Judy Viitanen and the team believe whether we are communicating with clients/customers, colleagues, or family/friends, we can use positive language to project a helpful image rather than a destructive one.

The impact and importance of positive communication as summed up by Mahatma Gandhi can be translated as:

• “Keep my words positive. Words become my behaviours.
• “Keep my behaviours positive. Behaviours become my habits.
• “Keep my habits positive, because my habits become my values.
• “Keep my values positive, because my values become my destiny.
• “There is no dress rehearsal. This is one day in our life.”

We can help ourselves to develop positive language by:

• choosing words and actions that convey the impression we wish to give;
• actively listening to the words, tone and intonation we use when we speak and by editing carefully what we write;
• deleting anything negative and replacing it with something more positive;
• practising this process until the negative words and phrases are filtered out before they are expressed;
• when disagreeing with something or someone, giving clearly the reasons for our disagreement before stating that we disagree;
• offering alternatives or suggesting options and amendments to ideas that we genuinely believe inappropriate or unworkable;
• asking for support, and challenge, from our colleagues.