The Power of… Wait for it… WORDS!

Today. I want to talk to you about the power of language. I had an experience during this past week that totally highlighted the power of language and how it’s connected to emotions, and it blew me away. So a lot of you have seen the musical Hamilton on Disney Plus, and some of you, if you’re lucky you got see it on Broadway.

Well,I had an experience the other day, where I was able to attend Hamilton live like the Broadway production came to a city that I was visiting Atlanta, Georgia visiting my guy, Adam, and we were able to get some tickets and we went to go see Hamilton. Now it’s an amazing experience. And I’ll be honest. I loved it when I watched it on Disney Plus, but there’s a phrase in the show that appears in a song called ‘Wait for it’. And if you watch it, someone says, ‘Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it’. And the first time I watched, I just experienced that phrase as a lyric in a song and the song as a part of the show.

But this time I’m sitting live and I realized that ‘wait for it’ is a theme that goes through the entire show and they’ve set up the main characters, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton as the, the conflictual people in the show. And Alexander Hamilton is depicted as a guy who just jumps in and takes action. And Aaron Burr is someone who takes his time and observes. So ‘wait for it’ was most associated with Aaron Burr and jumping in and taking action was’ the most associated with Alexander Hamilton. And as you watched the show that phrase, ‘wait for it’ appears in multiple songs highlighting this trait, this difference between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

And then at the end, the climactic end when Aaron Burr assassinates Alexander Hamilton, sorry, I don’t mean to spoil it for you all if you haven’t seen it, but it’s actually true story in history. Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton in a duel. You should already know that.

So anyway, the ‘wait for it’, switches and now saying, ‘wait for it’ is Alexander Hamilton who instead of taking action and firing his gun, he waited a second and it cost him his life. And it was remarkable the emotionality that this phrase’ wait for it’ had, as I went through this experience of this three hour live show. It made me think about words and emotions that happen in therapy.

Like, imagine if you watch me do therapy, you’re going to see that the client will give me their desired outcome. And then I will use the presence of those words consistently in the session. And it’s an emotional experience for the client. Just like it was emotional experience for the audience as we were watching Hamilton, we kept hearing the phrase, ‘wait for it, wait for it, wait for it’. And it does something to you. And I don’t know if I’ve ever, I mean, I certainly didn’t show up there looking to experience that. And certainly didn’t go there, look to experience that. But once I experienced it, I was like, oh my gosh, this is, this is exactly what words do, they evoke emotion.

So when you’re in therapy, make sure you’re highlighting the right words to be the theme of the session. And your client will have emotion envoted within them and then make a huge difference in the way they experience the session. So, anyway, that’s my lesson for today. Go check out Hamilton live if you can. It’s an unbelievably remarkable show. Watch it on Disney Plus you haven’t watched it already. And I will see you in the next video.

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