Could removing "Lockdown Language" really make a difference?

I don’t think it can be denied that the discourse and everyday language surrounding the term “lockdown” is negative, and the word “lockdown” itself is simply awful. Pre “Covid-19”, the word “lockdown” would have reminded me of some sort of prison emergency, like an inmate rebellion that caused immediate lockdown and emergency sirens to ring loudly. I’m sure we all have our own mental version like this.

Furthermore, when I recently checked the definition of the word “lockdown”, I felt even more downbeat. According to thesauras.com, the word “lockdown” means to be in “solitary confinement” and other word suggestions for the term include; “isolation”, “holding cell” and worst of all, “the hole”. Can it get more negative than that? I don’t think so, and I'm sure these words ring true for people all around the world right now.

Before March 2020, the only time I came across "lockdown" language was probably during an episode of "Inside the World's Toughest Prisons" on Netflix. Like most people, I had little or no cause to use it in my everyday talk. Fast forward almost a year and "lockdown" language has infiltrated my everyday talk, like some sort of invasive weed. I'm also startled at how inconspicuous and habitual these words have become over the past year, I've even started using "lockdown" talk to start conversations with people. Instead of greeting someone with; "hey how are you?" or "hey, good to see you", its "hey, what do you make of this whole lockdown situation?" or "how's the lockdown been treating you?" or something similar. In many ways the term “lockdown” has replaced the “weather” as a conversation starter, and what a terrible replacement it is. At least for some of the time, we talk positively about the weather, “isn’t it glorious out there today” or “aren’t the bright evenings wonderful”…. you catch my drift I’m sure. I can’t pin down the exact time after the coronavirus hit when I began using the word “lockdown” regularly in my conversations, it was sometime after March, and yet I feel as if it’s been part of my discourse forever.

If we were to try and quantify how much we use the word “lockdown” on a day to day basis, I’d say we (as a collective population) would be horrified. Personally, I say it (soon to be said it) as part of a daily habit. Instead of commenting on the weather, I’ve switched to lockdown talk. Regardless of whether it’s to do with my personal or professional life, I definitely get the word in there at least ten times a day. I say at least because it could literally be thirty or forty times in a day.

Due to the unknown of what lay ahead, I never considered "lockdown" talk to be a red flag until now, almost a year later. In fact, I’ve only come to realise the damage this habitual talk has already caused and what it could go on to do if I were to continue to use it as part of my everyday talk. When I say damage, I refer to the negative affects of "lockdown" talk on our emotional fitness, or in this case, emotional unfitness. In the same way that people lift weights to build a bicep muscle, we need to "lift the talk" we put into our mind in order to build our "mind muscle". The more good stuff we put into our mind muscle, the better or more emotionally fit we become. The more emotionally fit we are, the better our feelings & emotions, relationships with others, and levels of success and fulfilment we experience.

While its no easy task, I now realise the need to become a "gate-keeper" of my mind over the coming weeks and months, if I am to reduce (and eventually eliminate) the word “lockdown” from my daily talk. In other words, I need to spend a little bit more time observing what I am saying and also what is said to me, in order to try to regulate it better. Putting in the effort now will lead to a fitter emotional state and enhanced levels of wellbeing.

Is all of this easier said than done?

Sort of, but if we think of how little time it took for us to start using "lockdown" talk in the first place, there's every reason to believe we can un-use it just as quickly.

Here are some ways I am going to try to un-use "lockdown" talk over the coming days, weeks and months ahead.

1. The first thing I’m going to try to do is to “catch myself” each time I say the word “lockdown”. There’s no denying it’s still going to happen, and so rather than give out to myself (and engage in even more negative talk) I just plan to “catch-it” as it happens. In other words, I plan to consciously take notice as it happens, by pausing for a moment and consciously choosing another word to override it. For example, the next time I hear myself ask someone “ah how are you, how’s the lockdown is treating you?”, I am going to apologise and say something like; “I’m sorry, that’s a negative way to start a conversation, more importantly, what I meant to say is how are you?” . I’ll tailor this to the moment of course, I’m just giving an broad example to illustrate how we could redirect the conversation quickly.
2. Secondly, when I find myself caught up in negative “Covid” talk with others (even if it was me who started it), I am going to make a conscious decision to apologise and change to something more positive or if this is not an option, remove myself from the conversation. I can do this easily without causing offence, disappearing to the bathroom isn’t all that unusual for me. If I’m on the phone or zoom with others (which seems to be the case for most these days), I intend to simply bring the negative talk to a close as soon as I can and talk about something different, like going on holidays when we “open-up”, or what a nice walk I had that day, or what we’re cooking for dinner. Anyway, you get my drift, it’s all about distraction and redirection. Once you change the course of conversation for yourself, you empower others to do the same and before you know it, are back in the more positive space, where we ALL need to be right now.
3. And lastly, just for fun, another idea is to create a jar called the “Open-Up” jar. It will work in a similar way to a curse jar (which admittedly I could also use), except refrain from labelling it “the lockdown jar”, as this would clearly defeat the whole purpose. Each time someone in the household mentions the term “lockdown”, a contribution of say 50 cent (or whatever works for others), is to be made to the “open- up” jar. I think this would work really well in a busy house-hold with children, who as we all know are excellent gate-keepers when it comes to generating money. It’s similar to the idea of an accountability buddy, and committing to others that you are going to live up to a certain behaviour always gives us a better chance than if we kept it to ourselves.

Finally, my point is that perhaps its time to pause for a moment and take a helicopter view of how we are responding by means of our words and language to the events over the last year. Despite the fact that it’s often hard to avoid negative “Covid” talk, we can choose to create better mental responses to it and changing your own words & language is one way to achieve this.

We might not think that listening (through the ear) and speaking (through the mouth) has much of an impact on our overall well being, but neuroscientists will beg to differ. I once heard an interesting story about a wealthy businessman from New Zealand who never watched the news or listened to anything negative. When the news came on, he would get up and go into a different room. When challenged by people who felt this was downright ignorant and selfish, he argued that he was of much better use to poor people if he didn’t watch the news. He felt that by watching the news, his mental state would be in jeopardy and therefore his business and ability to help others would suffer too. Instead, he made the decision that he was going to remain as upbeat and positive for as much of the time as he possibly could. While there’s lots to consider here, it definitely got me thinking, maybe this guy is onto something?

 Thanks for reading!

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Alison.