SLAMMED!!!

We've been 'slammed'.

This is another new experience for me.....and one that is proving a mite challenging!

For those of you who haven't yet discovered what it is to be 'slammed', allow me to explain.

On Thursday all was well. Our phone worked and so did our internet connection. On Friday morning we got up, switched on our laptops to check e-mails, news, weather etc....but couldn't get a connection. This is not particularly unusual....but when all the usual tricks failed to work, I decided to ring our provider....and discovered too that the phone did not work either.

A series of phone calls from my partner and myself ( and ok...I admit his were more effective than mine) to the provider and other providers lead to the pronouncement that we had been 'slammed'. Another provider had taken ( I think of it as STOLEN!) our phone line, either inadvertently or deliberately. Apparently it's not uncommon. And apparently it could take up to two weeks to either repair the mistake or to find us a new line. In the meantime I'm becoming a rather familiar figure hunched over my laptop in Wetherspoons....enjoying their free wi-fi. Bless Wetherspoons.

I'm fascinated by the word 'slammed' and the effect it has on the users. Its connotations of violence, power, victim etc. So many of the words we use have an onomatopoiec effect on us. This is familiar NLP stuff...but when you come across a new word used in a new context it allows us to realise again the power that the words we use have upon ourselves, our family, our friends, our colleaguees, our clients, our students.

It has started me thinking of the words I want to be using instead. I like softer, nurturing, loving, empowering, enabling words (do these words in some way embody the sentiment they convey?).

Note to self: listen gently to the words I use when I'm talking to me.

And send loving thoughts to those s.........!