Words vs Actions

When I was trained to run I was taught that the faster I moved my arms the faster my legs would move.  You see your arm movement facilitates your leg movement and if you speed up your arms your legs will follow.  Until that was brought to my attention I never even considered using my arms to run faster.  It works give it a try.  There was a clear cause and effect relationship between my arms and legs.  I wonder if the same is true for the words you choose and your subsequent actions. 

 Do your words facilitate your actions or do your actions supersede your words?  I do know this, that when your actions don’t coincide with your words there is a problem.  You also must consider a person’s ability to properly communicate.  I think we are very poor communicators, which is why 75-85% of our face to face communication is nonverbal.  If we could pick the proper words to express our intended thought we wouldn’t rely so much on our bodies doing it involuntarily for us.  Some times in discussions I think that people are words apart not worlds apart.   Maybe this is why we are so attracted to movies and TV where the words are carefully chosen and scripted along with the actions for the actor. 

If you changed the words you choose would it change your behavior?   We spend a lot of time talking but I don’t ever recall spending much time studying words or practicing how to express my thoughts with the proper words.   I think we all should have that sense of importance with the words we choose and how we use them.  We all have a wonderful opportunity every day to do great things with the words we know, yet most of us don’t do it.  Why?  We can encourage, praise, support, pray, or simply acknowledge others; just to name a few.  How many of you did all of these things today?

I do think there is a direct correlation between the words we choose and our actions.  If that is true then to change your actions all you have to do is pick different words.  Can it be that easy?  Think about the possibilities, you could change your performance at work or improve your relationship with your spouse just by picking a few different words. You could lose weight or improve your health by using different words.  The impact could be significant and I think it is very possible.  Next time you have to solve a problem or you cannot resolve an issue, carefully consider the words you use and see if that doesn’t help you find a resolution.  I contend that we are very poor at choosing the proper words to describe how we feel or what we truly desire and that is why we use the phrase “actions speak louder than words”.  We seem to be linguistically lazy we just pick the easiest words to justify what we desire.  If we happen to be good at communicating the proper words we, “walk the walk and talk the talk”.  I’m not sure if those two phrases don’t give us some insight into our inability to use the proper words to express our point of view.  For someone who performs the more desired behavior of their actions and words reflecting the same thing there is a phrase that doesn’t make much sense (walk the walk and talk the talk).  I guess metaphorically it is somewhat clever, but I think the phrase for a person’s behavior not matching what they say is much clearer and well said (actions speak louder than words).  Perhaps that is because it is more commonly used and has been refined over time. 

I guess there are more questions than answers when you try to breakdown words and how we use and choose them.  As a writer I try to be careful and cognizant of the words I use and the impact they may have.  As a person having a conversation I am much less in tune (reckless) with the impact of my words.  I am beginning to feel that wisdom, in part, comes from a great discernment for choosing the best words to properly communicate my point and to have equivalent behavior.  I also feel that part of the same wisdom is having the same ability to choose no words or action at the proper time.  

CM Gartner