A metamorphosist: Someone with the awareness and agency to creatively decide when to transform disempowering habitual language patterns into more empowering choices.
Meaning:
The meaning we're focused on is "fascinated." When you find yourself extremely interested, or, another way to put it, it captures your interest as if it were by a spell.
Challenge:
One major challenge of using the word “annoyed” quite frequently is that it immediately puts you in a disempowering state.
It makes you focus on what’s not working because you’re not getting what you desire. In other words, the outside conditions are not matching your inside expectations. In addition, feeling annoyed can lead to stronger emotions such as frustration, anger, or even rage.
Advantage:
One major advantage of using this word, "fascinated," more often is that it can put you in an empowering state immediately.
It makes you focus on what’s working because, even though you’re not getting what you desire, you transform how you perceive the situation; in other words, the outside conditions are perceived differently to match your inside expectations or the meaning you create about the situation. When you are fascinated by an inconvenient situation, alternative emotions such as peace, wonder, or compassion may arise.
Questions:
Annoyed:
Are you expecting life to always go a certain way when it doesn’t? To put it directly, are you being too much of a control freak at times?
Fascinated:
How can you be fascinated by life when it doesn't seem to go your way? To put it more directly, are you willing to change your perception?
Context:
There are times when "fascinated" doesn't feel or fit right; it seems off-key or misplaced, even inappropriate for a serious situation.
The focus here is on how our habitual language patterns affect our perceptions and feelings and on committing to having more agency in our decisions. In other words: Am I "fascinated" at the moment so I can stay resilient and curious in finding an alternative way of perceiving the situation (or the person), or is "annoyed" the most appropriate word to use right now?
You decide based on the situation.
Your Creativity:
Maybe you don't like using "fascinated" to replace "annoyed" in your particular context.
What language pattern (choice of habitual word or phrase) might you use instead?
Warning:
The intention is not to devalue an experience someone has gone through (or is going through) that has caused (or is causing) bottled-up negative emotions.
Since research shows that language can affect our emotional state*, the real outcome is to give you creative choices.
In other words, to replace an English word or phrase you habitually use that gets you into a disempowering emotional state (because of the particular experience/memory/context) with a word or phrase that helps you get into an empowering emotional state (utilizing the power of perception), thus interrupting the negative emotional pattern and giving you more agency to decide how you will move forward.
-Christopher
*Brooks, J. A., Shablack, H., Gendron, M., et al. (2017). The role of language in the experience and perception of emotion: A neuroimaging meta-analysis. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(2), 169–183. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw121
Meaning:
The meaning we're focused on is "fascinated." When you find yourself extremely interested, or, another way to put it, it captures your interest as if it were by a spell.
Challenge:
One major challenge of using the word “annoyed” quite frequently is that it immediately puts you in a disempowering state.
It makes you focus on what’s not working because you’re not getting what you desire. In other words, the outside conditions are not matching your inside expectations. In addition, feeling annoyed can lead to stronger emotions such as frustration, anger, or even rage.
Advantage:
One major advantage of using this word, "fascinated," more often is that it can put you in an empowering state immediately.
It makes you focus on what’s working because, even though you’re not getting what you desire, you transform how you perceive the situation; in other words, the outside conditions are perceived differently to match your inside expectations or the meaning you create about the situation. When you are fascinated by an inconvenient situation, alternative emotions such as peace, wonder, or compassion may arise.
Questions:
Annoyed:
Are you expecting life to always go a certain way when it doesn’t? To put it directly, are you being too much of a control freak at times?
Fascinated:
How can you be fascinated by life when it doesn't seem to go your way? To put it more directly, are you willing to change your perception?
Context:
There are times when "fascinated" doesn't feel or fit right; it seems off-key or misplaced, even inappropriate for a serious situation.
The focus here is on how our habitual language patterns affect our perceptions and feelings and on committing to having more agency in our decisions. In other words: Am I "fascinated" at the moment so I can stay resilient and curious in finding an alternative way of perceiving the situation (or the person), or is "annoyed" the most appropriate word to use right now?
You decide based on the situation.
Your Creativity:
Maybe you don't like using "fascinated" to replace "annoyed" in your particular context.
What language pattern (choice of habitual word or phrase) might you use instead?
Warning:
The intention is not to devalue an experience someone has gone through (or is going through) that has caused (or is causing) bottled-up negative emotions.
Since research shows that language can affect our emotional state*, the real outcome is to give you creative choices.
In other words, to replace an English word or phrase you habitually use that gets you into a disempowering emotional state (because of the particular experience/memory/context) with a word or phrase that helps you get into an empowering emotional state (utilizing the power of perception), thus interrupting the negative emotional pattern and giving you more agency to decide how you will move forward.
-Christopher
*Brooks, J. A., Shablack, H., Gendron, M., et al. (2017). The role of language in the experience and perception of emotion: A neuroimaging meta-analysis. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(2), 169–183. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw121
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