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I don’t know about you but I do not find it easy to hear what I am saying.
Yes, I know what I want to communicate before I speak.
Yes, I hear the sound of my voice.
But to hear the actual words that I use – that is not so easy.
It came as quite a shock to me the other day when someone suddenly interrupted me in mid sentence and said: “You use a lot of nominalisations, don’t you.” (A nominalisation is when you use a verb as a noun e.g. “we had a communication.”)
I was completely unaware that I do this. But their interruption made me think about my language and start to listen to myself.
Listening to myself proved to be far more difficult than I had imagined it would be. When I am writing it is easy, but when I am carrying on a conversation it is much more difficult. I have to step outside of myself, into a kind of third person, in order to actually listen to myself.
Perhaps by now you are asking yourself, “why should I bother to listen to my language?”
The answer is that the language you use reveals your state of mind. If you use a lot of negatives it indicates that you have a tendency to think negatively. Conversely, if you use a lot of positives it indicates a positive state of mind.
Ask someone close to you to listen to your language and gain some awareness of your state of mind. Then develop the habit of listening to your own language so that you can be aware of your state of mind and when you need to change that state of mind.
