Written by Sarah McCrum
May 10, 2019
A Very Long List of Dos and Don’ts for Powerfully Creative Conversation
Everything you say, think and feel is essentially a command into consciousness. It gives an instruction to the universe, or life, that is equivalent to a wish that must be fulfilled. Life responds by delivering these instructions. This is the process of manifestation.
It means that your words, as well as your thoughts and feelings, have a powerful influence over your future. They are directly creative. This is a far greater level of creativity than we commonly acknowledge.
For example, if you say “Why do I keep getting more bills?” it acts as a request to the universe to supply you with even more bills. If you say “I’d love to go to South Africa but I’ll never be able to afford it” you’re putting in a request to make sure you can’t ever afford that trip. Most people are unaware how powerful their words are and are therefore content to speak in an unconscious way much of the time.
Many habits of speech that are common in regular conversation have no useful place in creative communication. If you want to develop the ability to speak in a way that shifts reality directly, you need to become very conscious of how you speak, think and feel.
Here’s a list of dos and don’ts I came up with a few days ago. Please feel free to add to it—and let me know your suggestions. I’ll add them to the article on my website.
Words and phrases that diminish creativity
“Just” has a flat-lining energy and it’s rarely true. When you say “I just want x” you usually mean you want x and a whole lot more. Being honest is more powerful. Feel the difference between “I just want to be happy” and “I want to be happy”.
Prefacing a sentence with “I think” covers your back while you say what you were going to say anyway. It also takes you into your head and out of your heart, which diminishes the power of your creativity. Feel the difference when you remove the words “I think” and say the rest of the sentence. For example, “I think I’d like to go out for dinner this evening.”
“Do you know what I mean?” is an attempt to control the other person’s response, rather than letting them take responsibility for what they understand and how they communicate about it. It can seem like sensitive communication, but try feeling into the effect it has on you when someone frequently says “Do you know understand what I mean?” It’s surprisingly hard to say “No, I don’t” or “I understand some of it but that bit doesn’t make sense.” So I often find myself saying “Yes, I understand” even when I don’t. My communication is more direct and less controlling when I avoid adding anything like “Do you know what I mean?”
“Kind of” and “sort of” stall your energy while you’re thinking what to say. Pause and speak when you’re ready. There’s more power in the silence than in such empty words.
Starting a sentence with “So…” has a very similar effect. It’s fine to pause before you speak while you connect with something worth saying. Filling the silence with “So….” reduces the energy of whatever you say after it.
“In my opinion”—who else’s opinion could it be? Of course it’s your opinion. Let’s just assume that most of what you say is your opinion. And adding the word “humble” as in “in my humble opinion” isn’t a humble act.
“I mean” is a lazy way of restating what you want to say, because you’re talking more quickly than you’re thinking. Slow down and speak at the pace that’s right for you.
Hedging words such as often, probably, maybe, and possibly, let you say things that may not be true by diminishing your authority and saying them anyway. For example, “People often think too much.” “Probably everyone’s worried about climate change.” If you remove the hedging word you wouldn’t say the same sentence because it wouldn’t be true. It’s better to get clear about what’s true, as far as you can, and say that. Hedging words may be justified at times, but not nearly as often as many of us use them.
Really, amazingly, extremely, and other words for emphasis over-stimulate the energy of your statement and erode trust if they’re used too frequently.
Saying “I’m sorry” when you’re not or when you’re diminishing yourself diminishes your effectiveness. I’ve noticed a common pattern where, for example, I bump into someone and they say “Sorry” as if they did it. This lack of self-awareness and self-respect reduces your manifestation power.
Saying “I don’t know” when you do know and you’re about to say exactly what you know weakens you. For example, when someone asks what you’d like to do this evening and you answer “I don’t know. How about going to the cinema?” If you want to go to the cinema, say so.
Ways of communicating that don’t have the effect you want
The universe doesn’t recognise or respond to “no” and “not”. When you say “I don’t want to worry about this anymore” you’re putting all your attention into worrying and so you continue the experience of worrying. If I say “Don’t think about pink elephants,” you think about pink elephants. Life will supply you with more of what you don’t want because you’re drawing attention to it. It’s very useful to be aware of this if you’re communicating with children.
Trailing off at the end of a sentence (or ending a statement with the intonation of a hesitant question) is a way of hedging what you’re saying. For example, “I think we should start the meeting now, or something.”
Bringing in spurious knowledge that makes you look clever but adds nothing to the creativity or flow of the conversation lowers the energy and shifts attention towards you and away from the person in the centre. A typical way of doing this is to start telling stories about something that happened to you when the focus is on someone else. For example, you’re with an artist admiring his paintings and someone starts telling a story about an amazing artist they once met.
Philosophising is not creative. It might be interesting, amusing, or (often) boring, but it comes from the head and doesn’t have creative juice.
Generalisations are very rarely true. When you say something that’s untrue it confuses the energy, reduces trust, and lowers the resonance of the conversation. You can see this in the extreme in the mainstream media, where much of what is reported is untruthful. When you’re tempted to generalise, ask yourself what’s actually true here and say that. It may be less dramatic, but it will have more creative power.
Following on from the previous point, saying anything that’s untrue is immediately perceptible to anyone listening to you, even if they don’t show it. The vibration and resonance change when you say something untrue and most of us are more sensitive than we realise. For example, the common complaint “Why does this always happen to me?” is blatantly untrue. In the “always” of your life, many other things happen to you, not just this. Another example is “This is the best burger restaurant in the world.” First of all, you don’t know if this is true because you haven’t tried all the others. Second, best at what? Best meat, best sauce, best taste, best price? I often think about this when people say “America is the greatest country in the world.” It’s a meaningless statement. Greatest at what? Possibly it’s the greatest at being America, but we can’t know because nowhere else can join the comparison. It’s a statement that needs qualification to have meaning and true creative power. Note: There’s a lot written about “Fake it until you make it.” This can be effective in helping you change your energy and reality, but it also requires a lot of forced energy and that creates a force against you at the same time. I recommend faking in moderation and once you’re feeling more positive, find a more honest, heart-based way of transformation.
Exaggerating sounds good at the time and might sell something now but in the long term it comes back to bite you. There are very positive ways of being honest that have more power than exaggeration. When I edit my writing, removing words like “very very”, “really”, “amazingly”, “incredibly” and other such exaggerations makes my communication more direct. It’s harder to edit them out of our speech, but listen to the difference between people who feel the need to embellish everything and those who honestly tell it like it is.
Typical dinner party conversations are seldom creative. One person tells a story. The next person tells another story, often trying to outdo the previous story. More people join in and there are more stories. Each story is bigger or better than the previous one—and they’re all based in the past. There’s nothing wrong with telling stories, but it’s important to understand that there’s very little creativity in this style of conversation unless a story is told to engage someone at a much deeper level. When you keep telling stories of the past you’re recreating the past. It’s great entertainment, but not great creativity.
Confusing what you want with what you haven’t got or how it didn’t work in the past undermines you. For example, someone asks you what you want in your relationship and you reply, “My husband’s never at home and that’s made me very lonely.” What you probably mean is that you want more companionship, a relationship with someone who’s at home most of the time, or something else that only you really know. Whatever it is you want, say so. Otherwise you’re reinforcing what you don’t want by repeating the same old story and wondering what’s wrong with you.
Saying what you want and what you don’t want in the same sentence weakens your request. For example, someone asks you what you want to achieve in your business this year and you say, “I hate being so busy all the time so I want an assistant.” The first part of the sentence pays unnecessary attention to what you don’t want and diminishes the request in the second part of the sentence. This slows down the delivery of your request.
When you talk about the past, you recreate the past. If you keep talking about the past, it gets very difficult to move forward. This can be especially challenging when you’ve experienced a lot of past success because you have so much to talk about. The point here is about creativity. If you want to influence the future, you need to speak it into existence.
Talking about your pain and suffering continues and extends the pain and suffering. This is especially important if you’re sick. Communicating clearly with those who need to know your condition and symptoms is important. But dwelling on the theme of your pain and suffering with everyone who’ll listen prolongs them.
Other people can feel very easily when your feelings aren’t aligned with your words, for example, when someone asks you how you are and you say you feel great when you don’t. Or when you pretend everything is going really well when it’s not. This is a very common challenge for parents. It’s hard for your child to cooperate with your instructions if you have conflicting feelings. They pick up mixed messages and don’t know how to respond.
Deflecting or not receiving gratitude or appreciation sucks the energy out of the conversation and is deflating to the person expressing it. It’s good to practise receiving gratitude and appreciation with grace and graciousness. Many people find this remarkably hard to do at first, and it’s worth practicing.
Ways of communicating that work well for creativity
Get conscious about how you’re talking. Listen as you speak. Remember that your words are powerfully creative.
Align your feelings and thoughts and words.
Slow down and speak what’s coherent.
If you also align your words with the deeper Truth (with a capital T), you align with the source of creativity. You can’t get better than that.
Understand that inquiring is different from philosophising. Inquiring opens you up to learning and exploring more and creates a positive environment where manifestation happens more easily. Philosophising comes from the head whereas enquiry involves all of you.
Connect to the joy of the future that you’re moving towards. Feel that joy now, so you’re bringing it into the present. This accelerates manifestation.
Be willing to stand by what you say (unless you discover that it’s not true) or don’t say it at all.
Talking about what you love creates more of it. It’s also great to encourage other people to talk about what they love. It makes for great conversation.
What you appreciate appreciates. If you appreciate anything that’s going well, it’s likely to expand. Appreciating creates magnetic attraction.
Expressing genuine gratitude is also great for expanding your ability to manifest.
Feel joy, whatever you’re talking about. Joy attracts more joy. Feeling joy as you speak creates a future with more joy. Joy makes you more attractive and attracts good things to you.
Humour and happiness are more powerful than rules, including all the rules I’ve listed above. Keep your conversations lighthearted.
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