WHAT ARE SWITCHWORDS? PART I: What do they do, where are they from?
Switchwords are words that represent the essence of an emotional or a physical experience. But they are more than just words. Switchwords are tools. Switchwords are lifestyle enhancing tools for living the life that you love and for loving the life that you live. These powerful tools were "invented" by James T. Mangan after more than forty years of study and usage. He introduced them to the public in the 1960's with his book THE SECRET OF PERFECT LIVING. You can get a copy on amazon.com, perhaps elsewhere too. It's a fantastic book, it is the original book, and it is the very best book on the market to-date regarding this wonderful lifestyle enhancement. Mr. Mangan has passed away now, but his family is re-printing this delicious book for all who are interested. This is such a fortunate turn of events for all switchworders, and we can thank Robert Burns for contacting them and making that happen. Mr. Mangan truly is the Master Switchworder, unsurpassed even since he left us and this life.
WHAT ARE SWITCHWORDS? PART II: Any word can be a switchword!
In reality, any word can be a switchword on an individual level, and all of the words that we use actually are. People that consider themselves quite intellectual often want to mistake the context of the words that we use as being important in conversation or thought, but truly the feeling and essense of words that we use are of very real importance. You can almost completely dismiss the context as being relevant to the feelings and experiences that they express individually. You may have noticed this when speaking with "sophisticates". So easy to misinterpret their meaning, so easy to hear "not what they mean". It is simply that they are not as sophisticated as they think that they are; they are not understanding the way that the brain and emotions work.
The most helpful way to illustrate this point is via the work of Malcolm Gladwell.
In the amazing book Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell tells about psychological tests in which a professor asked people to see him in his office. Those called to visit him had to walk down a long hallway, come to his office and sit down at a table. They were given a sheet of paper listing ten different five-word sets, and instructed to create four-word sentences from the words.
Examples of the word sets:
“him was worried she always”
“from are Florida oranges temperature”
“shoes give replace old the”
“sky the seamless gray is”
“Up bingo sing play let”
“sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins”
Gladwell says, “That seemed straightforward, right? Actually it wasn’t. After you finished that test -- believe it or not -- you would have walked out of my office and back down the hall more slowly than you walked in. With that test, I affected the way you behaved. How? Well, look back at the list. Scattered throughout it are certain words, such as “worried,” “Florida,” “old,” “lonely,” “gray,” “bingo,” and “wrinkle.” You thought that I was just making you take a language test. But, in fact, what I was also doing was making the big computer in your brain -- your adaptive unconscious -- think about the state of being old. It didn’t inform the rest of your brain about its sudden obsession. But it took all this talk of old age so seriously that by the time you finished and walked down the corridor, you acted old. You walked slowly.”
John Bargh, the psychologist who originated this ”priming” experiment and many similar experiments, claims it shows how much goes on deep in our unconscious mind.
Being exposed to words such as “bold,” “bother,” aggressively,” and “rude” caused people to act in this manner. Words such as “patiently,” “polite,” “yield,” and “courteous” generated similarly responsive behavior.
There were variations of these priming experiments, and other psychologists have created more extreme versions. What is significant, as Gladwell points out about priming experiments, “They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act -- and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment -- are a lot more to do with outside influences than we realize.”
To project this idea into our day-to-day lives, consider the effect of watching or listening to the news. Newscasts are skewed toward negative and depressing stories. Talk shows too tend to be negative.
Now, the point here is not that we are puppets of what influences us, only that this type of information is USEFUL to know. Especially when you want to deliberately choose how you feel. Deliberately choosing how you feel is a very important decision in the switchwords lifestyle.
To assist our site users that may be experiencing emotions with which they are having difficulty coping, we have designed four free audios that are located in the lower portion of our home page. Please enjoy them. We know their value and offer them with great delight to all that are wise and wanting to use them.
WHAT ARE SWITCHWORDS? PART III: Why learn and use James T. Mangan's switchwords?
Mr. Mangan lived a life of astonishing productivity, enriched with fabulous relationships. He left his family well supported emotionally, as well as with ample resources. Even today the family is on good report with themselves and each other.
This speaks volumns to his clarity and person power, as well as his ultimate benevolence, energy and ability to support those around him in their individual growth. Mr. Mangan spent over forty years developing the switchwords list (that's a link that you can click on to see the list if you want). He put a lot of time and practice and even had others practice the words before really identifying their functions individually. Personally I have found that I can use other words as switchwords too, my favorites being "hokey pokey" and "ease", but ultimately I most often choose switchwords from his list and really take the time to experience them and let their value be shown to me. I have never been disappointed and instead am continually amazed and delighted. My favorite switchwords are "praise" and "guard". From a Law Of Attraction standpoint, "guard" does not on the surface make sense as a switchword to use, but as a deep student of both disciplines I have found that they are a perfect match simply because the right brain understands the true meaning of "guard", even though our left brain does not. This leads me into our next section about HOW switchwords work.
HOW SWITCHWORDS WORK
Switchwords work; you will demonstrate this for yourself.
How they work is another subject altogether. It can be quite complicated to explain, and the words that you use really depend on the mental and/or emotional disciplines that you follow. Some disciplines use the concept of "unconscious mind", others use "higher self" or "super conscious". My personally favorite label to use is simply the term "right brain". This is due to the fact that regardless of the mental and/or emotional discipline that you may be familiar with or follow, all the labels that are used across the various discplines are housed either in the right brain or the left brain. The right brain is the seat of your emotions, your inspiration, and even the source of "coincidences" and "miracles". So, it is sufficient to say that switchwords work via the abilities of our right brains, accepting the switchword from our left brain as a request or command that is brief enough and non-logical enough that the right brain simply springs into action on our behalf, rather than sorting through concepts and comparing the request or command against our existing beliefs and neurological patterns. The short and indirect nature of switchwords is what circumvents the stumbling blocks that most encounter within themselves when attempting to reach for new experiences and is why they are so easily effective.
What is nice to also know is that we don't really need to understand the specifics of HOW switchwords work in order to use them with extraordinary effectiveness. Think of electricity. Do you have any idea really how electricity works? I don't. But I do know that if I flip a lightswitch up: the light turns on. I know that if I plug my toaster in, put bread in the toaster and turn it on, that I will soon have toast. Harnessing the power of my right brain via switchwords is the same: I know that if I have a life condition that I want to improve, whether that condition is a lack of knowledge, a lack of relationship or harmony within that relationship, or a lack of health, or a lack of specific resources; I know that I can find a switchword that is specific to my current needs and that by "flipping that switch" I will get help that is powerful, benevolent and individual to my preferences and desires. The help that switchwords gives us may seem miraculous to some, but to me is now simply an expected fact of life. I live a life that I love, and I love the life that I live, and switchwords are a cornerstone, along with Abraham-Hicks, and along with my personal relationships, of the life that I love living.
It is the wish of myself and all that are contributors of this site that you too find what you are looking for to support you in your lifestyle. Here or elsewhere; it does not matter. You are allowed to and are able to live life happily, healthily and abundantly on all levels. Keep looking until you find what you seek, and if you find it here, we are delighted.
HOW DO YOU USE SWITCHWORDS?
Using switchwords is easy. Simply identify what you want to address in your life, and then refer to the switchwords list. Look for the switch that serves your current focus, and then say it to yourself. You can say it outloud or silently in your mind, you can repeat it over and over again for a nonspecified time, you can simply say it once. You can spend a day or even longer just running a switchword over and over in your mind while you do other things. You can focus on a switch as a meditation. You can write them out, once or many times. You can put them in places for you to see, you can even hide them where they can't be seen but where you remember that they are there. You can even use them in combination with feng shui! How you use them is up to you, and having more than one way to use them is fun and will help you to explore their power in your life.
Some people like to use more than one switchword at a time. Occassionally I too will use multiple switchwords, but very seldom. My personal way to use switchwords is to sit down and write out my current issue and then determine what I want to experience as an improvement. Then, I go through the list and look for switches that seem to be appropriate. Next, once I have a list, I look for the one that best supports my OVERALL intentions, and then simply make a note that the other switchwords are "components" of that over-all intention, and then I use the one switchword that I have chosen.
If I am dealing with a very important issue that I am unable to really believe that there is a solution for, I will use "around" in front of the switchword that I have chosen. "Around" will begin to bring you evidence from life in interesting ways and experiences of the viability of your desire. It's really a lot of fun to watch life seek to convince you that what you want really is possible.
Here is an actual example of how I select a switchword. I was preparing to build this particular site:
For building this site just the way I want it.
Preliminary flipping on of states of beingness and consciousness:
Appropriate aspects of my intentions regarding the site are a good match to:
On: to build, for new ideas, for transportation of other products to their intended audience: those that are seeking.
Take: to be an effective leader
Personal: to disseminate popular information widely.
Next: to tend to many details very well.
Consider: to be a good mental mechanic
Count: this will be a launching pad for personal income as well as for others
Reach: to invent new correlations and concepts that are easy to understand and to easily use effectively
Give: to help others, to provide value, and to sell supporting products and services
Watch: to call forth information from within
For: to be appreciated.
Many aspects here. Reminds me of myself. I will notice that all of these are part of what I am wanting, but none of them are complete, except for ON.
My switchword for turning on my focus in building a phenomenal site is ON because the site is a vehicle for expressing myself and for providing income.
ON on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on
amen.
This seems to be the most powerful method for me and is in harmony with the teachings of switchwords conceptualizer James T. Mangan. Mr. Mangan even goes so far as to state in The Secret To Perfect Living on page 41 regarding one particular switchword, but also regarding the way the right brain works in general: "the subconscious soul is usually willing to accept a single word where it will resist a large number of words." However, many people do use multiple switchwords, and even develop quite long strings. However you feel most confident and effective using switchwords will be to your greatest benefit.
