What’s With ‘Er? (from Jason in the UK)
Nancy Morris here with another episode of The Morris Code. Today is episode #2 – Dear Nancy.
I’m going to do this on a regular basis because I get a lot of questions and this is a great way to share the information with many people rather than one.
So I got an email from Jason the other day who watched my Facebook Live and heard me say in that Facebook Live “Nancy, you said that you don’t like e-r at the end of a word”, so faster, quicker, smarter. “Why is it … why is that? Why do you say that’s not a good thing?”
So I’m going to answer this question for you right now, Jason. And here we go.
If you have a look at the autobiographies of successful people and the books about the laws of success and the psychology of success, you’ll find that the people who are writing these books talk a lot about not only taking persistent, consistent action or things like having a mastermind group or these sorts of things.
They are also talking about the ability to understand what’s going on inside of your mind.
So people who create success not only look externally to themselves in what they’re doing, but they also pay very great attention to what they’re thinking.
“Er” is identified as not a good way to be thinking – thinking about faster, richer, smarter, wealthier, thinner – all these sorts of things. It’s not a motivating factor and I’ll sort of explain why right now. In order to really set very strong and achievable goals and be motivated toward those goals, one needs to be in the present moment. You need to be able to understand why you’re going after the goal and you need to be very…you need to attend to it because, really, goal achievement is not about the results that you get and in many ways it’s not even about the actions that you take.
Getting your goals is about what you’re thinking.
And you need to be very much in the present moment. Adding “er” to a word takes you into another moment. It puts you into the future because if you say, “I want to be richer”, you’re putting yourself in a position of not being rich now, so therefore richer is in the future. That gap of time is a very difficult gap for your brain to fill when it comes to being motivated towards goals. So removing “er” from a word keeps you very much in the present moment. I’ll explain a little bit more about that in a second.
I just mentioned that being in the present moment is very important for goal setting and it is, and here’s why. If you start from a place of lack – and any time you’re using “er” you are thinking about more so therefore you’re in lack – every time you’re trying to work towards a goal or setting a goal, when you’re starting from a place of lack, you’re actually going to limit your goal. You’ll probably limit your goal. So why do that?
And it can be as simple as removing those two little letters from words and I’ll show you what I mean.
Let’s talk about “wealthier”, which a lot of people talk about. It is possible to set goals to grow one’s current wealth. In other words, I may not have a million dollars in the bank, but in many ways I am wealthy. I have abundance in not only some financial ways, but in other ways in my life. So I can be wealthy and feel wealthy in this moment and still set goals about growing that wealth. There’s a big difference between being in lack, therefore needing to be wealthier and acknowledging a state of wealth – in however you want to define it for yourself – and wanting to grow that.
Just think about that for yourself for a moment. Think about something that you tend to add “er” on to. Let’s even take “healthier”, whether you’re talking about being thinner or whatever, let’s talk about being healthier. Well, likely in this moment, there are states of health in your body. You have a state of health. I mean, you’re listening to this, you’re watching this. There are states of health you currently have. You want to grow that state of health so you can set goals that will grow that state of health. If you need to set goals about being “healthier”. I mean how does that feel for most people it’s like, “ug” … it’s not very motivating because they’re starting from below zero.
That’s the really important thing to remember about the “er” – it puts you in another timeframe, so tomorrow…way out over here…somewhere, you know, sort of at the end of your fingertips. “Er” is always off the end of your fingertips and also it puts you in that state of lack.
“I’m lacking” and it’s demotivating to feel like you’re lacking because some of the language that goes on perhaps consciously, but often subconsciously, is “how did I get here? I’m forever in this state of lack” and you will be as long as you have “er” going on in your life.
So move the word that you are currently wrapping an “er” around and reframe it into something like “healthy”. “And now I’m setting goals to grow my health” … “wealthy” and “now I’m setting goals to grow my wealth”. That slightly different frame of mind will change the way that you feel motivated towards your goals.
Some people say to me “Nancy, that’s just semantics” and in some ways, yeah, and that’s absolutely how your brain works. It works in language, so understand the language to use and you’ll be creating more opportunities to set and achieve the goals that you want to achieve in life.
I hope you found this helpful. Please do feel free to continue to send me questions. People will email them to me. They’ll message me on the Facebook page or LinkedIn or wherever you like. I love getting the questions and even more so now I’ll be able to share with many people at the same time, so thanks very much for watching. I’m take care of yourself and we’ll talk soon. Bye.
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