Giving something a label has immense perception-changing power. Sometimes, it can be helpful: a medical professional providing a label of ADHD or Autism can ease the path to understanding behaviour we didn’t expect. Sometimes, it can be detrimental: adults repeatedly calling a child “naughty” or “difficult” can change their self-perception for life.
We have also learned, through discussing mental health, that having a word for something can turn the invisible, visible. There is a gorgeous illustration for this in a tribe in Namibia who have a different labelling system for colours than most of the rest of the world. Their wide variation of words for shades of green, for example, make their perception of the different shades instant and clear where, to me, it is hard to see the difference. On the other hand, they do not have such distinct labels between green and blue so, to them, it is harder to quickly categorise all blues as different to all greens. (You can read more about this here if you like)
This month, my nature challenge involves giving a label to a piece of behaviour we all probably do, at least ocassionaly, without realising. Perhaps, if we make a thing of it, we will be able to feel the benefits of it even more and go into it more intentionally in future.
So, here it is:
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