Guard Your Speech In Retirement

There is power in words.  What we say can have a tremendous impact on other people but can also affect our own outlook more than we realize. Learning to guard your speech is a great habit to develop. Athletes are wonderful examples of using the power of speech to positively impact your performance.  It is more than just positive thinking because speech and the words you use underscore and strengthens your thoughts.  The great athletes never talk about defeat or failure because they don’t want to even entertain that possibility.  Of course anything can be taken to the extreme.  Loud boasting and antagonization is not what I have in mind.  When I say guard your speech, I’m referring to a careful word selection that offends no one but affirms a belief.  That can be much more complicated than it sounds but I think it has a certain relevance for those of us who have been fortunate to reach retirement age and experience the wonders of this time period but also the accompanying problems like aging.

It's important to guard your speech because your words have more power than you realize.

Life is a matter of perspective.  As the great Zig Ziglar used to say, you can tell someone they looked like the first day of spring or the last day of a long, hard winter.  Choosing what to emphasize can make all the difference in the world.  I’m sure we all know someone who seems to delight in telling us every health problem they have.  We all know people who have a remarkable ability to list everything that has gone wrong with a project or someone who reports on the day’s developments in a way that tells us that the end is near.  The truth is that, at this age, if we focus and talk about everything that is bothering us as we age, we’re going to feel much older than we already are.  If you learn to focus on the positive and guard your speech accordingly, you can have an amazing impact on your outlook.  I can already hear some naysayers talking about my naïve thought process and Pollyanna outlook but that is an actual fact.

If you’ve read other posts on this website, it doesn’t take long to understand that I believe in taking a positive outlook on life and I think it has made a real difference in my life.  Left to my own devices, I’m able to rain on any parade and put a stop to any celebration.  I turned to self-help books as a matter of survival and one of the first ones I read was called Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz who was a doctor and plastic surgeon.  An amazing realization led Dr. Maltz to write this book.  In his years of practice, he noticed that the appearance of his patient before and after the cosmetic surgery they had requested was not that noticeable to him but made a world of difference to the patient.  This led him to realize a truth that has been consistent across many of the same types of books in this field and that is that you create your world with your thoughts.  Guard your thoughts and you will protect that world.  Guard your speech and you will reinforce those thoughts.

Do you know someone who seems to be perpetually optimistic?  Someone who believes that everything will turn out okay.  Those people have discipline that allows them to control their outlook on the world.  People who have that same discipline appreciate seeing it in others.  Those who don’t have it or never learned to develop it don’t think it makes any difference at all.  They are completely wrong.  I have learned that your outlook truly does create the world you see around you and, if you guard your thoughts, you can control your outlook.  If you guard your speech as well, you’re reinforcing that mental process that will allow you to achieve more and be happier than those who don’t.  I know how difficult that is to believe if you’ve never been exposed to that way of thinking or never found it to work in your life, but I will never stop believing it.  I know it works.  I know how overwhelming the world can seem if I become lazy in how I let my mind work.  Your mind is no different from your body.  If you don’t exercise and stay active, your body will get out of shape.  We all know that.  Why would we think our mind is different?  We know we should be careful with our diet and what we feed our bodies.  Again, why would we think our mind is different?  We need to develop a discipline for how we think.  We need to guard our thoughts and, when we guard our speech, we reinforce that mental discipline.

Life is far too short to be pessimistic.  The world is a wonderful place if we make the effort to view it that way.  Feed your mind with healthy thoughts.  Learn new things and visit new places.  It’s time to Enjoy Retired Life!

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