Words. Power to build. Power to destroy.

Do you take your words for granted? 

Have you ever thought just how much your words can positively or negatively influence your home, your community, your workplace, your corner of the world and by extension the wider world around you?

In case you didn’t already know it, words have super powers – they can inspire and they can destroy; they can build up and they can tear down, they can encourage love and they can incite hate. 

Recently, a friend led me to a YouTube video called Words that changed the World on the Intelligence Squared channel. It featured historical and modern speeches from Presidents, human rights activists, Shakespeare and a Queen among others, with commentary provided by two former political speech writers – Barack Obama’s director of speechwriting, Cody Keenan, and Philip Collins, Tony Blair’s former speechwriter and Times columnist. Newsnight’s announcer and journalist Emily Maitlis chaired the session. 

Some of the speeches selected for the event were powerful, others simply-structured yet memorable. Actors delivered the speeches creating an atmosphere of almost being thrown back to the day the speeches were actually delivered. Such was the power of the spoken word. I was awestruck by several of them, written and delivered by powerful men and women who made their mark in the history of the world – Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech, Queen Elizabeth I speech to the troops at Tilbury and Winston Churchill’s ‘their finest hour’ speech delivered in the House of Commons in 1940.

I have always enjoyed words and was an avid reader as a child. Following the path of literature well into high school. Words have followed me in my career as with every role, I’ve had the responsibility for writing internal and external communications for my organisation to ensure that it reflects our strategy and value proposition. .

Today, I find myself writing blogs and website content and full training programmes. Words formulated to provide information, to promote a product or service, to showcase my talent as a writer, to attract a target audience of people who are in need of words to be written and structured to enhance their business or their goals. I’m an introvert by nature, but my fingers create the words that my lips can’t quite seem to get out.

As a member of Wealthy Affiliate, this is what we do. We write! Whether you’re good at it, new at it, suck at it…we write! In today’s age of technology, we are fortunate to have the assistance of resources like Grammarly and Hemingway that help us to write well – or at least write better. I’ve never used either, but the reviews are positive, so maybe some day soon I’ll give it a try. In the meantime, I’m happy to write as my heart and head guide me. Not too shabby, so I’m told. 

I’d like to share a few brilliant quotes on the ‘super power’ of words. Inspire or Destroy. Choose wisely!

• “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” -Rumi
• “…But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will run wild and cause you grief.” -Unknown
• “Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble.” -Yehuda Berg
• “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” -Mother Teresa
• “The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break a heart. So be careful with your words.” -Unknown
• “All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
• “If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words, we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths.” -Betty Eadie

If you enjoyed reading this blog post, please feel free to leave a comment below. Share with us what Words mean to you and how they have influenced your own pathway.