impeccable words
The practice of speaking with absolute integrity, truth, and positive intent, avoiding gossip, lies, and self-deprecation.
Where You Look, You Go
In martial arts, we learn to hit with the eyes first. You look where you want the strike to land, and your body organizes around that decision, your weight shifts, your timing sharpens, your energy flows together. Look away and you drift. Get distracted and your energy dissipates. Your aim gets messy.
The same thing is true across sports: baseball, football, soccer, gymnastics, skating, archery. Whatever the arena, your eyes go first. You look where you intend to send the ball, where you intend to land, where you intend the arrow to go, and you trust your training to meet it.
Words work the same way. They’re not neutral. They aim us.
On a non-linear path, the kind most of us are on whether we admit it or not, you don’t get the luxury of certainty. You don’t always know what the next right step is. You don’t always get quick proof that you’re doing it right. So you learn to steer in other ways. You learn to steer with what you can control: your focus, your energy, your choices. And one of the most direct ways to do that is through your words.
In my art of Poekoelan (pukulan), a form of pencak silat, we talk about impeccable words as part of the training, because all martial arts have some version of this. You learn to watch your mind, watch your mouth, and clean up the language you’re living inside. Impeccable words are the practice of speaking with integrity, truth, and positive intent. It’s not about pretending everything is great. It’s about choosing words that keep you moving in the direction you actually want.
So instead of “I have an injured knee,” it becomes “I have a healing knee.” Instead of “I’m sick,” it becomes “I’m getting over a cold.” Instead of “I’m trying to lose weight,” it becomes “I’m getting fitter.” Same reality, different aim. One set of words keeps you stuck in the problem. The other keeps you in motion toward the outcome.
Say It Like You Mean It
On a non-linear path, language matters even more because the external markers aren’t always there. You don’t always get instant feedback. You don’t always get a straight line from effort to result. And that’s exactly when it’s easiest to start talking in circles: “I’m behind,” “I’m stuck,” “this always happens to me,” “I’m trying,” “I can’t figure it out.”
Those phrases sound like truth, but they can quietly train your nervous system to expect struggle. They keep your focus pointed at the problem, and then you wonder why everything stays the same.
I learned this tool more than 30 years ago, and it helped me in real, practical ways. Back in the 90s, it was part of how I got my career moving in the first place. What surprised me is how often I’ve had to come back to it, especially now, in this midlife phase of building a new, more independent career and business. The hurdles aren’t identical, but they rhyme. And I’ve watched myself slip back into old language patterns that keep me in a loop. Not because I don’t know better, but because new levels have a way of pulling old reflexes to the surface.
This is where impeccable words become a skill set, not a self-help idea. It’s training. It’s how you steer when you’re in motion and the path isn’t giving you a clear map. One of the ways we keep the tool sharp, one of the ways we remember how to apply it to new situations, is by turning around and teaching it. That’s part of what community is for. We forget, we remember, we practice, we remind each other. That’s what shared knowledge is. That’s what Struktur is.
Wall Street Was Literal
Years ago, a martial arts colleague of mine moved to New York with a clear intention. She said, “I want to work on Wall Street.” She was driven, she was serious, and she kept moving in that direction. After a while, though, she was frustrated. She was working in finance, but not in the role she wanted, not in the place she imagined.
One morning she was walking to work, caught in that mental loop of “I’m not there yet,” when she looked up and saw the street sign. Her office address was literally on Wall Street. It hit her all at once: she had achieved the goal she kept saying out loud. She was working on Wall Street, just not in the way she meant.
That was the moment she got more precise with her words. She didn’t need a new dream, she needed a clearer target. She changed the sentence to, “I want to work on the trading floor.” And once the words matched the real aim, her actions, choices, and opportunities started lining up with it. Within a short period of time, her work shifted and she ended up on the trading floor.
That’s the power of impeccable words. Not because they’re positive. Because they’re specific. The clearer the target, the cleaner the path.
Give Your Brain a Clear Instruction
When I say words are training, I mean it literally. Your brain is always learning. It’s always wiring and rewiring around what you repeat, what you practice, what you focus on, what you expect. That’s neuroplasticity in plain language: the more you run a pathway, the more familiar it becomes, and the easier it is to find again next time. It’s the same way you build muscle memory in martial arts, in dance, in sports. Your body learns through repetition. That’s great news if you’re practicing something that moves you forward. It’s brutal if you’re practicing the same old loop. This is habit change, in real time: building what helps, releasing what doesn’t.
I’ve been interested in neuroplasticity for a long time, and I’ve done a lot of reading on it over the years. One of the books that cracked my mind open was The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge MD, because it put language and evidence behind something I already felt: we have more agency than we’re taught to believe. I grew up, in part, in a Christian Science household with my mother, and that worldview already carried the idea that the mind has more power than most people give it credit for. When I later found neuroscience language for it, it wasn’t about positive thinking. It was about possibility. It was about realizing I wasn’t destined to stay where I started.
I mean that in the most practical way. Without this kind of training, mindfulness, awareness, learning how to direct my focus, I don’t think I would have ended up in college. I don’t think I would have ended up designing for major outdoor companies. I definitely wouldn’t be building what I’m building now. That kind of life felt far away from where I began. Some people grow up knowing they can do things, or with opportunities that make it easier to believe in themselves. I didn’t…not quite. Training helped me shift my mindset, strengthen my awareness, and become more effective and impactful over time.
This is also why I pay attention to the neuroscience conversation happening right now. People like the neuroscientist Sam Harris talk a lot about mindfulness, meditation, and attention as trainable skills, and it matches what so many of us have learned through experience: what you train gets stronger.
On the biology side, there’s also research around BDNF, Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor. Here’s the simple version: BDNF is a protein your brain uses to support learning and change. It helps neurons grow and connect, and it supports the strengthening of new pathways, basically part of the brain’s fertilizer for adaptation. BDNF can be enhanced through specific behaviors like exercise and meditation. And this is one reason practices like movement training, martial arts, meditation, and mindfulness matter. They support the conditions where your brain can learn, regulate, and rewire more effectively. The headline is still the same: practice changes you. Repetition matters. What you feed grows.
And this is where impeccable words come back in, because words are one of the most consistent forms of practice we have. They’re the reps you do all day long. So when you change the words you repeat, you’re not just changing your attitude, you’re changing what you practice.
Start with the phrases you say on repeat, the ones that feel like “just how I talk.”
“I’m trying to figure it out” becomes “I’m building this, and I’m learning as I go.”
“I’m always like this” becomes “I’m changing this pattern.”
“I can’t” becomes “I’m practicing.”
“I’m sick” becomes “I’m getting over a cold.”
“I have an injured knee” becomes “I have a healing knee.”
Same reality. Different instruction. Different direction.
Speak It, Then Walk It
Impeccable words aren’t about sounding perfect. They’re about slowing down, paying attention, and realizing that your thoughts, choices, and actions have a direct impact on your experience of life, what you do, what comes to you, what you draw in. On a non-linear path, that matters. There will be days when the results aren’t visible yet. The timeline isn’t clear. And in times of stress, we fall back into old patterns, old reps, old language that pulls us right back into the same story. That’s the moment to treat words like training: slow down, get honest, get precise, and choose a sentence that moves you forward.
Here’s the practice I come back to again and again: pick one phrase to retire, and pick one phrase to adopt.
Retire the phrase that keeps you looping: “I’m trying” (this is the one I’m really working on right now), “I can’t,” “I’m always behind,” “this always happens to me.” Then replace it with a phrase that gives your brain a clear instruction: “I’m building,” “I’m practicing,” “I’m adjusting,” “I’m getting stronger,” “I’m moving through this.”
Same life. Different aim. Different energy. Different next move.
Because this is what it comes down to: you don’t have to wait until you feel confident to speak like someone who’s headed somewhere. You speak it clean, and then you walk it out. One decision. One action. One rep at a time.
Clear. Impeccable.
In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy noted, "We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being." Thank you for exploring and sharing a new way of seeing a timeless truth.
GoTTa aLwaYs bE iN tRaiNinG … so much good in this narrative reminder . Thanks Michelle…
“where impeccable words come back in, because words are one of the most consistent forms of practice we have. They’re the reps you do all day long. So when you change the words you repeat, you’re not just changing your attitude, you’re changing what you practice”