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Three Ways to Say the Same Thing

And why one of them makes it harder to change

Someone gets nervous in crowds. Here are three ways they might describe it.

I get nervous in crowds.

I’m someone who works on handling crowds.

I have anxiety.

Same person. Same experience. Nothing about their life is different in one sentence versus another.  But those three sentences do very different things to how permanent it feels — and to how likely that person is to believe it can change.  That’s what this article is about. The whole rule fits in a few lines listed below.

The rules

When you’re describing a problem, say it as something that happens.

I get nervous in crowds. Something that happens can stop happening. There’s room in the sentence for good days.

When you’re describing a strength, say it as who you are — but build it out of something you do.

I’m someone who works on handling crowds. That’s a label, and labels stick. But it’s a label made out of an action, so a bad day can’t take it away from you.

Avoid the third kind: a label with no action in it.

I have anxiety. I’m an anxious person. There’s no action anywhere in those sentences. Just a thing you have, or a way you are. Nothing in the wording suggests it could go anywhere.  These are the semantic ideas to consider. The rest of this explains why it works.

Why wording changes how permanent something feels

In 1999, two psychologists named Susan Gelman and Gail Heyman told a group of young children a story about a girl named Rosie.  Half the children heard that Rosie eats carrots a lot.

The other half heard that Rosie is a carrot-eater.  That was the only difference.  The children who heard “carrot-eater” believed Rosie would probably still be eating carrots when she grew up. They also believed she’d keep eating them even if her parents asked her to stop.  One word changed how permanent it seemed.

Adults do this too. Researchers Gregory Walton and Mahzarin Banaji found that people who described themselves as a Shakespeare reader reported a stronger, longer-lasting preference than people who said I read Shakespeare a lot. Same behavior and a different sense of how fixed it was.

Here’s why it happens. When you turn an action into a thing, your mind starts treating it like a thing. Things can be owned, counted, kept, and stuck with. Actions just happen or they stop.

Notice the following:

Relax is something you do.  Relaxation is a thing you’re supposed to get.

You can fall short of relaxation. You can’t really fall short of relaxing — either you’re doing it right now or you aren’t. The moment the word became a thing, it also became something you could fail at.

What this does to problems

Go back to the person who gets nervous in crowds.

I get nervous in crowds describes something that happens on some days and not others.  I have anxiety describes something they own. Researchers have measured the difference this makes. In 2013, Erlend Kvaale, Nick Haslam and William Gottdiener reviewed a large body of studies on how mental health difficulties get described. The pattern was consistent: when a difficulty is described as a fixed thing inside a person, other people blame that person less — but they also believe it’s less likely to ever change.  Less blame is good. Less hope is not. And the wording delivers both at once.

This isn’t an argument against diagnosis. A diagnosis is often the thing that finally gets someone help, and there’s real relief in having a name for what’s been happening. But there’s a difference between the doctor’s word for it and the words you use for yourself. The second set is yours to choose.

Some therapists work around this by moving the problem outside the person. They’ll give it a name and talk about it as something separate — the Worry, or the Anger. Something that shows up, and then leaves again.  It’s still a thing. But it’s a thing outside the person instead of living inside. That difference matters.

Why some labels are safe

So far this sounds like labels are the problem. They’re not — it depends on what’s inside the label. Some labels have an action in them. Runner. Reader. Someone who shows up. Someone who works on handling crowds. You can see the activity right there in the word.  These are safe to keep. If you miss a run, you’re still a runner — because the label was never a claim about how good you are. It was a description of what you do.

Other labels have no action in them. Smart. Talented. A natural. Anxious. An insomniac. These name a quality, something you supposedly have inside you. There’s nothing to do, only something to be.  These are the ones to watch. If it’s a bad quality, nothing in the word suggests it could ever leave. And if it’s a good one, a bad day can argue with it — which does more damage than people expect.  There’s a well-known study on exactly that. In 1998, Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck had children work on problems, then praised half of them for being smart and half for working hard. Then they handed every child a set of problems that were too difficult to solve. The children praised for being smart chose easier problems afterward, said they enjoyed the work less, and gave up sooner. The children praised for effort kept going.

Smart is a quality, so failing can take it away. Once you’re the smart one, every hard problem is a test of whether that’s still true — and the safe move is to stop taking tests. Carrot-eater can’t do that to you. There’s no bad day at eating carrots.

So the test is short:

Is there an action inside this word?

And one more, for the good ones:  Is this about what I do, or how good I am at it?

I’m a runner is safe. I’m a good runner isn’t. One word’s difference and it’s the word that creates a grade.

One honest note

Not everything in this area has held up, and you should know that.

A well-known 2011 study suggested that asking people to be a voter rather than to vote increased voter turnout. A much larger study in 2016 tried to repeat it and couldn’t.

The basic finding — that labels make things feel permanent — is solid and has been shown many times. The idea that changing one word will reliably change your behavior is not.

So: wording matters, and it isn’t magic. It makes some things easier to believe and other things harder. That’s worth a great deal. It just isn’t a substitute for the work.

Try this for a week

Once a day, notice yourself describing something.  If it’s something you’re struggling with, notice whether you said it as something that happens or something you have.  If it’s something you’re proud of, check whether there’s an action inside the word.  You don’t have to change anything yet. Just notice.

Then ask:

Is this actually permanent — or did I just say it that way?

Because calling something a thing is a claim about how permanent it is.  And most of the time, nobody ever checked.