Years ago, I read this piece on using passwords as a tool to change mindset. The gist is: make your password a statement to remind yourself of what you want. I used it at work, where I’d have to log in multiple times per day, and while I didn’t see the depth of results he reported, I did find it a helpful way to keep my mindset where I wanted it to be: passwords to help me have patience, to cultivate joy, to embrace “now,” to enjoy my students in a context that made it challenging.
Nowadays, I don’t enter passwords all that often, so it’s not useful.
But where do I type words every day?
Wordle. Dordle. Quordle. Octordle.
I play all four of them daily, and I enter the same words as my opening moves. I want to get the most commonly-used letters and all five vowels into play right away.
A word that has some commonly-used letters and two vowels? Tired.
I realized that I don’t want to use tired four times a day every day. Tired definitely doesn’t require reinforcement.
Using a thesaurus, I made a list of five-letter words that didn’t have duplicate letters that I might like to type every day. Words I want to be part of me. Words that I would be happy if others used them to describe me. Words that maybe I have trouble embracing, but even those that are more solid. Who doesn’t need reinforcement sometimes?
Looking at the list, there weren’t three that easily fit together within the strategy of the game. After mixing and matching for a while, I chose my three, put them in … and lost. I didn’t cross-check well enough, had key letters missing, and missed.
I decided to pare it down to one word. My opening word. Let the others be more strategic to the game.
Spark.
It’s not the strongest opening word, but it’s been good enough, in combination with what I have next, and I am back on my winning streak. If I take a few seconds to connect with the word, it makes me smile.
Only a few days have passed since I implemented this, so I can’t speak to long-term efficacy, but it gives me a drop of joy for the moment.
If you’re a password user or a Wordle player, how might you use this to be intentional about your thoughts?