The Power of Words: How What You Say Impacts Others

We all know words are super powerful and therefore we make a point about thickening our skin so negative words will have less of an impact. The advice often dispensed to ‘shake off’ negative words and ‘move on’ may be good once things have been said, but a much more effective plan (and necessary for our mental health) is to NOT say bad things in the first place; to work at the root cause and make a real effort to use good words instead of bad ones. Remember that words can be forgiven, but not forgotten.

Is there a science to the power of words? Endless tomes have been written about this topic, but one Japanese scientist took a fascinating new approach. In his book ‘Messages From Water and the Universe,’ Dr Masaru Emoto stated that the molecular structure of water changes according to the positive or negative vibrations, words and thoughts it is exposed to. The exposed water, once frozen, produces either beautiful or ugly crystals. Whoa! Our human heart and brain alone is 73% of water and therefore his point - that we become different people according how we are being spoken to – rings rather true.

Masaru Emoto then did another experiment to prove the same point with his country’s favourite food: the rice experiment. He put two equal amounts of rice and water in identical glass jars and sealed them. One jar was labelled with the words THANK YOU and the second jar with the words YOU FOOL. The jars were left in a classroom and students were asked to tell the words on the label to the rice in the jars, twice a day, for a month. After a month, the ‘Thank You’ rice was white and normal and had no smell, yet the ‘You Fool’ jar’s rice had become smelly, black and putrid.