The Seven Words That Can Transform a Life

A note to young leaders.

Words are incantations – especially when spoken often and with conviction.

And when it comes to words that impact lives for the better, there are none better than these seven:

“You’re better than you think you are.”

These are the seven words that changed the course of Dr. Julie McGonigle’s life – the very able leader of St. Andrews Cathedral School, my old high school.

McGonigle was in her early teens and a middling student, when the mother of one of her friends began to repeatedly tell her: “You’re better than you think you are.”

At first she dismissed the exhortation as mere flattery, but then “positive doubts” began to creep in:

“She repeated the phrase to me so often that I began wrestling with the thought, coming to the point where I had to tell her, in the most certain terms, she was wrong.

You see, despite my tender years, I had already judged myself as a pre-determined thing. But what those seven words did was to begin to challenge my self-belief.”

The seed had been planted – and from it grew a series of internal challenges , which took McGonigle’s response from “No, you’re wrong,” to “Well … maybe you’re right.”

And when the seed finally took hold, the once-average student began to flourish – eventually earning a master’s degree, then a doctorate, from Oxford University no less.

Words have tremendous power.

Who are you mentoring?

Who needs to hear you say – often and with conviction – “You’re better than you think you are”?