“The meaning you give is the instinct you will live.”
L. Michael Hall, Neuro-Semantics
Given that experiences don’t come with built-in meanings, that it’s up to each of us to give them meanings, and that you could give any experience a lot of different meanings, the challenge in life is to learn how to create experiences that mean something. How are you at this challenge? Do you have the required skills for this? If you don’t do this, you might be the victim of an experience. Then the experience (and the meanings you give it that you don’t own) will have power over you.
This is not easy. And it’s a challenge that a lot of people don’t manage to overcome in their lives. They go through an event, and by doing so, they seem to give up all control over what it means. They fall back on cultural meanings, the meanings of the people around them, and the worst ideas that come to mind first. When someone criticizes them, they automatically think that words can hurt them, so they feel bad. They don’t even stop for a second to realize that, in some way, they are taking the words as they are. There isn’t enough time to stop and think about where the words came from, where the person is coming from, or what he might be trying to do.
The challenge is even harder for every person who hasn’t learned how to think critically. That’s because if you can’t question things and talk about them in a clear and precise way, you’ll always use childish ways of thinking. You will think like a small child, which means you will automatically generalize, exaggerate, personalize, make things emotional, make things seem awful, and so on. But if you use these ways of thinking, you will always come to false conclusions that will make you unhappy.
In the fields of therapy, coaching, and consulting, professionals learn to expect that where there is emotional pain, there is a high probability that the person is not doing critical thinking. Instead, the person is thinking in erroneous and fallacious ways. That’s the problem. They are not the problem; the thinking patterns are the problem. They are thinking in ways that attribute ugly, nasty, dark, and toxic ideas to some experience, and that’s the problem.
Wherever you have an experience, whether it’s something most people would consider negative or something most people would consider positive, the experience itself doesn’t determine what you will experience next. It’s strange, isn’t it? What makes an experience good or bad is the meaning you give it. That’s how much power you have to make meaning and give meaning.
For example, you can make a good thing happen to you into a bad thing. You might do well at work and make something that gets you praise and a bonus, but if you compare yourself to a coworker who did more and got more, you might feel bad. Jealousy could drive you crazy, and envious thoughts could ruin the praise. You might feel bad about yourself and like you’re “never given the breaks that other people get.” Even if you go to a party with people who care about you, the party could make you feel bad. To do this, all you have to do is focus on what isn’t there or who isn’t there instead of what is there and who is there. Think about the divorce you went through three years ago, how your ex- isn’t there anymore, and how everyone else has a partner. Then think about how alone, rejected, and hopeless you feel.
How to Make Experiences Meaningful
#1. Knowing How to Make Meaning
The art of making experiences meaningful starts with knowing how to make meaning. Your flexibility affects your meaning-making. Your ability to invent, alter, and shift meanings so you are not constrained by them. Your thoughts, maps, and emotions will be stiffer and more stuck the less flexible you are. In that case, your meanings have you instead of you having your meanings.
#2. Focus on What’s Important to You
Once you’ve learned how to make meaning, you can focus on what’s important to you: what you value, what you care about, what you’re thankful for, and what’s a blessing. This is not a simple message about “positive thinking.” The truth is that you can think about both good and bad things at the same time. But a negative meaning doesn’t have to be so strong that it drowns out and gets rid of the positive ones.
“Yes, last year’s winner of this recognition award did more than me, but her success takes nothing away from me. I’m glad for her and I will be glad for myself. It’s foolish to compare myself with others, I will only compare what I’m doing now with what I have done in the past.”
“Yes, it seems that most people here at the party have a partner, and when I’m ready I will set that as a goal; for now, I will focus on the fact that I have loving and caring friends and we’re having a party.”
Meaning is the Key for the Quality of Your Experience
Meaning is the key and your power to make meaning is the determining factor for the quality of your experiences. Now you know the pathway to having much more meaningful experiences in life—develop your innate powers in your inner meta place. Become a well-trained and well-practiced meaning-maker extraordinaire. Because this is central in Neuro-Semantics, you might want to consider some Neuro-Semantic training or coaching this year.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Neurons] 2023 Neurons #4 THE ART OF DEVELOPING MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
