What Happens When You Change One Word?
You may find it transforms your perspective
I never know what will happen when I start writing in my journal. Putting thoughts into words can be tricky. Sometimes, describing the events of my day takes me to places I didn’t intend to go.
And so, one question I’ve been experimenting with this week is: What happens when I circle back and change one word? Does it change my perspective?
To think it through, I made a new journal page built on a three-part prompt design:
Write about a thing
Change one word
Reflect on what happens as a result
The results were, in a word, thrilling!
Here’s what happened when I journaled the first prompt, one thing you’re doing or working on today.
In response, I wrote:
Starting over.
I didn’t give myself much to go on. (I was referring to a long-time project, near and dear to my heart, that I’ve been stuck on.)
Nevertheless, as soon as I saw the words on the page, the change seemed obvious.
I rewrote my original response but changed one word:
Starting fresh.
What happened as a result?
Suddenly, instead of feeling weary, I was excited.
I wrote:
It goes from a grim re-do to a chance to wipe the slate clean and imagine a new way.
Neat, huh?
It was just the refreshing change of perspective I needed.
As I worked my way through the rest of the page, these three strategies were helpful:
1. I tried not to worry about right or wrong when responding to the prompts. Instead, I tried trusting my first impressions.
When I started the second prompt - one important thing you know about your life right now - I couldn’t think of a single important thing I know about my life. What I wanted to write was:
It feels like a lot of things are up in the air.
For a moment, I wondered if that was something important I knew about my life, but I wrote it anyway.
And the rewrite? Once again, it surprised me.
Instead of changing a word, I added several to the end of the sentence:
It feels like a lot of things are up in the air, so patience, consistency, resilience, and hopefulness are important right now.
I loved the change. It helped me finish the thought.
Which brings me to strategy number two …
2. When changing one word in my response didn’t work, I tried changing one part of my response instead.
The prompts are intended to be guides, not rules. They can be tweaked and changed in whatever ways help them work better in the moment.
3. Changing one word didn’t necessarily need to change my perspective. Instead, it could deepen it.
While journaling the last prompt, one thing I’m looking forward to, changing one verb from a general description (watching) to one that was specific to the circumstance (cheering for) made my answer more meaningful. It didn’t change my perspective on what I’m looking forward to as much as it made me appreciate it even more.
In the end, I loved this experiment. It reminded me that the words we use to tell our stories matter. They can be an obstacle in our way or motivation to keep moving forward. With the help of our journals, we get to choose.
If you’d like to see what happens when you change one word, click the link below to download the page.
(The pdf file includes two page sizes: letter and A4. For printing tips, visit my shop welcome page and scroll to the bottom.)
Happy journaling!