The power of words

I always find myself marvelling at how wonderful words are. Gathered up and arranged carefully they have an amazing, almost magical effect on those who listen to or read them. Words have the power to make or break a person, they have the power to draw inspiration out of the bleakest of situations and paint a smile; far more beautiful than a thousand sunsets, on a person’s face.

Each of us is a custodian of this powerful tool, housed in our mouths and our minds. It is, therefore, extremely important that we guard whatever words come forth from us and choose them as carefully as we would a valuable piece of jewelry to complete a fine outfit. This is probably why our elders always urged us to “think before you speak”, so that we could meditate on the value of what we were about to say or write and how those words would be received or impact on the person at the other end.

Below are some of the thought-provoking, happiness-inducing words that I have come across in my journeys into books, magazines, radio and television programmes that have stuck with me through the years. These are words that I cut out and kept, memorised or wrote down so that I could constantly refer to them. I hope that a few of these words help make a small difference in your lives today and that; someday, you will dig them out and pass them on to a friend who needs them!

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting……Before a dream is realised; the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realising our dreams, master the lessons we have learned as we have moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up…. [At this point] Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.— Paulo Coelho

 

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace from that day. We cannot change our past, we cannot change the fact that people will act in certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing that we can do is play on the one string that we have and this string is, attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it. And so it is with you….We are in charge of our attitudes.
Charles Swindoll.