If you successfully completed the previous Developing Willpower exercise then you will already feel very good about how quickly your willpower is developing. The second Developing Willpower exercise is designed to continue this development, albeit in a different area of life. This week, your instructions are as follows:
Developing Willpower Exercise #2
For the next seven days, you must not speak a word of pessimism, criticism or negativity. Instead, you will speak in an optimistic, encouraging and positive manner. If you cannot say anything positive in a given situation, say nothing.
Many of us speak without thinking, and not only does this demonstrate a deficiency in willpower, it can also hurt others and make life seem a lot more negative than it really is. By adhering to a ‘verbal negativity fast’ for seven days, you will develop your willpower and experience life itself from a much more positive perspective.
Controlling the tongue is not easy, because it requires us to think about our words and choose them carefully, rather than allow ourselves to be swept in one direction or another by the emotional feeling of the moment. The key to success here is to get into the habit of pausing for a few seconds before saying anything. This will give you the presence of mind required to process your response consciously.
The words we speak not only influence other people and the universe around us, but the way we ourselves feel. For example, if we continually tell people that ‘life is hard’ and that ‘money is tight’ then we will tend feel a lot more stressed and anxious than if we were to remain silent or to actually have a positive attitude and say ‘life is easy’ or ‘ always have enough to meet my needs.’
Look at the people who always seem to enjoy life and you will notice that they regularly speak in positive terms. They do not speak in such a way because they are enjoying life, but rather, they enjoy life because they have developed positive ways of representing it to themselves and those around them.
By the time you have completed seven days with this exercise, the truth of that last statement will be more apparent than you can currently imagine.
