Conversations carry with them the power of life and death, all buried deeply in the words you speak and say to yourself.

I learned how powerful your own words are only a few years ago. Better late than never!

Like most things I’ve learned, this was tough, hard, and in the best ways the most challenging. If you’re interested in learning what I did? Keep reading. If not? Hey, you know what? I get it. It took me a while figure it out, too. No worries!

So here it is.

You talk to yourself every single day. You believe the words you are saying internally, the conversation you have with you? It’s a powerful one, and not many of us think about what it holds. It runs in your background, kind of like Muzak, soft, unobtrusive noise. During your meetings. The quiet drive home, highway sounds keeping you company. It shapes who you are. Believe me or not, I assure you this is real, researched and documented at length. The more you think about it, the more it becomes your reality, your truth.

Alissa helped me see it, saying to me, “You have the power of life or death in your tongue.”

So I started paying attention to my words. The ones I was using on myself. Small. Ordinary. Boring, most of the time, and seemingly insignificant. Weird that I was living in have to when I could be living in get to.

It would seem that small change infected my attitude like drinking poison — except this poison healed. I get to go to work instead of I have to. Two words. Two little words. You get to walk into a building, carrying something only you have — you. And you get to serve people exactly that. Guess what? You are something special. A person that matters. That’s a hot commodity, something worth hanging around for.

I get to write. That sentence, reading it right now, still stops me cold. To put words on a page. To create something from nothing, out of my creative imagination. To say this happened, this mattered, this is true — and leave it somewhere someone might find it. Like you, reading this now.

You get to do that. Not everyone does.

I get to become who I want. This one is the deepest. You are still here, changing and becoming the person you want to be. That person is still ahead of you. Today. In the middle of your regular Saturday. That becoming is reserved for you.

Here’s what I know about you: you are carrying more than you’re giving yourself credit for. You show up. You keep going. You do the Muzak thing at work, the one still waiting to be seen. So I want you to start naming it — to yourself, first.

Stand somewhere, maybe the health and beauty section of Target, and stand still. Then take a deep breath and tell yourself one true thing.

I get to try to fix my broken relationship.

I get to learn how to change a tire.

I get to be here for you.

These are not manufactured words. They are your own recognitions. You get to acknowledge what’s already real, already present, and already woven into exactly who you are.

Every morning hands you a small invitation, long before your calendar starts strangling you like Homer Simpson does to Bart, seconds before the noise finds you — there’s a moment. A breath. A chance to speak something into yourself worth carrying all day.

Take it.

Your words give yourself permission to become the ground you stand on. So speak to yourself the way you’d speak to someone you love at the start of something hard. Be tender. Nice. And most important? Honest.

You get to be here, how cool is that? You get to be. You get to write your own story, right now, in this season, with what you already have.

Say so.

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Show up. Stay. Speak life.

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