I’ve always believed words have much more power in them than most people are willing to give them credit.

With that in mind, I broke new personal ground today by starting my own Wordly Wednesday "thing" (how’s that for a use of words) on Twitter.  Search: #wrdw.  For starters, I’ll be taking an often misused word I hear during the week and crafting a Tweet about it.  I’m not sure how this will turn out or how long it will last.  Consider it an experiment.  My first #wrdw Tweet was this morning.  Go and have a look.  :)

How ironic then that a coworker today posted these powerful words on his corporate blog. Unfortunately, they weren’t attributed so I can’t give proper credit. I wish they were mine, but they’re not. {sigh}  Anyway, here they are:

Watch your thoughts, they become your words.

Watch your words; they become your actions.

Watch your actions; they become your habits.

Watch your habits; they become your character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

There’s nothing more to say.

I am a stickler for words.  I’ve tried to pretend it’s not true, but it is.  For instance . . .

• I hate it when people at the office chat over instant messaging in all lower case and and don’t bother to spell check. (NOT referring here to texting shorthand like ‘thx’ or ‘l8r’)
• I cringe (just a little) when my 12YO says at the dinner table ‘Can I be excused?’, instead of ‘May I…’  (Of course she can, but whether or not I’ll let her is another matter.)
• My hackles raise just a bit whenever anyone says to me ‘Why don’t you {fill in the blank}’.  (They’re not really asking me if I will do something; they’re asking me to tell them why I won’t.

I digress.

Often when I’m working on a story I find myself rewriting the same passages over and over again, trying to get the words just right.  . . . Continue Reading