Language creates. But only always!

I was sitting at my laptop last night watching one of the laser coaching sessions my coach Ankush has recorded with each of the attendees at the September 2024 'Powerful Men's Immersion' which I will also be attending. I'll be saying more about the Immersion over the next few weeks as I share some of the transformational insights, I know I will bring home from it. I know with certainty that I will come home with many life-changing insights because this will be my seventh Immersion, and it has never been anything other than amazing. The shift in me as a man, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a friend and even as a coach over the time I have attended these events has been hugely significant.

Anyway, I was just coming to the end of the recording of the laser session, when one of those Facebook notifications popped up on my screen. I can be susceptible to distraction ... anyone else? Maybe it was because I was a bit tired, but my resistance was low enough that I clicked on the notification tab and the?photo below popped up.

It's a long time since a photo stopped me dead in my tracks. There on my screen looking back at me was a photo of a much younger Jules and me, which?I hadn't seen in a very long time. Thank you to my good friend David Acheson for posting it. My best guess is that this was taken during the summer of 1986, We have been together since October 1985, and I am not sure I have a photo of us together from any earlier in our relationship. We were 18 years old in the photo. Next month we will celebrate our thirty third wedding anniversary.

This post is about Jules. She is without doubt the person on this planet who has most impacted my life. My life would not look the way it does without her, and I want to create her for you in this edition of 'Uncommon'.

Her commitment to me and our kids over the last 35 years has been incredible. She almost single-handedly brought our kids up for the first ten years we were parents when I was too busy working and sitting on committees and running youth groups. She nudged and encouraged me to slow down during the years running up to my burnout in 2006. Jules saw it coming, I couldn't see it and I wasn't listening.?

Jules is indeed uncommon. My first indication of this was when she had to do a placement for her physiotherapy course when we were at university. Most people did theirs in an NHS hospital. But not Jules, she wanted to do it differently. After knocking on a lot of doors, she found a leprosy hospital in southern India to do her placement in and raised the money she needed to make the trip. Jules is also an amazing physiotherapist and now coach. I have watched her transition her career a number of times. The first move was from the NHS to private practice. She set up her own business then sold it when it became bigger and more complex than she wanted it to be. She set up in business again on her own in a beautifully created garden room at our home. Just her, without premises or staff. Just Jules running things on her terms with a paper diary and a credit card machine just treating the people with the conditions she really wanted to treat. I have seen her transition from an exceptional general physiotherapist to becoming an expert in treating necks and backs using a cutting-edge technique developed by an Australian physiotherapist who has treated the British Royal family.?

I watched again as she decided she wanted to specialise in Myofascial release. She discovered one of the best in the world in this field was based in Arizona, so she started to travel there once, sometimes twice a year to be trained by this master therapist. She is now one of the most experienced Myofascial release therapists in UK and Ireland.?

Finally in the last year she has started to transition again to becoming a coach and is now powerfully helping people change their experience of chronic pain. Did I mention she is well into writing her second book?

I could keep going for pages. But I hope you're starting to get a sense of the person I have been so grateful to spend the last 33 years with. She has loved me, encouraged me, cheered me on, supported me, been patient with me and been the best friend and partner I could ever have had.

I'll be honest. I haven't always seen Jules this way. I spent years taking her for granted. I haven't always seen how amazing she is and how lucky I am, and I certainly haven't always told her.

Over the last two years I have learned a lot from Steve Hardison, aka 'The Ultimate Coach', about the creative power of our language. Most specifically I have observed how he speaks so powerfully about people in general, but especially how he speaks to and about his wife Amy. It has taken me a while to see this, but in the same way that Steve creates people with his language, I am always creating people with my language and there is always a choice in how I create them.

I have a line in my document that says, 'I am committed to my amazing, beautiful, sexy, talented and inspirational wife Jules, with every fibre of my being.' Jules is all of this and so much more. I recite this twice every day at least. The more I have recited it, the more I have come to see how amazing, and beautiful, and sexy, and talented, and inspirational Jules really is. The more I have seen this, the greater my commitment to her has become. As my commitment has grown it has just seemed so obvious to her tell what I see more and more often.

The language I now use about her has not only created Jules in new ways for me, but it has changed me as a husband, and it has changed my relationship with her for the better.

Change really is possible. It is our language creates that possibility.

Who or what in your life are you seeing as a problem that could be transformed though a shift in your language? Who are the important people in your life or on your team? What is the language you use to create them? How might a change in your language unlock possibilities in your marriage, in your home, in your friendships or in your team that you have only ever dreamed of?

Language creates, but only always. But don't take my word for it. Test it.

Have an amazing week!