Names Can “Break Your Bones”

Your Words Have the Power to Build up or to Destroy

Your Words Have the Power to Build up or to Destroy

Your Words Have the Power to Build up or to Destroy

by John J. Teng, P.E.

I remember a phrase from my childhood that goes “sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.”  Well, I am writing this article at these time decades after I first heard learned it to say that words might not literally be able to break a bone, but they can potentially be used figuratively to “break and destroy” other important aspects of our bodies and minds. When I was a child my father was very critical of what he considered to be poor performance regarding my academic performance. I remember showing him my overall report card every Summer and he would scowl at me for an hour and tell me that I was as “slow as a turtle” and then repeatedly tell me how disappointed he was with me. This conversation did not take into account that my father was not really part of my life for 10 months out of every year since my parents had some years earlier gone through a messy divorce and I actually lived far from my father in another state with my mother. As part of their divorce settlement, I was ordered by the court system to spend my 2 month Summers with my dad where he would start off each visitation by yelling at me for 1-2 hours and telling me in effect that I was stupid. I grew up most of my formative years living with the idea that my father imprinted upon me that I truly was stupid and that I would never become successful.

Here’s the reality. I beat all of the odds that an almost economically-impoverished and fatherless young man could have easily fallen prey to. I avoided drugs, I didn’t drink alcohol and didn’t get involved in premarital sex in high school. I ended up focusing my study habits and become an academic honor roll student in High School, I lettered in three high school varsity sports (football, wrestling, and track), I played first violin in my high school orchestra and I earned The Boy Scouts of America’s highest rank of Eagle Scout before I was 18 years old. I went on to college and earned a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering and started an exciting new professional life as an engineer working from a luxury high-rise in Southern California. I speak three languages (English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese), and I learned Spanish and Chinese mostly by self-study. I paid off my college student loans after my first year out of school and soon thereafter I was able to secure a bank loan for my first home as a happy bachelor. I somehow continued to hold off from having sex until I was 31 years old, and until I married my beautiful wife, and we now have four wonderful children.

And before you get the impression that all I’m doing to do here is to brag about myself, I now want to make an important point regarding how the power your words can have on yourself and on your fellow human beings. I mentioned to you earlier how during my early childhood years my father started out each of my Summer visitations by reading my report card and spending 1-2 hours basically telling me how stupid I was. So to this very day, despite all of the high achievements that I’ve attained, all the awards that I’ve received, and all of the amazing experiences that I get to have, I still wake up almost every morning with the first words that come to my mind that I am a failure.

This notion that I am a “failure” is so embedded into my consciousness from my childhood days that I get out of bed and start each beautiful new morning with the first thought in my mind being that I have already failed.   And what has saved me from giving in to that false notion is that I have had to wage battle on that thought process, knowing that my very life could be on the line if I were to ever allow myself to succumb to that destructive lie.

Contrast my own childhood with that of my wife who was raised by hardworking and successful parents who reinforced in her from a very young age two very important concepts: 1) that she was smart and 2) that she also had to work hard in order to put her smarts to good use. In other words, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean that you can use your math book as a pillow at night and the next morning you can get an A on your calculus test. My wife was raised to understand that she was expected to work hard in order to put her innate intelligence to good use. And my wife never once ever thought of herself as a failure, even if she didn’t achieve something as ambitious as she had hoped to accomplished. Her parents set her straight from the beginning of who she inherently was and those words sunk deep into her automatic thinking processes, regardless of a particular disappointing situation or circumstance.

So the takeaway that I want to leave with you here is to truly understand the enormous power that your words have, to build up or to destroy. To reinforce my point, Jack Schafer Ph.D., a retired FBI Special Agent and professor at Western Illinois University in the Law Enforcement and Justice Administration (LEJA) Department, discusses the concept of the “primacy effect” which he explains as a form of perception filter that shades the image that we have of someone or something based on initial information that we are given on that subject.[1] Fortunately, my own positive self-affirmations have helped me to battle back at the constant onslaught of negative thinking that is ingrained into my own thought processes. But think about how much more powerful a person can be if they are given the gift of a clearly understood positive personal perception from the very beginning, which I believe puts them at a much high advantage to manage stressors and disappointments that are an inevitable part of living life!

John

John J. Teng P.E.

Midlife Magazine- Founder/CEO

https://www.midlifemagazine.com/

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[1] REF https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/let-their-words-do-the-talking/201011/words-have-power