The Power of Language: Choosing Your Words to Shape Your Destiny

[00:00:00] George B. Thomas: We're stuck in this narrative because of the words that we can use around it. Verse what I would almost say their freedom based on the words that didn't exist. So this got me to think, what if moving forward, we spoke George or we spoke Liz or we spoke belly, but it was a subset of words that we allowed or did not allow in our vocabulary based on what Created or moved us into being the best beings we can be.

Also, I have to say, I love that Hopi time. If you do a little bit more research is about cycles, rituals, and mental preparation for key events. So I got to do something here. If you listen to this podcast right now, could spend more time in dreams, thoughts, desires, and life forces, and realize the important flow that you're looking for in life is around the cycles, rituals, and the ability to have mental preparation for key events in your life.

And you could dictate the words that you're allowed to use and not allowed to use. How would just that block of information?

[00:01:19] Liz Moorehead: Welcome back to Beyond Your Defaults. I am Liz Moorhead, and as always, I am joined by the one and only George B. Thomas. How are you this morning? 

[00:01:28] George B. Thomas: I am doing great, Liz. I'm super excited for this conversation. I think I always start out every episode that way, by the way, of being excited. But, man, this one, for me, it's funny.

It was a journey. And it was a little bit more difficult than I thought it would be as far as like the research and picking things out of my brain. But I'm actually excited to see what is going to come out of this episode from both of 

[00:01:54] Liz Moorehead: us. Well, let's go ahead and let the cat out of the bag. Right? So today we're going to be talking about the potent power of the language we use to talk to ourselves often about ourselves.

Right? So I'd be curious to hear from you before we dig into this conversation, what made it such a challenge? What made it more challenging? 

[00:02:12] George B. Thomas: Sometimes in life, you do things by default because you've just kind of over time programmed your self to do it that way. What I'm trying to do on many of these episodes is peel the parts away so that I can talk about them versus just.

Do them in my own life and so coming up with those mindsets, those principles, the best practices that I've worked really hard to just kind of become me and become the way I do it, picking those apart and finding out or thinking about what words were important to use today. And what words could be left aside for a future conversation.

It was just a real interesting journey. 

[00:03:01] Liz Moorehead: Yeah. And I think we have a lot of preconceived notions about how we talk to ourselves. Right. Because it really doesn't matter if we consider ourselves introverts, extroverts, ambiverts, some other yet to be discovered vert. Yeah. We humans are fundamentally at our core social creatures, whether or not we like to admit it, but the one person we actually spend the most time with and the one person we spend the most time talking to isn't our best friend, our parent, our partner.

or spouse, whether we realize it or not, that person we talk to the most is ourselves morning, noon, night, consciously or not, or subconsciously, right? With mental pictures or with inner dialogue. I learned that recently that did, you know, some people do not have an inner dialogue. They only see visuals in their head when they're thinking, I know, but we're often just chattering away to ourselves about ourselves.

Now I'm going to be the first to admit here that when I catch myself talking to myself out loud when I'm by myself. I sometimes worry, is Liz crazy? Has she gone a little too far off the reservation? But for those of you out there who may be like me, there's tons of scholarship just to let you know that says talking to yourself out loud or otherwise is a totally normal and often essential way that we process our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences.

Now if you live alone like I do, you may be doing this a little bit more out loud. Living alone kind of gets a little lonely, but the substance of your dialogue and how you talk about yourself referred to. Self talk. And that's how I'm going to be referring it to, um, to it during this episode matters quite a bit because there are three different types of ways that we talk to ourselves, right?

There's self reinforcement. I am prepared for my talk tomorrow. My presentation is going to go great. Self management. Don't forget to call the bank today or walk the dog. Social assessment. When I ask him out, he'll likely say yes, but here's what's interesting. What if our default isn't neutral or positive?

What if it sounds more like, I sounded ridiculous during that call? I can't ask him out. Why would he ever want to date someone like me? Of course I forgot to call the bank today. I can't trust myself with anything. I don't know why I volunteered for this presentation. I'm going to make a fool out of myself.

I'll never amount to anything. Why even bother trying? Now on its surface, these are just words, right? Not quite. You and I, George, have talked about this through a number of episodes so far, but the

The words we use to describe ourselves and our surroundings dictates how we think about ourselves and our surroundings. And from there, our actions take over in accordance with those thoughts. In essence, our words become the reality that we see and create. So this week we are digging into the linguistic relationships we have with ourselves and how simple shifts in our self talk can have a massive impact on our ability to live beyond our default.

So George, the past few years I've known you, I've always known you to be very mindful about the language you use to talk about yourself. And I bet you knew that this question was going to come. I bet you knew this, but yeah, however, when you and I first started working together closely over a year ago, one of the things I used to ding you on freaking constantly was how you talked about yourself.

Because the weird thing was you were never overtly negative, but you would always put yourself in these boxes, right? Well, I can't beat this and I can't beat that. Or you would put yourself in this kind of like side character energy instead of main character energy. You were always leveling down your potential.

So one year later, I'd love to hear from you on how your relationship with self talk has evolved. What has changed over this one year ish period? Because you have become more observant in how you talk about yourself and I've noticed substantive 

[00:06:40] George B. Thomas: changes. Yeah. So, first of all, I got to back up just a little bit here, and I just want to start with, because I want to simplify the complex, ladies and gentlemen, if you're sitting here listening to this, and your mind is like, well, the words I use don't matter, words are just words, no, if you don't take anything else away for the next however minutes we end up talking about this, Words are not just words.

They matter. And when I say matter, I mean a capital M A T T E R. They matter, especially internally, but also externally. Now, also, Liz, it's funny, I giggle at this question a little bit, because you're like, you know, you've never been overtly negative. Listen, we got to unpack that statement first. We'll get to the, what has happened or changed over the last 12 months here in a second, but I need everybody to understand that I had worked real hard.

I had about 49 to 50 years to get where I was with this conversation. When we started to have it and to understand the crux of what's happened in the last 11, 12, 14 months from being a business owner and moving forward. Look, there was a ton of years that I thought that I would never amount to anything in life.

And I told myself that. You'll never amount to anything in life. There are a ton of years that I thought of myself as a loser. There were a lot of years that I was afraid of who I was or who I would become legitimately fearful of myself and who I would end up showing up to be on this planet. There were a ton of years.

I'll just say it this way. I was lost

in this I oftentimes would run the narrative. Why am I even here? Why am I even here? Now, I know if there are people listening to this podcast who have known me for the last ten years, they'll be like, wait, what? Where was that guy? Right? Who is that guy? That can't be you. Because you're right, Liz, for at least the last 10 years, I had gotten to the point where I'm like, oh, it's all about positivity, it's all about adding value to the world, it's all about being significant, and being a servant, and all of these things, it's about going to play, it's about making sure that I pray, it's about making sure that I have these positive emotions to myself and to the world, but it wasn't always that way.

So the reason I explain that is because you have to understand that this last 12 to 16 months, it's been the easiest to be completely honest, the last part of this journey has really been easy compared to the original hell that I had to go through to even get to the point where I was able to make the changes that I have been able to make, you know, I had to get past these crazy moments or thoughts in life.

Look, I haven't shared this with a lot of folks, but when I go back to that moment in time of you're a loser, you'll never amount to anything. Why are you even here? Like, some people don't even know there was a time where I was homeless. Like, I was couch surfing from my cousin's house to a pastor, uh, his name was Willie May, to my grandparent's house, and sometimes just, like, wherever.

It was me, my skateboard, uh, during the day, my friends, and then I would just try to make the best out of it. Being homeless, meeting Pastor Willie May in Mineral City, Ohio, ended up me then journeying to Faith Ranch, which everybody needs to understand that Faith Ranch is the three years of my life where I started to see little wins that provided a self belief in myself.

Liz, you literally said in the intro area of like, I don't trust myself to do this thing. Like, you have to believe in yourself and trust yourself. And I started to have self belief in myself like I had never had before, these three years in Faith Ranch. Three years, I had learned about or was learning about love and how to love others.

And for three years, I was being injected with faith and how God felt about me. And all other humans on this planet, by the way. I learned this thing where I could start to program my brain over those three years. And one of the first things I can remember programming my brain, Liz, was God don't make no junk.

God don't make no junk. And I had to tell the I'm a loser. I'll never amount to anything. Why am I even here? God don't make no junk. God don't make no junk. And I hope all of our listeners know that they've been wonderfully crafted to do something on this planet that no one else can do. I had to realize that I'm wonderfully crafted to do something on this planet that nobody else can do, which, by the way, I get goosebumps thinking about that because I think about the book or books, I think about the times that I step on stage, like, nobody else could do it the way that I can do it.

I've never really been able to have that belief before. I hope the listeners realize that they're special. Here's the thing. The only thing that I didn't really learn in those three years. That I've learned over the 12 to last 16 months that you are a catalyst in and we're getting there. I swear, I knew I had to kind of set this up a little bit.

We're getting there. I didn't take or didn't pay attention during those three years on how to love myself. Like, I learned what love was and I learned that you're supposed to love others. But I had a real difficult time with understanding. I know God don't make no junk. I can like me, but I don't have to love me.

I hadn't really spent that time like, you gotta love yourself. And it took me a lot of years to figure this out. I mean, I've made a boatload of mistakes, and I still have time to make a boatload more in this life. But you see, it's really easy to get stuck in this mindset of, Mistake, hate yourself. Mistake, hate yourself.

Mistake, hate yourself. Like, it becomes a frickin loop in your life. And it's hard to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you make against yourself. And many times we look at it as it's like mistakes in the world or mistakes in my job. But when you internalize those and you're like, Oh, I make that mistake against myself.

God don't make no junk. I got to love myself. Right. So now we get to like the part that you actually asked me. It's like, what happened over the last 12 to 16 month period that made you become more observant? Listen, the first thing that came to mind when I looked at that question was I took the biggest leap of my life ever other than being married and getting saved by Jesus.

Starting a business is a massive freaking leap. And you're right. It made me get out of my historical comfort zones. I'm a great number two to a number one. I'm a great Robin to a Batman. bss. Like you can't run that narrative when you're the captain of the ship. And so I had to have, you know, a conversation about showing up as a whole ass human.

And I know that you're smiling about this list 'cause you were part of this conversation. You literally said to me. What does it look like if you showed up as a whole ass human? Because it had gotten to the point where I knew what love was. I knew that I was supposed to love others and I had started to even love myself, but I loved the new me.

I need everybody to understand that I loved the new me. I still hadn't figured out how to love the old George, the dirty George, the George that made a buttload of mistakes. And we had this conversation. Well, actually you kind of slapped me around a little bit and he said, I'm sorry, I did it from a place of love.

I totally agree. And you said, what does it look like if you showed up as a whole ass human and you loved yourself? I pulled up this Facebook post because I think the Facebook post says a lot about when I took the time to think about that question and I thought about the narratives that I was running in my head and the words that I was using against myself, listeners, what words are you using against yourself?

Like, I need you to start to pay attention to that and document that, but the words that I was using against myself versus the words that I needed to leverage to get the power and the energy to become who I needed to be and shine a light onto the world from a business perspective, personal perspective.

So I wrote this post. And I want to share it on this podcast episode. It starts out by the way, I warn everybody, Liz, I freaking warned everybody authentic and personal post ahead with an exclamation mark. And it goes like this. I'm working with a coach on voice tone and messaging, you know, the really important stuff for any business.

She asked me this very important question today. What does it mean to show up as a whole ass human? This is the unedited typing frenzy that occurred after that question when my mind had time to sit down with it. To be a whole ass human is to understand you are a spiritual being in a human body. Love yourself, no matter what you have to love the dents and the bruises.

You have to love the shine in the darkness. You have to love the punches, chisels and chainsaws of life that made you this way to be whole. You have to read the room and read yourself. You have to tell your story, the stories that they need to hear, not that you want to tell you have to be empathetic and be a servant.

You can't let anything get in your way. It's all about G. S. D. Get stuff done being a whole human is always trying to better my capabilities while at the same time understanding. I was fully made with everything. I need to be successful. I'm going to read that again for the people in the fricking back row.

Being a whole human is always trying to better my capabilities while at the same time, understanding I was fully made with everything I need to be successful. Being a whole ass human means I can be a blessing bomber to others in and around my life. Meaning I can be a blessing bomber to myself. It means always be learning, always be educating.

It means that I pray, play and make their day to be whole is to be a father, a husband, a son to be whole is to be an author. To be whole is to lead a community towards a better life. Folks, this was way before we started this podcast. I'm going to say that again, to be whole is to lead a community towards a better life, to live in the moment and not be distracted by outside forces, phone, email, Slack, et cetera, to be a catalyst or impact that others need or want in their lives to get to the next level, giving compassionate, empathetic person who leads with love for others.

And myself leading by loving yourself so that you can deeply love others you meet Liz. That's what changed, like that script, that narrative, that understanding that I had been doing the work and the missing piece, the key to make it all be fundamentally like fall in line. I just had to love myself. And I had to use the words that let me know that I finally loved myself.

Wow. 

[00:18:28] Liz Moorehead: There's so much to unpack there. First of all, I think one of the most important things that you said there is this idea of trusting ourselves. And this is something you and I have talked about in previous episodes. But we also had a really long conversation about it last Friday during what we call affectionately our human time, which I think I've referred to before.

But. Every few weeks, George and I get together, even though I think we talk to each other all day, every day about work stuff, but we have set aside a human time to talk about human things. And we got on this conversation about this idea of this was something I've struggled with throughout my entire life, right?

I, one of the things I do love about myself is that once I see something or know something, I can't unsee it and I can't unknow it, particularly when it comes to myself. But that has made me incredibly hard on myself and you can so easily get stuck in those loops. You want to start talking. more nicely to yourself.

You want to start being more kind to yourself, but there's always an asterisk, right? You're always that Patriot season with the asterisk because of the deflated football, right? There's always the, I'm a great person except for that thing I did two weeks ago. I'm a great person except for that thing I did to someone else two years ago.

And it becomes this thing where it's like you look at yourself like a bank account where you have depleted so much from some sort of moral center that you can't extend beyond. But that's simply. Not true. I remember you and I having this conversation and I'm saying this, by the way, for audiences at home, I'm saying this as much to you as I am as a reminder to myself.

The thing I also remember telling you, George, is that at some point you are going to have to stop putting your old self into boxes and realize the reason you were standing here is the person you are is because of the person you were. There is no now without him. There is no now without who you were two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago.

When you and I were both doing homeless fun stuff, crashing on people's couches, I did that too in my very early twenties when I first moved out on my own. But let's talk a little bit further. You already started talking about, you know, going back in time and how we got to this point. But tell me a little bit about your day to day now.

How do you engage in self talk at all in your day to day? What does it look like? What are some of your do's and 

[00:20:47] George B. Thomas: don'ts? Let me set that up a little bit, because I think there's a piece that people need to understand that came out of that conversation. It came out of that post is historically, I had been real good at compartmentalizing it is in some cases, but in many, it's not in this conversation.

I'm going to say it's not if you look at yourself and go, I'm great at boxing pieces here and there in here compartmentalizing. If you're like, that's a superpower I've got. Be careful, because one of the things that I had to actually destroy in my brain was this idea of compartmentalizing. It's okay to love Tupac and Chris Tomlin at the same time.

It's okay to watch The Chosen and Fast and Furious. It's okay to have these things in your life that just make you you, and they don't have to be the good you, the medium you, the bad you, the, oh shoot, let's hide that from everybody you. No, no, no, no. In this conversation of talking to yourself and being the best you that area just needs to be like, uh, you know, how they go in and do home renovations and they're like, knock this wall out and this wall and it's just like open space.

When it comes to you, you need an open space. You need an auditorium because listen. An auditorium is easy to communicate in a house filled with walls is hard to communicate in. There's things that muffle the message when you're talking to yourself, you can't have a muffled message. So you have to build your brain into an auditorium when you're getting ready to talk to yourself.

Okay. So you asked me how do I engage with self-talk, you know, how do I manage this day to day and do I ? Do I actually manage it like I'm still a human, ladies and gentlemen? But most days the answer to this question is yes. But some days I forget to be my own leader. I forget to be my own mentor. I forget to be my own coach.

I have those days now, those days that I forget to be my own leader, my own owner, my own mentor, my own coach. Those days are always worse than other days. The days that I wake up and I remember that that's what I'm supposed to do, that I'm supposed to love myself, that I'm supposed to mentor myself, that I'm supposed to lead myself, that I'm supposed to coach myself.

Those days are always great days, good days at worst, but usually great days. What does that look like? So it starts first thing in the morning, to be honest with you. Like I get up and I think about this. And I start to talk about myself and to myself, there's a video that I want to try to find a link to, and we'll put it in the show notes, but this professional speaker, Mel, she's amazing.

She talks about 90 percent of the human race, not being able to stand in the mirror and look at themselves. I took that as a personal challenge. So one of the things that I do in the morning is I'll be brushing my teeth or whatever, but I'll stand in the mirror. First thing in the morning, I'll look at myself in the eyes and I'll be like, George.

You're one handsome. No, I'm just, I'm just kidding. I don't say that. I say, George, you are humble, George. You are happy, George. You are a helper, George. God created you to be a blessing bomber. George, you're smart, George. You understand the things that you need to do. I'll just run this narrative in my brain and basically, like, believing in myself, loving myself, and pumping myself up for the day that is about to occur.

Every morning. And when I find myself walking away from the mirror, I actually go, No, no, no, no, no! Turn around stand your happy ass in front of that mirror and do what you know You're supposed to do like I'll literally catch myself And I think that's part of what I want the listeners to understand is you got to get good at catching yourself when you're not Doing these things when you're not treating yourself, right when you're not loving yourself catch yourself And then just flip the switch and do it now second thing or second time that I do this what it looks like Liz Before I step on stage, anytime I'm about to step on stage.

And to be honest with you, I have two conversations every time before I step on stage, one conversation with myself, you know, this information, you got this, you understand the audience. You're going to be amazing. Sure. You're going to black out along the way, but when you get to the end, people will think it's awesome because you're here to serve.

Like I'll have that. But then the second I used to have a conversation with God, let it be your words, not mine. Just let the people have ears that hear what they need to hear for what we're talking about today, right? But I'm putting into myself at that moment. Anytime I get stuck on something That's another time where like I can feel myself and I catch myself I can feel myself going down that negative road If I was just a little bit smarter if I just had a little bit more money if I just had a bigger team George George George George Shut up.

Shut up. And just like, Hey, we're blessed. We've got these things. These are the positives in life. And I start to tell myself, George, you've got this. George, you've got that. George, this has happened in your life. George, other people like I had, by the way, I'm going to go on a total side change for a second.

I had to tell somebody about a week ago, these words. You understand that in chasing your dream, you're leaving somebody else's, right? I realize that I might be living a life that is somebody else's dream. That jukes usually any negative things that are running around in my brain. But any time I catch myself with negative talk, I try to catch it and I spin it around.

And here's the thing. When I say catch it, What I really mean by this is I try to use God eyes. I try to use God eyes when looking at myself in my life. Meaning you've ever had those moments where you just kind of leave your body and you see the words that you're saying, you see the words that you're saying, the way that you're acting.

You almost feel like you're in a second or third person, like visually seeing like your life happening in that moment. I call that God eyes. How can I manufacture that? I can. Pull away from what I'm actually doing and look around at myself and the folks in the room and really get the right perspective, not my perspective, the right perspective of what's happening in those moments.

So dues, I don't have a lot of dues or don'ts other than what I've shared, like the times I do it. But one thing that I always put in my brain, because I think it's a superpower and a lot of things of life, one of the major dues is stay consistent. Stay consistent, stay consistent in loving yourself, stay consistent in catching yourself, stay consistent in these rooted elements of just like this framework, right?

I have these four times in my life that I know that are possibly when we're going to have a downfall. Pay attention to those four things. Make sure you're consistent. I love that. I, 

[00:27:37] Liz Moorehead: I'll admit from me personally, I spend a lot of time talking to myself. I do a lot of self talk, but to be fair, you know, I think I'm at one of those points in my life where it's like, I'm making a lot of changes.

I'm doing a lot of betting on myself. I've blown a lot of stuff up and I stand by those decisions, but it gets a bit challenging. But what I do find interesting in preparation for this episode, and I think I shared this with you, I found this great article in psychology today that talks about like five different ways that you could talk to yourself.

Then I found this one nugget of research that I thought was just completely crazy to me and I tested it the whole week. So the way we prepare for this episode, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, is we actually have an entire week in which we can research prep, whatever, cause I prepped that outline a week in advance.

So I decided once I found this research that I was going to test it for a week to see if it made any tangible difference. Yeah, so here's the quote. In a study, people who use the first person when talking to themselves before a task were less effective than those who spoke to themselves in the second or third person, because when you create psychological distance in our self talk, then it can help us calm down and face challenging moments.

So me saying Liz Moorhead is trustworthy. Liz can do this. Liz is trustworthy in theory is supposed to be more effective than saying I can trust myself, or you can do this. You've got this. So I spent all This week talking to myself in the third person and I was pushing myself to make some changes in getting back into my workout regimen and just, I had some big scary stuff that I had to really work on this week.

It made a huge difference. Now sometimes I'm just talking to myself like, all right, I'm amazing. I can do this. It's pretty awesome. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But there were times where I did have to say out loud, Liz Moorhead is trustworthy. Liz Moorhead can be trusted to make better decisions. Liz Moorhead will get her butt to the gym and she's going to feel amazing about it afterward.

It made me move faster and for the first few days I was like, it's probably just because I'm excited about a new thing that I'm doing, but it worked as recently as yesterday afternoon sitting in a parking lot in front of planet fitness in Hamden and I'm like, I do not want to go in. But Liz Moorhead makes better decisions than that.

Yeah. She got her butt in there. So I think that is something that is interesting. I started noticing that it's almost. Like, you know, I'm a marketer, so I'm like, I'm rebranding myself and it made me feel more like a 

[00:30:06] George B. Thomas: whole person. Yeah, no. And it's funny because when I saw that research that you put out there and then that was a talking point, I got excited because again, if you go back to the beginning of this episode where I said, pulling the blocks apart.

Like, that's one of the things I got excited when I saw that, because I was like, Oh, I call myself George all the time. Like, I speak to myself in, like, using my name. And I picked that up, actually, Marcus Sheridan told me about a book, and I read this book, and in the book, it talks about how people love their name.

And they love when you use their name. And I immediately went, Well, then I like my name. I should use my name when I'm talking to myself. And I, I literally took what was an external communication hack or technique and used it for me, which by the way, I want all the listeners think about that list out all the communication presenter techniques.

And what if you use those for yourself instead of just for your audience or your employees? 

[00:31:09] Liz Moorehead: I love that. The other two techniques that I love to use, and this I have to admit, I did not get for myself. This is a dear friend of mine. Um, her name is Swan, which by the way, incredible name, right? Like talk about everybody loves their name.

Of course you would love her name. I used to get really down on myself and say, I'm just so tired of self sabotaging. She's like, ah, no, no, no, no. She's like, humans don't self sabotage. You were trying to keep your So thank yourself for the patterns that you used to feel that you needed in order to stay safe and set those to the side because it's all that's ever that's trying to happen.

Even if some people do want to qualify it and call it self sabotage because they can technically see that as the outcome. Fundamentally, at the end of the day, we're not self sabotaging creatures. We're not here to make ourselves fail. We're here to keep ourselves safe. The other thing I like to do is, and this is where we get back into the, our thought, our words tell us what our thoughts are.

1. Thoughts, dictator, reality. If we keep telling ourselves that we are going to fail, we are confirmation bias creatures. We are going to go out into the world and seek evidence that we are failures, that this is not something that we are good at. So sometimes I will go out of my way and say things like, Liz is going to seek evidence that this is working.

And then I will just start tallying up that evidence. So that's a little self talk thing I'd love to do. Now I do want to move into another bit of research here because as a professional work nerd, you know, I love work. I obsess about the precision of words, how people use them, why we use them, and there was this really fascinating bit of research about the Hopi Indians.

So there's this thing called the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, which states that the structure from grammar to verbs and all that stuff in a person's language will influence how they perceive the world. So they did this study at Yale, which involved working with many Native American languages, including the Hopi Indians, and Whorf discovered that the Hopi language is actually quite different from the English language.

language in many ways, particularly in regards to time. Western cultures and languages view times as a flowing river that carries us continuously through the present, away from the past, and into the future. So the Hopi speakers, however, have very different ideas about time and thus their language reflects that.

They think about time differently. They do not have concepts of past, present, and future or in their language. Instead, they divide the world into what is manifest. Manifested and what is unmanifested. Manifested consists of the physical universe, including the present, immediate past and the future. And unmanifested consists of the remote past and the future and the world's dreams and thoughts, desires, getting more into that esoteric space.

But there are also no words for minutes, or days, or days of the week. And so Native Hopi speakers often had a great difficulty adapting to life in English speaking world spaces when it came to being on time for their job or other affairs. And it wasn't because they're lazy. It's not because they aren't freaking magical.

It's simply due to the fact that their language dictated how they perceived their reality. And I would love to hear your thoughts on that, because I know that was something that interested 

[00:34:17] George B. Thomas: you. Without a doubt, I was like, Oh, this is juicy. So first of all, just know that you sent me on this spiral. That might be a whole episode in the future around living in a bubble or a global perspective or something like that.

Because my immediate was like, Oh, great list. Thanks for pulling one random, you know, tribe out for us to have a conversation about, but did you know in Mandarin earlier is up later is down or that you could tech Mayan have no word for before or after. So this isn't just one tribe. This is, like, multiple civilizations that, based on language, have a different belief structure to what we set our frickin watch to on a daily basis, to what we set our meetings to.

Anyway, I digress. Did the research surprise me? Not dramatically at first. Like, when I read the thing, I was like, okay. But when I had time to think about this line, Liz kind of did, and the line is the Hopi language has no present, past, or future tense. By the way, the key word in that is tense. Anyway, instead, they divide the world into manifested and unmanifested domains.

I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? Rewind. Let me play that back again. And if I think about that in the light of this podcast and of our culture today, Western, you know, Americanized civilization, we're always talking about being in the present. What would we say if we couldn't use that word?

Would it even be an issue if we couldn't use that word? Also, so many folks are stuck because they relive their past over and over again, or are afraid of what they won't do, or worse, what they might be possible of in the future. What if those didn't exist? Like how much further or impactful could we as humans be if we weren't preaching a narrative of be in the present and we weren't always reliving the past and we weren't always fearful of the future?

What would that unlock in us? Now, the other thing that I did find interesting in this was this, the Hopi manifested, uh, domains consist of physical universe, including the present, the immediate past, and the future. The unmanifested domain consists of the remote past. And the future and the world of dreams, thoughts, desires, and life forces, ladies and gentlemen, if I could get you to spend less time in the past, present, and future, and get you to spend more time in the dreams, thoughts, desires, and life forces of your life.

If I could wave that magic wand, I would. So went on a research deep dive and the term grabbed my attention, that tense. So you kind of have to pay attention to that, but humans, this, this is the line where I was like, and this is other research that I was doing, which by the way, is where I came up with the Mayan thing and the Yucatec and the Mandarin and all that humans are at the mercy of the language they use blew my mind.

And when I dug deeper. The Hopi Indians, there was no substance called time. You even mentioned it. There's no word for time. There's no timeline. There's no time spatial metaphors like we use all the time. They had no tense for time. And we think of time because of our language, like, versus Hopi time in their way because they speak Hopi.

Like, we're stuck in this narrative because of the words that we can use around it. Verse. Where I would almost say their freedom based on the words that didn't exist. So this got me to think, Liz, what if moving forward, we spoke George or we spoke Liz, or we spoke Billy, and it was a subset of words that we allowed or did not allow in our vocabulary based on what created or moved us into being the best beings we can be.

Also, I have to say. I love that Hopi time. If you do a little bit more research is about cycles, rituals and mental preparation for key events. So I got to do something here. If you listen to this podcast right now could spend more time in dreams, thoughts, desires, and life forces. And realize the important flow that you're looking for in life is around the cycles, rituals, and the ability to have mental preparation for key events in your life.

And you could dictate the words that you're allowed to use and not allowed to use. How would just that block of information. Change your life. Talk a lot 

[00:39:14] Liz Moorehead: about everyone having the ability to choose their day based on the language they use What does that 

[00:39:21] George B. Thomas: mean? So this question leads me to a couple areas with about two minutes left for us to finish this podcast Which, by the way, just so the listeners know, we skipped about three or four questions that we wanted to get to because it's just such a big topic.

And the reason I'm bringing that up, Liz, is because I think that there's probably like a version two at some point down the road where we get more in the nitty gritty of the words that we allow or don't allow in our lives. Choosing your day based on the fact of being able to talk your own language.

Based on a new understanding of time and vocabulary, your question leads me into 2 places that I have to talk about 1 choosing the language to speak to yourself in a way that you speak it using your name that plants a seed that waters the seed that grows the plant that grows into a great enormous tree in your life.

And I did that on purpose, by the way, because I believe that there might be people listening to this podcast that just don't have self belief. So started as a seed and grow it. I started at amplify it because I'm ready to amplify the self belief self trust. The other thing is, and I kind of bumped into it earlier, you got to own your ish.

There's a whole nother podcast episode that we probably need to do on owner mentality. And I don't mean like business owner mentality. I just mean owning your life. Owner mentality. But the way I'll put it here is the captain of your own ship. You have to be the captain of your own ship. You have to have your set of maps for your life.

You need to be able to speak to yourself and speak to your crew. You need to know the direction that you're headed to use the right language to get you there. And the last piece I'll say about this is that if you are the captain of your ship, you have to believe that you're going to make it to your destination.

Because the crew, family, friends, employees, whoever, they are looking to you to get them to the destination. You can't self doubt yourself. You can't show up and not have a destination. You can't show up and not have maps. So after this podcast, I need you to sit down and I need you to think, where am I headed?

Who am I taking with me? What words, what language do I need to use internally to fill myself up to be able to make that journey with those humans? Fundamentally, I believe that there's not a lot of people that actually take the time to just even understand that part of their life.