In this interview, Dr. Chuck talks with Bruce Pulver about changing the way you can look at words and how our mindset about them matters.
How Our Words Matter with Bruce Pulver
Dr. Chuck: I’m here with Bruce Pulver, he is the author of Above The Chatter Words, That Matter, and I’m Doctor Page. You’re goin to want to stay tuned on this episode, because Bruce has a unique way of looking at the words, that process through our mind and it’s interesting how this started. Bruce, tell us how you, how this came about, that you began thinking in this way about the words that are operating in your mind.
Bruce Pulver: Yeah, sure, so I had what I call a “bam!” moment in life.
Dr. Chuck: Hopefully it wasn’t a hammer!
Bruce Pulver: We all have them. Sometimes it’s a hammer, sometimes it’s a tragedy, you know, maybe a health tragedy. Sometimes it’s a relationship, you never know.
Dr. Chuck: But it happens.
Bruce Pulver: It happened, right. “Bam!” happens, right? And for me it was a sudden, unexpected job loss. I had spent 25 years in the healthcare technology business, in sales, in customer support implementation. Just, that was my career, and one day after working to close a pretty large piece of business for over three years, my job and the job of 500 other employees in the company I was working with was eliminated.
Dr. Chuck: See ya!
Bruce Pulver: “Bam!” Right?
Dr. Chuck: Thanks, Bruce, for working 25 years! Have nice life, see you later, bye!
Bruce Pulver: Absolutely!
Dr. Chuck: Here’s the door.
Bruce Pulver: That’s right! But I was raised in a family that looked at things from a gratitude perspective. Grateful for what we have, grateful for, you know, sometimes a challenge we had to come through, and a father who just loved words: crossroad puzzles, word searches, wrote plays. And the day after that lay off, I think those two influences in my life forged into an unbreakable insignment, a message. And I woke up with one word pounding in my head and I just wrote it vertically.
Dr. Chuck: What was that word?
Bruce Pulver: It was the word that my mother sort of instilled in me, but I never really looked at it. It was strong, “Bruce, you have to be strong”. And so the first word I just wrote that down: Stand Tall, Remain Optimistic, Now Go for it. I wrote it vertically, just looked at the letters. The second day was, “today, Bruce, will be awesome.” Well, ok, what does that mean? Wrote it vertically and immediately it became: A Wonderful Experience Shall Overwhelm My Expectations. So it started- It either started me pulling myself off by the boot straps, or it stopped me from sliding in the gutter. Chuck, I’m not sure which one of those it was.
Dr. Chuck: It was a “bam!” moment, whatever it was.
Bruce Pulver: But I’m glad that it did, right? And so-
Dr. Chuck: So, I want you to stop for a second. So, this started a cascade of changing the way that you thought about your life events having gone through this “bam!’ circumstance. So, for our viewers who are trying to figure out, “ok, i’m going through, fill in the blank, in my life.” A financial change, a health challenge, whatever, how do I start? How do I start this process of beginning to rethink and use the words for something positive in my life? How do we do that, Bruce?
Bruce Pulver: Yeah, so that’s a great question. First, for everyone listening, I want to make sure I’m very clear about this: I am a mouse in my own laboratory. I’ve not figured it out, I got days that are down in the gutter just like everybody elses. I mean, we’re human. So, this is a tool. This is a tool in my tool box that I lean towards. So, there’s a couple of things, one of them is to just focus on eliminating words that end in ” ‘nt” or “not”. I call it: “kick the can’t or untie the nots”. So a lot of times our self talk is programmed, “I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not prepared enough, I’m not liked enough,” whatever those things are, and that script has to be rewound, and has to be untethered a bit. So that’s the way I would start, I would say start thinking about how we’re talking to ourselves, and others, and the kind of input we’re receiving from others as a baseline.
Dr. Chuck: That’s good. We’re here with Bruce Pulver. He’s a speaker, an author. He speaks to a lot of businesses, technology sales, leadership, you name it. He goes before a lot of groups and he kind of talks about these principles and how to incorporate these in your life. You can find more about this at abovethechatterourwordsmatter.com, and I think you’ll find more about Bruce there. Bruce, it’s been really good having you on this segment. I think people are going to really be encouraged by the words you say. It begins with, hopefully, before that “bam!” moment you’re already beginning to think about those, the way that you see your life events. Bruce, good having you on the show.
Bruce Pulver: Thank you, great to be here.
To watch a previous interview Dr. Chuck had with Bruce Pulver click the link below
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For more Spoonfuls of Courage, check out Dr. Chuck’s show Spoonful of Courage TV or buy the books A Spoonful of Courage for the Sick and Suffering: Transforming Your Greatest Challenges into Your Biggest Blessings and Spoonful of Courage: Equations to Find Grace in Life’s Challenges on Amazon.
