The Hidden Mindset Seduction: How Words Shape Your Reality

Listen to an expanded conversation between Bart and Sunny around this newsletter:

Why Everyone’s Whispering About It

Why is everyone suddenly whispering about ‘hidden mindset seduction’? Because words don’t just describe reality… they shape it. A dear friend of ours, Dr. Aleksandra Zuraw, recently shared with us this quote by Ludwig Wittgentstein:

If language is the lens through which we experience life, then the size of your vocabulary directly influences the size of your reality.

The Words You Use Define the Life You Live

Think about the words you use every day to describe your emotions. Do they feel repetitive? Words like: Happy. Sad. Grateful. Stressed.

But what if you expanded them? Imagine describing yourself as exultant, in the depths of despair, or awash in reverence. Suddenly, your inner landscape is richer and more nuanced. In other words, language either widens or shrinks the texture of your life. 

There are certain Inuit tribes who have over 50 words for snow. Their ability to perceive and describe snow is way more intricate than our here in Idaho, where we just say “snow.”

The Himba tribe in Namibia have many different words for green, so many that they can easily distinguish subtle shades of green that the rest of us cannot see and would just lump together. But here’s the twist: their language does not have a separate word for blue. When shown a color wheel with one blue square among green ones, many Himba cannot pick out the blue at all. To them, it literally blends to green. 

If your language doesn’t give you a word for a color, your brain doesn’t flag it as different. You don’t just miss the word, you miss the reality! 

Erasing Words, Erasing Worlds

There are myriad conspiracy theories you can find online right now about how ChatGPT and other learning language models are intentionally programmed to leave certain words out with the underlying intention of erasing them from our language. One of those words is: integrity. If we lose words to describe certain aspects of humanity… then do those aspects cease to exist? 

It’s worth thinking about! When a culture loses words, it doesn’t erase the underlying human experience, but it does change how people perceive, access, and express that experience. Over time, what we can’t name becomes harder to notice, harder to share, and harder to think about clearly. If we lose words for certain inner states (“awe” or “grace”), those states may not vanish, but our ability to recognize and cultivate them weakens. 

Words as Weapons… And Spells

Of course, it’s not only about erasing words. Words themselves can seduce us into believing the frame of thought they came wrapped in. In other words, they can also enslave us. Every buzzword is a spell and every slogan is an invisible string pulling you into someone’s agenda. 

Mainstream language isn’t neutral. It’s engineered not to just sell you products, but identities. If you don’t catch the code, you end up living exactly the way someone else intended you to.

When One Word Shakes People

We recently posted that after thirty years of marriage, we threw out the word marriage and chose partnership. We immediately lost seven followers and had one man comment, “Yeah, a binding pledge or promise is probably too strong for most. A lot easier to have partner and not be so committed.” 

We recognize the term as being sacred to many people, and if it rings true for you, keep it! But the idea that we are less committed because we use Partnership is the exact opposite of what happened for us. The word partnership carries more weight, freedom, and power. It’s what feels true to our reality.

The point? One word can carry massive subconscious weight—and trigger strong emotional reactions.

Why Language Hits Below the Surface

And before you roll your eyes and think, “Okay, that’s getting a little out there…” let’s ground it. Words shape us beneath the surface, even when we don’t know their etymology. Your nervous system, your culture, and your subconscious all respond to words in ways you’re rarely aware of.

Sound Carries Meaning

Our nervous system doesn’t only process the dictionary definition. It also reacts to the sound, rhythm, and feel of a word. That’s why some words feel harsh and others feel soft to us. Even without knowing their Latin roots, our bodies feel different when hearing them.

Cultural Conditioning

Even if you’ve never studied the roots of a word, you inherit how it’s been used in your culture. That cultural coding lingers in the collective psyche, so the word itself carries an unconscious charge.

Sounds far-fetched? Consider this: in The Heart’s Code, Dr. Paul Pearsall documented the case of an 8-year-old girl who received the heart of another child who had been murdered. After her transplant, she began having recurring nightmares of the crime, so vivid and detailed that her descriptions eventually led police to identify and convict the killer.

If cellular memory can be transferred through a heart, is it really a stretch to believe that words, repeated over generations, infused with stories, beliefs, and emotions carry an invisible weight in our psyche?

Implicit Associations

Psychologists have shown that words trigger “priming effects.” When you hear a word, your subconscious links it to a clutter of meanings, images, and emotions. Say the word love or God in a room and you’ll get 10 different emotional responses from 10 different people. Each person’s subconscious connects the word to their own web of images and emotions. 

Language as Spell-Casting

This is why ancient traditions called words “spells.” A word doesn’t need to be understood rationally to alter consciousness. Just like music can shift your mood instantly, words carry vibration, history, and energy that slip beneath the radar. 

Your Challenge This Week

Pay attention to the vocabulary you’re living inside of.

• What words do you currently use to describe your emotions, your relationships, and your business? Do you find yourself using the same words over and over again?
  

• How could you expand your experience by expanding your words? Try using one new word per week to describe your emotions, your relationships, your business, etc.
  

• Which mainstream words have you accepted without question, and are they even true for you? How do they feel in your body?
  

That’s how you play full out, because when you reclaim your words, you reclaim your world! 

Life Updates:

• Played a little pickleball this week and Bart got to rope a little! The weather in Idaho right now is to-die-for so we get out as much as possible!

• Sunny’s Dad is in town from St. George, Utah so she got to enjoy a beautiful, early morning walk with him!

• We went to the Eastern Idaho Fair (Bart, Sunny, Cobe, Xander) and had a marvelous time. We shot some fun content and enjoyed a nice evening.

• We are currently en route to Nashville with Xander and Cobe. We are going to hit the General Jackson Steamboat Cruise (dinner/show), Rudy’s Jazz Room for a Sunday night jazz jam session, and then for the Grand Finale… Eric Clapton. We also will probably get to play some pickleball with Bill Allen and meet up with Brett Manning.

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