What Could This Mean?

Transcript

Let’s talk about “what else could this mean?”

That is the ability for us to chose the meanings in our lives.

So the other day having a conversation with a friend of mine after asking her some specific questions eventually she came to a realization.

She said “That’s amazing, cause I never realized that I could do the same activity but have a different interpretation or discover a different meaning from it.

And I thought that’s wonderful that she realized that. I also thought that’s kind of bizarre because I thought that I had that knowledge or perception for some time.

So for me like before that, going through life without that would be like seeing everybody writing or seeing writing all around you. All different stories and interpretations of things that have happened.

And never realizing that you could pick up a pen.

Now having come to that realization she can bring that and push it to the max. Use it in all aspects in her life.

Start to see things differently. Start to choose the meanings that she wants for her events and find meanings that are empowering that help her be happiness. And help her bring happiness to those around her.

That is the power that human beings have in a sense it’s like you can say it’s the only thing that we can do because we can’t really act without really knowing the meaning of the thing.

Our actions our interpretations our emotions are based on these meanings that we assign to events.

So it’s a tool that we have that’s so powerful to determine our experience of life.

People talk about the book Man’s Search for Meaning. Several people have told me it’s a very powerful book, one of their favorites.

I still haven’t read it but in it the man is in a concentration camp. Bad things are happening, people are being tortured and murdered.

He keeps asking “what could this mean?”

He doesn’t want to be bound to one particular meaning, he finds different ways to interpret it. Is it a challenge for him personally? It is a challenge for his people so they can go on to better things?

Is it a test from God? What could this mean?

These are the same questions we can ask in our every day life.

If you go to the park with your dog and and you want to sit and relax for an hour.

Then after half an hour you start thinking “Oh, I am wasting my time here. There’s so many things that I need to do.”

I have to do my homework or complete an assignment at work or catch up on some other things and clean the house. There’s 1000 things I could be doing but I’m wasting time here, in the park.

This is a kind of autoexigent thought pattern a kind of self commanding thought pattern.

We can ask ourselves, what else does this mean? What is the purpose of this action of going to the park to relax? To connect ourselves with the environment. To see the nature around us. To feel the grass under our bare feet and just experience it. That innate experience.

Maybe you have your own interpretations, your own reasons why you would do something like that and if they bring you happiness and let you feel liberated then they’re probably pretty good reasons.

We have a lot of situations in our life, we have a certain interpretation, a certain belief.

It brings us anxiety.

Of course people have this classic, I don’t want to say…dysfunctional. Maybe I can say this. It’s like this cognitive distortion or problematic belief because things have been this way for awhile. They’ve been this way today, they were like this last week.

That means it will always be like this which if you look through your life experience you’ll see that’s not normally true. Normally things are transient. Things come and go.

This too shall pass we say when somebody is depressed and they get caught up in that thought. They make it a belief that things will always be like this.

Then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy sometimes.

What if in that situation you asked “what else could this mean?”

Maybe you’re going through a period of low energy, it’s just a natural cycle. It’s a part of being human. Maybe you’re withdrawing from other people because you need time to recharge or analyze your own emotions and think about things that are going on.

Maybe there are lessons of the past you have not quite integrated and that’s why your ruminating so much. Because you want to discover that hidden lesson that’s going to unlock a new stage of your life.

What else could this mean?

Well there are as many possible interpretations as there are people on earth, probably more yet to be discovered.

So many wonderful possibilities when you begin to ask what could this mean?
Thank you so much for listening, thank you for thinking about the things in your life that have a particular interpretation that results in you being stressed, anxious or depressed. Or not as happy as you could be.

Thank you for looking at that and trying to put it in a different light so you can try to move forward with your life. Step into the light where all things are revealed.

Thank you for listening, have a wonderful day, I’ll talk to you soon.