Old Words with New Meanings

Playing with words that evoke strong emotions, to clients in my counseling practice, I suggested seeing “impatient” as: I m patient—the word’s opposite appearing simply by spacing the letters, potentially creating a new practice—one I regularly worked on myself.

Reading once that anger was only good for twenty minutes and only to identify an issue, and in certified life coach training, learning that anger activates a chemical to complete the body circuit in ninety seconds, I gave clients a language view: adding a d makes it “danger,” but replacing the r with an l makes it “angel”—a curious, chameleon-like change. I was offering that a change in behavior might not be as difficult as perceived.

Suggesting clients see themselves in a convertible (with the top down) stopped at a red light and twenty minutes later the light hasn’t changed, and that two days later it still hasn’t changed and that they’ve sent out for pizza until twenty years have passed, I then asked, “Whom have you been angry at for twenty years (or even just two hours)? Could we find another way to look at your situation?”

Cancer, a more serious word, has a high potential for creating new direction. When the c is separated from the remaining letters, with a word added, it becomes, “c the ancer,” a reminder of Bernie Siegel’s work that when curing isn’t possible, healing (the inward journey to self and higher Self) is.*

“My realization is, “Miracles are not made by size and may come through a small opening.”

*Bernie Siegel. Love, Medicine, and Miracles