“Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.” – Yehuda Berg
In 2009 I was asked to speak at an event for people working to make a world of difference in their communities. At this time I was very new to the world of speaking, so new that I didn’t event know that a world could exist around it. I’d see debaters, politicians and comedians building a career around the power of spoken word but for me public speaking was still among a fear, a great fear. In reflection I was wearing my speaking dippers which was probably a good thing because I was cr**ing myself, but it was an opportunity and I decided to embrace it. At the end of my talk a man called Billy Graham, not the American evangelist but amazing youth worker, former New Zealand boxing champion and admirable world class speaker came over to me and said “if you can do what you did here, you can do it anywhere”.
When presented with positive feedback there are a few things we can do;
- We can ignore it with statements like “oh, they probably just said that to be nice”
- We can think about it… think about it… think about it so much that we don’t know what to do.
- We can chase it, believe in massive actions and build the dream.
I chose to chase it and the rest is a story in the making.
Everyday our powerful force is tested through how we choose to deliver and respond to words. For words to make a world of difference we don’t need to be a lyrical genius, we don’t even need to communicate a lot, we just need to go with what we believe.
