This one we discuss how words hurt you and sticks and stones might be less painful. To ourselves and others! Find your word for 2024, Ashton is discover, Gene is Connect, Gideon is Consistency and Dad is flow. We spend a lot of time on personal talk and trying to keep things positive and uplifting when you visit with others. Find this and many other episodes by category on our website! https://adultingdecrypted.com/episode-search/
This one we discuss how words hurt you and sticks and stones might be less painful. To ourselves and others! Find your word for 2024, Ashton is discover, Gene is Connect, Gideon is Consistency and Dad is flow. We spend a lot of time on personal talk and trying to keep things positive and uplifting when you visit with others. Find this and many other episodes by category on our website! https://adultingdecrypted.com/episode-search/
All right. Today we get an opportunity to sit down and visit a little bit about the power of words. It's interesting to me that we really realized this on our trip here in Cabo. How many people are fluent in Spanish in this group? Oh yeah. Which would be an astounding zero. Yeah, none of us. Right. So we've had to rely on a couple of cool things. I think Google translate, we were able to use that today. That was kind of fun. There's some mistranslations. It was kind of interesting, how did it do, Gene? You did it. I watched a little bit of it as well. Yeah, so I used the
Welcome to Adulting Decrypted. We are your hosts. I'm Gene, and I'm starting my first year of college. I'm Ashton. I'm a music performer, composer, and educator. I'm Dean, a high school senior. I'm Roscoe, the dad. Those are my three sons, and this is Adulting Decrypted, where we discuss ways to become adults and the things we need to know to be successful in life.
Gene:Google Transcribe and Google Translate. And it worked decently well. For the most part, you could catch up on what the gist of what they were trying to say was. But sometimes the grammar was just weird. The words were just wrong altogether. Because you knew that that's not
Dad:what it was supposed to say. Yeah, just based on the context of Of the nomenclature of what's normally used. I know I've relied on Ashton multiple times. He's one with cell service and the Google translate camera feature. Is that what it is? It's under
Ashton:translate. Yeah. You just throw through your camera on something and it. It's pretty cool actually, it replaces the words on signs and boxes and stuff with the language you're translating to, in our case English, and it's kind of fun. Obviously it's not perfect there's a lot of things that don't make sense, but you get about 70 percent more
Dad:than you would have without it, so. Yeah, and to me, maybe 100 percent more, you've got a basis in Spanish a couple years in high school. Gideon, did you take any language in school?
Gid:Nope. Okay. I did not take
Dad:any language. Okay. Sounds good. Well, the old adage, have you ever heard, sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me? You guys ever heard that? I have. Many a time. And is it something you guys have said amongst your friends or is that stuff that I've said or where'd you hear it from? Do you think I don't I
Ashton:don't know the first place. I heard it. I normally use it as a joke But yeah, I mean I've said it a couple times
Gid:I think I've heard it from like media like songs or Maybe movies or something. I would never use it I don't think in a conversation unless like Ashton said for a joke
Dad:yeah, I think the first time I ever heard
Gene:it was, it's probably in a song. Couldn't tell you which one it was or where it was, but
Dad:I like heard it. I
Gene:was like, okay, I guess that. I mean, sure. And then I know that we talked about it later on outside of the podcast and I was like, Oh yeah, it doesn't make sense at all.
Dad:And we might've talked about the power of words before, but it's one is worth repeating. Coming into 2024. And, and there's two types. I think there's two types of words. We need to pay attention to one is self dialogue and positive talk. And then there's obviously the outer talk that we talk to others, but mostly today, probably the power of words in as it pertains to positive self talk and as it pertains to our own self talk, you know, as far as it's a positive self talk and, and optimistic self talk. Do
you
Gid:mean like self affirmations?
Dad:Yeah, they can be affirmations. Absolutely. Affirmations are one part of that. And for the listener getting, can you tell me a little bit about affirmations? Yeah, of course.
Gid:So I know in some like self help classes or stuff like that, they'll be like, you got to do 10 self affirmations in the morning. And what that kind of means. So you could look at yourself in the mirror and be like, I am beautiful, I am powerful, I am independent. And just like, an affirmation is a positive thing about yourself.
Dad:Yeah, is it always though? And I'm not trying to be dumb. To do it as an exercise, it's always positive. But do you think we give ourselves negative affirmations? Yeah,
Gid:I mean just like affirming a belief, technically. So it's like positive affirmations is how it's often stated. So it's not like any affirmation, but a positive affirmation.
Dad:Yeah, I guess my point was is that I think we give ourselves negative affirmations all day long. There's times we go, Oh, I knew I couldn't do that. Oh, I knew that was going to come up. Oh, I, I, I was gonna forget that anyways. Is there, is there any other ones that we probably do or that we share? Yeah,
Gene:I knew that was a bad question, or, oh, I knew the answer was wrong, I just didn't know the right one. I knew I wouldn't make it in the job, I knew I wouldn't get that part, or
Dad:any of those things. I
Gid:know, like, sometimes I make a mistake of it, ah, I'm stupid. Yeah. It's not like, that decision could have been stupid, but like, ah, I'm
Dad:stupid. You know, I do, I do. I think that's an interesting one. The one I catch myself saying that I don't even realize it. And it's like, I quit, I'm done. I'm frustrated. I'm angry. I'm whatever. Right. And I'm going, I'm done instead of saying it it's time to be done. Right. Or I can't do it. I quit, you know, I think we all do that if we're really honest with ourself and as a listener, hope you think as we go through this list and we think through this, there's going to be a challenge at the end and just to put it out there and you're To get you prepped for it and get it in your thoughts. The challenge is going to be coming up with a word that we strive to live 2024 by for me, 2023 was a year of mobility. And what that meant to me was that I needed to be willing to be mobile. In my job, you know, it was mobility for me personally on my exercise goals. I wanted to be able to do more things, be able to get up and down easier. You know, and I accomplished a little bit of all of it. I I'm not perfect at it by any stretch, but at least it got it in my head and got me thinking about it. the first reason why we want to do this, boosts confidence. Those daily affirmations, do you still feel pretty silly doing those in the mirror in the morning I don't know
Gid:if I've ever done one of those. So I mean
Dad:I can imagine I almost gave myself a negative affirmation I keep turning this mic. We're not using our stands. I'm like that is so dumb. I'm so dumb Why do I keep doing that? Anyways, but I didn't say those out loud, right? Those are internal So I think an internal, positive self affirmation probably adds value as well.
Gene:I know for me, whenever I've like been told to like, Oh yeah, write down like ten things that you're good at right now. And I'm just like I don't know. And so it takes a long time and then like. It's a slow process for me in this
Dad:regard. Yeah. So I think if you have those to look at on a quick at hand, here's where I think we get in trouble is that we can at times take away from our self confidence as we, as we do an affirmation. If I look in the mirror and say, you have the most beautiful thick head of hair I've ever seen. You're, you have Fabio type hair. Is that. What is that gonna do to me? Do I believe it? It's sending you an unrealistic expectation.
Gene:Yeah, and you're just like basically being sarcastic to yourself, which is sometimes worse than just saying it flat out. It's like, yeah, this is not something I
Dad:enjoy. Right, right. So I think, I think what we can do though, let's say that it's a trait that I'm working on. Let's say I choose to be kind to people. If I look in the mirror and say I choose to be kind, I choose to be nice. I do my best to see the good in others. Would that be just as powerful as saying, I see good in others? I
Gid:think that it could be more powerful than you saying, I see the good in others. Because then, you know, like you said, it gives you the choice. Like I choose to see the good when I see the good makes it feel like that's just something that happens. And something that you were born with and so it's not as important as maybe an acquired skill of choosing.
Dad:Yeah, and I think you're right, and I think the other part of that is, it lets me make mistakes. It lets me, with my own personal self talk, realize, oh, so if I'm not nice to somebody, if I cut somebody off and I don't flip them off, what do we do in this group? We change it from a flip off to Thumbs down. I thought it was the loser sign, right? You could do that too. But you know, instead of me doing that, if I could think, okay, I'm not that person, I'm not always kind to somebody if it says I choose to be kind or I see the good in others, trying to see that allows me that growth opportunity. It doesn't fix it. Yeah, so I think it's good to build those strengths. So I'd make a list of those Gene. Make them now and make them often. That way when somebody asks you, you don't have to step back and think, okay, what were they again? And it might be one of those words that you work on. The other put down is it enhances motivation. Positive self dialogue serves as a powerful motivation. Motivator. Encouraging words can inspire and propel you forward to where you want to be. It also gives you that sense of enthusiasm and motivation to pursue your goals with vigor. What do you think of that? Positive self talk as it goes to those. Gene, you missed out on our last episode in Season 6, we set some goals. How did we do on those goals
Ashton:we didn't. But
Dad:that's okay. We did it? We didn't. We did not. That's right. Yeah, I think we, we lacked on those a little bit. Had we had some positive words behind those. And turned to ourselves and looked ourselves in the mirror and said, I'm choosing to follow this goal, or I'm choosing to be more proactive. It probably would have given us some enthusiasm, right? The other thing it, and I think this is a big one. It fosters resilience what does resilience mean to this group around this table? To me, I think
Gene:resilience is being able to push past the negative things that will come and are coming and being able to be like. You know what? I know that these things are happening, but being able to push past them and not letting them set you back as much.
Dad:I like that. I like
Ashton:the Dictionary definition as I, as I most often do. But the second definition it has here is resilience is a noun, Is the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape or have elasticity. So I think of resilience as, Like that that Rocky quote. It's like, it's not about, you know, what does he say? It's not about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and get back up and keep going and whatever. So I think of that a lot probably. It's just like How much can you take and spring back in the effort of
Dad:something you want to achieve? Yeah, totally agree. And with that positive self talk, I believe it's going to help you build up that resilience, Sylvester Stallone personally went through when he was creating Rocky, right? He'd been knocked down. He got knocked down hard and he was able to get back up from it. Totally agree with you. And I think knowing that, and knowing where you want to go in the words you choose lets you back balance and get more resilience faster. It also improves focus and productivity. You know, words have a power of shaping your mindset during any given situation or any given task. Using positive language when engaging in these activities will help you improve focus and productivity. Positive self dialogue during projects can and will lead to more optimistic and efficient approaches. Do you guys buy into that? I
Ashton:think so. I think so. Like being optimistic always adds a little bit of energy for me, I think. When I can. I find I'm better at it. When I am like in a group that needs optimism versus I am the one being pessimistic If there's a situation where I know I need to be the optimist, I know I I try and use it to help I think it's good
Dad:Yeah And this goes back to that first saying sticks and stones can break my bones but But words will never hurt me I think they do hurt right Ashton especially in that example of saying where I need to be the optimistic person I can be, you know, and I'll get somebody go, Oh yeah, I'm positive. I'm a positive person. I'm positive. We're going to fail. Well, wait, hold on. That's not what we need here. We, we need to step back and be willing to look at ourselves and be honest. Where's our shortcomings. Right. I'm not saying. Hey, let's let's fake it till you make of it. Where's my shortcoming? Let me find that person. I'm in a bad place I need an Ashton to lean on Ashton. Can you be the positive source here? Can you help us get through this or I need to leverage other people's skills? How many times did I leverage your skill in your translation this week a couple? Yeah, because I was frustrated I was going look I don't understand any of this and I'm tired and cranky, you know So it but it wasn't helping anybody So I, I think that improving focus and productivity, reduces stress and anxiety. How can I have a positive or let's even do the reverse of that? Because we've talked so much about positive negative thought. How does that? Increase your stress or anxiety.
Gene:One reason that I see is when you're telling yourself all these bad things that are happening or could happen, you're more worried about them. Cause you're like, oh, I, I know sometimes I'll just be walking with a plate from like the counter to the table. And my brain will be like, what happened if you dropped this right now? And like it shattered everyone. Like, wow, I could be bad. But if I'm like constantly thinking about that and be like, oh no, I could drop this. It's like pushes off the table. Oh no, like I could do this and then these people would be embarrassed with me like it just leads and builds upon itself It becomes a vicious spiral downwards
Gid:I think something interesting along that line is what we talk a lot about in skiing where it's look where you want to go because that same thing if you're thinking about I cannot hit that tree and you're staring right at the tree and like that's the only thing you focus on is that negative Outcome of you slamming into that tree. You're gonna hit the tree, but instead if you're facing right toward the tree and you like Look out to the middle of the run where you probably should be skiing, then it'll most likely lead you to where you're looking that positive outcome instead of the negative of staring down that huge tree. And even
Gene:if you do hit the tree, it'll be less hurtful. Yeah,
Gid:if you're looking away from the tree.
Dad:Speaking of personal experience, right, Gene? Yes, speaking
Gene:from direct personal experience, skiing down a hill, going through the trees like, man, I want to hit that big jump. And then, because of the jump, like, went into the trees and came back out, and I looked at the jump and I, I saw the jump pass me, like, Oh, I missed a turn. I look forward, I see a tree, and I'm like, oh. But as soon as I was able to look away and get most of my body weight away from the tree, it didn't hurt as much as it could have if I just stared at the tree and hit
Dad:it straight on. I agree. And those positive words is you're, you're going to that. And it's that practice, that mental practice., I don't know how many things went wrong on this trip in my mind. The one we got here were non issues. What happens if the lady's not there at the airport? What happens if the hotel's not ready? What happens if. You know, I'm going through all these things and finally been out of work for, for five months, And I've set the money aside. We prepaid for it. All this stuff is already done. So I need to change my, my self talk to say I can make more money. Where I'm at now doesn't mean that's where I'm going to be next week, next month, next year. And because I have that it reduces that stress and anxiety, I love the skiing example I like the real sharing of it. And now as we think positive in other areas, it does reduce stress. I believe that Strength and goal achievement. Positive self talk aligns your thoughts with your goals can you say that one more time? Yeah. Strength and goal achievement by positive self talk aligns your thoughts with your goals. Do you believe that? I do. And here, and yeah, and here's why. Is because I think as we tell ourselves, this is, I'm trying to be, or I'm going to be, and I'm working on, and I'm, I strive for, It helps me get closer to my goals than saying, man, I'm so tense, man. I'm not limber. Wow. I I'm so rigid. No, I can't adopt new things and different things. I think by having positive self talk, it helps me get to my goals and achieve them better. The other thing I want to talk about is shapes, behaviors, and habits. What negative self talk have we done? Well, that's probably not fair. That's a dangerous question to ask. But I think if we were honest with ourselves. If we think of negative self talk that we do that leads to bad behavior, I think we can think of quite a few. So therefore then we have to look at the flip side of that. What positive self talk can we give ourselves to help us develop better habits and continue doing those? Something
Gid:I find interesting about that statement, and like, what popped into my mind, is there's a book, and I'm not quite sure the title, but it was a book designed to help smokers stop smoking. And the whole thing was like, after you read it, you won't even want to smoke. And a big point was always remembering, like always thinking about, what would a non smoker do? And thinking like, Non smoker, so it's like that could be the same for our goals like if your goal was to stop smoking and You think about that or like maybe another bad habit and like well What would somebody that doesn't have this bad habit do not what would somebody with the bad habit do that wants to stop? What would somebody who's trying to not smoke do right now? It's, what would a non smoker do right now? I think that could be an interesting side to
Dad:look at it from. You know, I like that you said that. There's plenty of times Over the last month of December because I got really busy with the company I'm doing the consulting work for like really busy. I would drive home and go. I'm just too tired I've got my 10, 000 steps in or my 20, 000 steps in but I thought Gideon What would a physically fit person do right? What would they do? Like well, they'd still go to the gym They missed it in the morning. They're gonna go at night, you know So I'd drive over and I worked out a couple times at night and I worked out on a Saturday So that I could hit my goal, right? So I love that you mentioned that by thinking positive and thinking of ourself as that physically fit person or that mobile person What would I do not? What's everybody else doing? What's the the other the other chunky monkey doing, you know? What is a big person doing? I like that Cultivate a positive outlook. It's interesting because it's kind of along the same lines. Is improved focus and productivity right or even helps us achieve our goal But it's even more than that by focusing on the positive aspects of a situation you cultivate a an optimistic outlook that can Enhance your overall well being what I mean by that is like I truly believe that all these things will work together for our good It's a hard one to believe all the time except it's one of my core beliefs, but I find it hard to believe How is that possible? Cultivating a positive outlook by focusing on the positive aspects of the situation you cultivate an optimistic outlook that can enhance your overall well being. Therefore, all these things can work together for our good. And if we remember that in any given situation that we're going to learn from it, it does work towards our good. Yeah,
Gid:I agree. I agree. Like you said, it's a big part of your core belief and as so mine. Like not just it's a part of our religion, but I truly believe that everything will be okay in the end, no matter what it'll be. Okay. And you can look at it from a small situation because I like gene example of, of dropping a plate. Cause I, I did that accidentally while we were here. I did it to this, the place that we're renting. I actually dropped a ceramic plate on the floor and it shattered everywhere, but. You think about it right after you, like the plate slipped out of my hand as like, Oh, garbage, this is bad. Like I'm going to, this is awful. Everything's awful. It's horrible. And then you look at it and I think about in a year, I probably won't even remember I dropped that plate. We'll remind you. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's what
Dad:families are for. But that's not the point. Oh, that's
Gid:right. When something bad happens, you think about it in a long term, a long term scale, it doesn't matter as much as you think it would. And it might be like me throwing stuff under the rug, because that's a really small example. And stuff really bad can happen to a lot of people. But no matter what happens. So I think that focusing on the positive mindset can help make any problem easier and seem less stressful.
Gene:Yeah, and I think some of the, one of the things that like work together for your good, so to speak, would be like, Oh yeah, I learned where to place my hands to better balance a plate or how I can sweep up a mess made of glass or ceramic. You learn things no matter whether the outcome was good or bad and I've heard a lot of things that say like hey You actually remember the things that you learned from when you did things wrong More often than you remember the things you learn when you did it
Dad:right the first time. Great great Points. Thank you. And then number nine, I think getting goes right with where you're going. It encourages self compassion, right? You didn't beat yourself up for it. Like yeah, that sucked. I got pretty quick feedback. The plate broke dad or mom said What were you thinking? I wasn't just slipped out of my hands. You got the feedback already It's already done the negatives already happened but if you can look at it going look at really in six weeks six months A year, this isn't going to matter. It encourages that self compassion and positive talk will then also allow you to have those bad times, those bad moments, those bad decisions, but if we're kind to ourself during those. Would you have yelled at somebody else had they dropped that plate? I don't think I would have yelled at somebody. Then why would you yell at yourself? Right, why would you be mad at yourself? Why, you know, would you take it out? Would you say, you're an idiot, you're so dumb, you know, why did you do that? Probably not in a lot of situations where we turn to ourselves and say, Oh, you're an idiot, you're so dumb, why did I do that?
Ashton:One thing I tell students a lot when I'm teaching them, At band is to make large mistakes. So when someone's learning a new skill in the percussion space. We often teach them to ignore the notes if they're really new, ignore the right everything, and just swing as hard as they can, so we can get the motions working right, and then we'll refine the specifics later. It goes back to something Gene was talking about a little bit earlier, about how we learn better from larger mistakes. We remember those lessons. Because a lot of students will get lost in themselves, wondering like if they're hitting the right notes, or if they're playing the right rhythms, and whatever. And it's like, hey, if you're really new, we don't really care. We're just trying to get you to, to move right. And then once you move right, then it's like, okay, well, if you're not playing loud enough to hear yourself, how are you going to know if you're hitting the right or wrong notes? Because hitting it loud enough allows you to associate whether or not something's right or wrong. So, just
Dad:stuff like that. Yeah, I like that. I, you know, I think of that in choir and how many times I've sung softly and then instead of performance you want to belt it out, you know. They're like, sing loud, and you're like, whoa, who is messing up? You know, but if we would have had that whole time to work on it. I like that Ashton miss big miss early right gives you longer to fix it. Yep The last thing I it creates a positive feedback loop, right and we need that in this life We need to have more positivity positive self dialogue creates a positive feedback loop and then reinforces those things that you're looking for Reinforces looking for the good in a bad situation I know mom and I you know laying down in October when we're going through all that garbage that we talked about We laid down one night and I said, you know, at least we have each other and we're relatively healthy. And then the next day my tooth broke. I said, well, at least we have each other and I'm going to lose some weight, but it, you know, that positive thinking, that positive feedback loop allows us to go through those other things, keeping a positive outlook, looking at things better., We're in 2024. If you haven't done so, we'd encourage you to pick a word. We at Adulting Decrypted, we've all picked different words. Gideon, would you like to go first? Share your word for the year and kind of a thought about it.
Gid:So, the word I chose is consistency. And if you've listened to the previous episode or couple, I'm not sure when it was, but we did mention that as a group. And I wanted to choose something else because, you know, we haven't talked about it yet, but this one really resonates with me and like the struggles that I have in the stuff that I'm like trying to work through. Consistency is a large. Roadblock in the way, so I think that being consistent with all of my different things will be my main goal for 2024 and maybe the word that I put up on my wall or
Dad:something great. Thank you good gene Would you like to share yours? Yeah
Gene:Actually before this podcast I went through and I looked through a giant list of words that I saw on Pinterest because I was like, oh yeah, I gotta think of a new word, and so I was going through them. And one that really stuck out to me, especially as I start this going to a, to a new school in a new city that I've never really lived a long time at the word I was wanting to focus on was connect. I want to focus on connecting with my peers, connecting with my teachers and my roommates. Even Y'all might my family because I'll be further away And so I need to remember to connect and stay connected you've been with the friends that I've had all throughout high school that are now also going out to different colleges and different spots of the The world I need to remember to connect. So that's going to be the one of the word I'm going
Dad:to focus on. I like it. So, so far we're, we've got two C words, consistency and connect. And I hope you listeners, you hear this. We were not going like super strict on this one word and what it means, right? Connect means something to Jean and it might be different to get in, right? Consistency and what that means to, to get in. Might be a little bit different than what Ashton has. Ashton, did you have a word you'd like to share with us? The word that I'm going
Ashton:to do is discover. I think that's fun. The original word I was thinking of was seek, but everything about seek was like an attempt to find something. Whereas discover implies a search but also includes getting somewhere.
Dad:I like that. I figured discover was a good one Yeah, kind of fun And I like that you explained to the listener a little bit of the difference between seek and discover Right and as you the fun thing is is discover you're able to discover even more right? It's not like there's something that you're truly trying to find You're trying to discover something new and you can't approach your career like anybody else has ever done That's the hard part to me about adulting We would like to look at a roadmap and be like, okay if I get on this roadmap if I get if I follow this Exact path I'm gonna end up here so many things change in this world, you know, you can't compare yourself to anybody else So I really like discover action My word for the year is going to be flow and flow and consistency are very similar in nature. And some of it, you know, some of it is that, Hey, we're doing the same thing. We're, we're getting into the groove of doing the same thing. Mine I chose flow because consistency to me sometimes feels very rigid and with what I've got going on over the next year I don't know where I'm gonna be at, you know to me I put consistency like I'm up at 630 and I'm a bed at 1030 more like a missionary rule But knowing where I'm gonna be at in my life. I want that flow Saying, Hey, I need to do these five things, four things every day to feel like I've won the day. And so I'm going to let that flow around everything else that I've got going on. But flow also talks about being a steady stream, a steady movement, steady progress. And that's what I need to make sure that I do this year. So that's why I chose flow. So listener, as you think about your 2024 and beyond, we challenge you to think of a word, think of something that's going to drive you to bigger, meaningful self talk and help you be positive in those powerful words that you choose. To describe yourself right as we build our affirmations we build our positive outlook I didn't challenge each one of you as adulting decrypted Team members that you think of how am I being positive in myself? And as you listen are putting this in place do the same thing and we'll see a great 2024
Gid:Yep, make sure to choose your word, but also I would love to hear, and I know that the adult and decrypted family in general All of us. You're also part of the family, so we would all love to hear it. So, you know, post about your word, tell us what it means either in our DMS, tell us about it or post about it, tag us in it, use the hashtag like an adult, and we would love so much to hear from you guys.
Dad:give us your definitions of them. Right. Going along that same line. Yep, everything is appreciated.
Gene:Like an adult. Hey! Making words for 2024.
Ashton:Like
Gene:an adult.
Dad:Gideon, did you ever take language in school?
Gid:I haven't. Oh, there you go. Nope.
Dad:I assume I was holding 100 percent backwards. Do we need to start over? Cultivates a positive lookout. Out lookout. Okay. Cultivates a positive outlook. This one's a little bit interesting because it's kind of in the same vine vein. Okay. This kind of feels like one of those riddles, right? The user doesn't use it No, wait, they use never mind. Yeah, that riddle is always super confusing. It is I agree. Can you restate your question again? There's no question it was more of a statement is is an cultivated an optimist