# The Life You Live Is Shaped by the Words You Use #Well-Being *Last Updated: January, 2026* You can't alter what you can't describe. That's the quiet truth behind why some people drift through decades while others seem to move with intention. It's not just discipline. It's rarely only luck. A lot of it is about articulation. How clearly can you put words to what you feel, what you fear, what you want? Writing is the tool that makes this possible. Not journaling-for-productivity. Not gratitude lists. I mean the kind of writing that feels like an archaeologist uncovering a hidden artefact, each sentence a brush stroke that takes off a layer of sand, bringing you closer to what lies within. The words [[notes/reference/Role of Language|don't emerge from nothing]]. They were already there, buried under years of unexamined thoughts, half-forgotten memories, and emotions you didn't know had names. You're not creating. You're [[notes/self/Writing Poetry is Discovery Not Creation|excavating]]. > **If you know what lies within you, you can begin to shape it. Not fix it. Not optimize it. *Shape it.*** Here's why that matters. Ever watched a stone tumble down a mountain slope? It gathers speed, bounces off ridges, and changes course only where it meets resistance. The stone doesn't decide where to go. The terrain does. Now think of yourself as that stone. The mountain is your world carved by the contours of your thoughts, your memories, your lived experiences. Together, they form the terrain that decides where and how you move. > **Most of us live like this: bouncing along, shaped by slopes we didn't consciously build. The only real work, then, is in reshaping your mountain.** What does that mean in practice? It means doing the uncomfortable audit to intimately embrace the [[Why 99% of the Self-Help Industry Is Slop - Gust Against Gravity|natural state of your mind.]] Question your assumptions. Scrutinise the stories you tell yourself. Confront your pain. Forgive your younger self. Discover what brings you genuine joy. Not the joy you perform, but the kind that needs no audience. > **More than anything else, it means being unabashedly ruthless in being honest with yourself.** The goal isn't to erase your past. It's to shape a worldview that is informed by your past, not hardened by it. And this is where writing becomes a tool, not just an art. There are few better ways to reshape your mountain than by finding the words that articulate your terrain. Writing forces you to take vague feelings and give them shape. It asks you to name what you've been avoiding. It holds up a mirror and waits until you stop flinching. You don't need to be a writer or a poet to do this. You just need to be willing to sit with yourself long enough to write something true. It doesn't guarantee you will live an authentic life. But you will exercise the mental muscles needed to articulate what you feel within. And the next time your actions don't fully align with your inner landscape, that self-awareness might just give you a chance, a window of opportunity in the daily humdrum, to steer, to avoid stumbling into old patterns, and to choose your direction with intention rather than by accident. The words you use shape the life you live. *PS: I use Obsidian to dabble with, store and grow my words, and this site is the public-facing version of it. More about the why and how is here: [[The Infrastructure for Insight - Cultivating Personal Judgement in the Age of Generation]]*