that, it also allows others to find solace, faith, and hope in where they are going.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today on Inflammation Superhighway. And until we cross paths again, please take care—and enjoy the ride.