Anthony Robbins AWAKEN THE GIANT... - Lemma Coaching

active and pride ourselves on our focus of taking action. The words we use consistently affect the way
we evaluate, and therefore the way we think. By contrast, the Chinese culture places a high value on
that which does not change, a fact reflected in the many dialects featuring a predominance of nouns
rather than verbs. From their perspective, nouns represent things that will last, while verbs (as actions)
will be here today and gone tomorrow.
Thus, it's important to realize that words shape our beliefs and impact our actions. Words are the
fabric from which all questions are cut. As we noted in the last chapter, by changing one word in a
question, we can instantly change the answer we'll get for the quality of our lives.
The more I pursued an understanding of the impact of words, the more impressed I became with their
power to sway human emotion, not only within myself, but within others as well.
"Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men."
CONFUCIUS
One day I began to realize that this idea, as simple as it was, was no fluke, that Transformational
Vocabulary was a reality, and that by changing our habitual words, we could literally change the
emotional patterns of our lives. Further, we could therefore mold the actions, directions, and ultimate
destinies of our lives. One day I was sharing these distinctions with a longtime friend of mine. Bob
Bays. As I did so, I could see him light up like a Christmas tree. He said, "Wow! I have another
distinction to give you." He began to relate an experience to me that he'd had recently. He, too, had
been on the road keeping an intense schedule and meeting everyone else's demands. When he finally
came home, all he wanted to do was have some "space." He has a home on the ocean in Malibu, but
it's a very small place, not designed to have house guests, much less three or tour.
When he arrived on his doorstep, he found that his wife had invited her brother to stay with them, and
that his daughter, Kelly, who was supposed to visit for two weeks, had decided to stay for two months.
To add insult to injury, someone had turned off the VCR that he'd preset for a football game he'd been
looking forward to viewing for days! As you can imagine, he hit his own "emotional threshold," and
when he found out who had turned off his VCR—his daughter—he immediately unloaded on her,
screaming all the four-letter words he could think of. This was the very first time in her life that he had
even raised his voice to her, much less used language of that color. She immediately burst into tears.
Witnessing this scene. Bob's wife, Brandon, broke into peals of laughter. Since this was so unlike Bob's
normal behavior, she assumed this was an outrageous and massive pattern interrupt. In reality, he
wished he had been doing a pattern interrupt. After the smoke began to clear, and she realized he
was actually furious, she became concerned, so she gave him some very valuable feedback. She said,
"Bob, you're acting so strangely. You never act this way. You know, I noticed something else: you
keep using a certain word that I've never heard you use before. Usually when you're stressed, you say
you're overloaded, but lately I hear you talking all the time about how you're overwhelmed. You never
say that; Kelly uses that word, and when she does, she feels this same kind of rage and behaves very
much like you just did."