Just Say "Yeah!"

While rocking Yaelle before bed, if I'm not catching up on social media and disrupting the peaceful darkness with my glaring screen, I usually try to use that time to pray, meditate and recenter my energy from the day.

Tonight, my thoughts kept bringing me back to the same theme: Words.

I've been witnessing the growing struggle of Yaelle trying to express herself through her limited vocabulary. Yet, she has somewhat successfully been able to communicate much of what she wants through one word; the cutest and most animated, "Yeah!"

If she's yelling about something, I'll just start asking her questions like, "What do you want?", "Do you want to play the piano?", "Do you want to go downstairs?", although she says "Yeah" to almost everything, it's not until you hit the right question she wants you to ask that she responds with several and much more enthusiastic, "Yeah's!" while bouncing up and down. Her freakin cute little "Yeah's" give me so much joy, I'd ask her a million questions just to hear her say it.

Which led me to my next thought...how happy are people around me with my words?

In my work, and specifically content marketing, words are everything. It can make a campaign successful or flop. It can open a conversation, lead to a partnership, or glossed over and dismissed.

My words exchanged in my relationships-- how I talk about others, how I talk about myself, how we talk to each other-- will either build up or tear down. I'm learning that there are truly no "neutral" words.

And it's just not what I say, but how I say them. I know I can be pretty offensive without realizing it...until I see a look on someone's face...or I just feel kind of yuck afterward, like I should just keep my mouth shut some times.

There's these verses in James 3 that liken our tongue to the rudder of a ship, where something so small can actually direct the course of something as great as the Titanic.

If I really reflect on things I say, I'll see that it can guide my thinking, which can sway my heart, and in turn influence my actions. I want to be someone who has a positive impact on my environment and those around me. The most challenging is at home, when when my guard is down and efforts to control my words are much lazier.

If we are as only as good as our words, then I should be on a diet of what comes out of my mouth rather than what goes in. Maybe I'll take a page from my daughter's playbook and metaphorically bounce up and down and say "Yeah!" to everything and see what happens.