So, it’s all change for me this year as I am now officially retired. However, as I don’t like using those words to describe myself, and can’t help feeling it adds about 10 years to my actual age I much prefer to describe myself as a “former teacher who now runs her own small business”.
That set me thinking about how powerful words can be, a power that we too often these days forget. With social media it can be so easy to write something without thinking, something that could hurt the reader or start an argument. That old nursery rhyme we were all taught as children,
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” isn’t true.
Names and words can hurt others but we often forget that the words we use to describe ourselves can be just as harmful to our own self-confidence or self-esteem when we describe or talk about ourselves.
Quite rightly there’s a lot these days about the impact of cyber bullying and hurtful personal comments and the danger these conditions the reader/victim.
What we need to also remember is that is all too easy to use these words to put ourselves down or neatly pigeonhole ourselves into a particular box.
I’ve previously written about how much setting up my business and building it has helped rebuild my self-confidence and self belief after the huge knock that arthritis and its friends had on me. Words are the same and filling in the forms needed to apply for things like ill-health retirement is tough as the focus has to be on what you can’t do, the negatives and the problems rather than the cans, the positives and the solutions.
So this year I have a very simple New Year’s resolution, and it’s one I really hope I can keep.
I want to use positive language to describe myself whenever possible.
Anybody else want to join me?
Here’s to a positive 2018.
A picture of me and my two girls - Alice my daughter and Lily my granddaughter. Together with Charlie my son-in-law and my two grandsons they all combine to help me feel good about myself.