What if I told you that there is one single skill responsible for all the achievements and failures in your life?
You start learning it within your first 0-5 years on this world and you keep mastering it to the end of your life.
It’s the meta-skill behind every other skill. It’s responsible for all of the humanity’s achievements up until that point. It’s accountable for all of the achievements in your life as well.
No matter if you are writing a book, a YouTube script, a CV, promotion letter or you’re just texting your girlfriend.
This meta-skill decided whether I failed at a job interview, whether I passed my exam in high school or whether I found friends as a kid.
Language. But not the language you learned in school. Grammar, rules and vocabulary tests… I’m talking about the operating system running underneath every thought you have, every decision you make, every identity you construct.
But what actually is language?
Right now, you’re reading black shapes on a white screen. Your brain is converting pixels into words, and words into meaning. Every human language functions within the same framework – Symbols. The word “tree” is not the tree itself but rather a combination of letters / sounds that represent it.
Those symbols are the Operating System ( OS ) of human consciousness. Every word, every concept, every metaphor you know symbolizes an idea.
How we make sense of these symbols is what distinguishes us. This is what makes us different to other animal species. We can operates with intangibles, abstract concepts an ideas.
Language doesn’t just describe reality, it creates it.
Language isn’t simply a translator of reality. It’s a tool with which we can proactively create reality.
Let me introduce you to something that could break your mind. The Linguistic Relativity Theory.
In the 1930s, Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist, made a pretty amazing connection between the so-called principle of linguistic relativity and Einstein’s theory of relativity.
“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” – Benjamin Lee Whorf
Whorf came to his idea by studying the languages of Central American peoples and concluding that speakers of different languages think differently about the same things.
The Pirahã people in the Amazon don’t have words for specific numbers. They have ‘few’ and ‘many,’ but not ‘seven’ or ‘forty-three.’ When researchers tried to teach them to count, they couldn’t do it. Not because they were less intelligent, but because their language didn’t give them the mental scaffolding.
In this sense language is not simply a means of expressing internal experiences. It’s a way of interpreting reality. Through language we agree about a system of categories accepted in a given society.
In Einstein’s theory of relativity, time and space turn out to be fluid, dependent on the position and speed of the observe. The same way in linguistic relativity, the meaning of the surrounding world becomes dependent on what words are used to describe it.
Many experts would cringe at the idea that language can directly influence how you think…After all, you can experience thoughts and emotions even if you can’t express them, right?
This is where most of the confusion arises, because there are two different theories and people often confuse them.
Linguistic determinism – The idea that without words for something, you literally cannot think it.
Linguistic relativity – Language influences thought. This is the version widely supported by research.
While language doesn’t necessary determine thoughts, it’s far more than a neutral communication tool.
You can have thoughts and emotions even if you can’t express them. But the symbols, we call language, can provoke and produce thoughts and emotions. Language plays a huge role also in interpreting them, which shapes your perception. That makes language a pretty important influencer.
Language orders the mind
The normal condition of the mind is chaos. Only when you give it a direction through your own words, it acquires order.
Here’s an example. In English there is pretty much one word for the color blue. In Russian there are two words that make a difference between light blue and dark blue. This distinction actually makes Russian speakers better at seeing the different nuances in the blue color when asked to.
Moreover through words and the meaning we attach to them, we can ‘infect’ other people. Any idea is like a gene. It possesses the property of reproduction.
You are a product of two types of evolution.
- Genetic evolution that gave humans a physical brain.
- Cultural evolution which filled that brain with words, meanings, and concepts
Other species only have genetic evolution – “I- life“. Alongside with the genetic survival, humans exist also on a informational level. We have the so called “We-life”.
I-life:
It’s finite. It continues as long as the body exists and ends when it ends.
We-life:
This is the realm of patterns, ideas, genes, and culture that persist beyond individual bodies. Writing and speaking enables you to transmit ideas as long as people find meaning in them.
Poor language = poor decisions
People that are good at speaking are those who are good at thinking. The level of your language shows how good you understand and operate with ideas.
Someone who is better at communicating will know how to use the words in a more persuasive way.
Someone at a higher level of consciousness will know more complex words / symbols.
Someone might use his language to create and earn money, other might use it to complain and stay in the same bubble.
You can’t solve a problem you can’t name. Try it. Think of something that bothers you but you’ve never found the words for. Many people can feel on a emotional level that something is wrong, but they can’t create a concrete plan on overcoming it.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Our minds love labels. Your brain constantly gives yourself a label that identifies you. Everything that starts with “I am” is a linguistic-symbolic characterization that you gave to yourself consciously or subconsciously. I am a student, a 9-5 worker, a republican, a democrat, a soccer fan, a creator, a programmer…
Every linguistic label that you accepted creates your self-identity. The events that happen in your life and the decisions you make based on that literally reaffirm your identity.
Cathegorization ( Language ) → Self-Identity → Confirmation → Stronger Self-Identity
This is a natural function, you can’t escape it. What you can do however is becoming observant of the categories and labels that shape your inner reality.
We have to stop thinking about the language of symbols as a given fact. Think of it as a skill that has to be mastered. As we move forward we’ll start using more complex symbols that describe a more complex identity.
Levels of Language Mastery
You can think of the levels of language as levels of thinking. But since language is our topic, we’ll look at them from that perspective.
Level 0: Prelinguistic
This is the first year of your life. No symbolic representation yet. Sounds are purely expressive. The infant lives in a world of sensation and immediate response.
Level 1: Literal / Survival Language
This stage occurs usually in kindergarten. Black vs White mentality.
Language is a concrete tool – words point to things directly.
You can describe what you see. But you lack awareness that wording changes meaning, you can’t use metaphors, framing or nuance.
You are just imitating. Through imitation you learn grammar, new words and ideas.
Level 2- Social & Emotional Language
People at this level can understands language as a system with rules. They can describe what they feel, read social cues and adjusts language based on context. You can grasps metaphor, irony, sarcasm as distinct linguistic models.
What lacks here is awareness of cognitive bias created or expressed by language. You are emotionally attached to your point of view. Us vs Them mentality.
Level 3 – Contextual Language
At this level you recognize language as culturally constructed and context-dependent. You are already pretty good at describing what you think. You can recognize narratives and frame experiences.
The most important thing is understanding how labels influence behavior.
You are comfortable with ambiguity, paradox and multiple valid interpretations.
Level 4 – Master Level
People at this stage can create new concepts that were previously unnamed. They can synthesize ideas from different fields in order to create something new.
Here are some of the qualities that people at this level possess:
- Use language with precision while recognizing its ultimate limits.
- Comfortable moving between literal, metaphorical, and paradoxical modes
- Can hold and express multiple developmental perspectives simultaneously
- Creates new linguistic structures when existing ones limit understanding
The Prescription
There is one evergreen method for expanding your language and consciousness. Reading. But “Just read more books” is a generic advice. However it’s not about just reading for the sake of it. It’s more important how you read and what are you trying to achieve.
It’s not a coincidence that books are one of the few technologies that survived for thousands of years.
Your mind is like your physical body. It’s the sum of what you consume, what you learn, and what projects you work on. Reading is how you expand your current knowledge and how you acquire new knowledge that you weren’t aware of.
Reading will stimulate new thoughts that you didn’t have before. You develop your mind both vertically and horizontally.
Horizontal development refers to acquiring new skills, knowledge, and information within your current way of thinking. It’s about learning more. This is tactical reading. You read books that will help you to acquire the skills need for building a business or teach you how to code.
Vertical development involves evolving how you think, not just what you think about. This is when you understand a new idea and your brain rewards you with dopamine.
How to Read?
Find authors that make you feel slightly stupid. The edge between your current level of understanding and one step above is where you’re most productive.
No resistance = no growth. Comfort = atrophy.
Progressive overload leads to growth. Proper nutrition leads to a lean body. You have to progressively increase the complexity of the ideas you learn about through reading. A hard book will make you want to quit, but eventually things will start clicking in your mind.
For me, there are two types of reading.
- Tactical Reading
That’s when you are proactively searching for new ideas ( vertical development ) .
This is mostly achieved through Non-Fiction books. You might read just a chapter or two to get the essence of the book. The main insight that will make you write it down in your notes.
However there’s a huge danger you have to be aware of. Reading Self-Help books can easily turn into mental masturbation. Let’s be honest. Most of the Self-Help literature today is trash. By reading the same author and the same banal ideas, your mind creates the false sense of achievement. You think you are moving forward when in reality you are escaping the real work with “intellectual” entertainment.
But don’t get me wrong here. There are some phenomenal Non-Fiction authors out there that can expand your consciousness and serve as a foundation of your identity.
- Layered Reading
This is where we should give Fiction a credit. Fiction provides you with an additional emotional layer. It enables your ability to create worlds. Think of how amazing that is. The same text can be interpreted completely differently by the one reading it.
At first you might not see why reading fiction is beneficial. With time, you’ll notice how reading creates small accumulation in your brain. You become more emotionally mature, because of the fact that you are put into the shoes. of your character.
There is a saying that the best Self-Help book is a fiction one. You are coming up with conclusions yourself. It’s better to read one whole book than to have ChatGPT summarize 10 books and give you bullet points.
Learn a new language.
I know what you might think when you hear about learning a new language and learning as a whole. It has a bad reputation in your consciousness because of the school system.
But seriously. I won’t go deep into the countless scientific benefits of learning a new language. You’ve probably heard enough of them already.
Speaking in a foreign language causes you to think in new ways. All languages express the reality differently. For example, English is my second language.
When I’m using it, I feel more predisposed for abstract and creative thinking. This is due to the fact that English grammar is pretty flexible. You can turn verbs into nouns and vice versa.
To have another language is to possess a second soul. – Charlemagne
As you know, learning languages isn’t about translating vocabulary to your native language. Learning and speaking a foreign language enables “out of the box” thinking. You start seeing things from a different angle.
New concepts → New connections → New ideas.
Your learn words for emotions and relationships that your language doesn’t have. You are being exposed to exposes you to different values and different problem-solving styles.
All of this trains your brain to recognize structures and identify patterns. Ultimately you’ll become a better communicator even in your native language.
Self-Awareness
Become aware of the language itself. More often than not the words we use and their meaning can show us what we’re doing wrong in a given situation.
For example, depressed people use identity language “I am…” instead of state language “I feel…” or “I’m experiencing…”. This choice of words makes the problem seem permanent and overpowering.
Every time you find yourself in a difficult situation, think about what your language reveals.
Change the narrative completely, if it shows:
- No agency
- External locus of control
- Victim mindset
- Things happen TO you, not BY you
If we pay attention to the words themselves, we’ll notice that there is a lot of wisdom coded in them.
For example, the word persona means ‘theatrical mask’ in Latin. Your personality was always a performance, a crafted signal. You are always wearing a mask. The question is whether that mask is one you chose, or one someone handed you.
Use language and its power to transform your reality, to create your persona.
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