[Neurons] 2016 Neurons #28 -- The Meanings You Give--- The Experience You Live

Sun Jun 12 22:14:55 EDT 2016

From: L. Michael Hall

2016 "Neurons" Meta Reflections - #28

June 13, 2016

Resilience Series #11

THE MEANINGS YOU GIVE-

THE EXPERIENCE YOU LIVE

Of all of your powers, the greatest of your inherent powers, lies in your
ability to create meaning.  That's because the meaning you give is the
experience you then live.  For designing a healthy and robust resilience, it
is here that you will find the heart of a resilience that will allow you to
spring back into action after any set-back.  In this series I have already
recommended specific meanings that will create the resilient state.  Yet
above and beyond those specific meanings as empowering beliefs,
understandings, decisions, and identities is the ability to choose your
meanings.

Do you know this power?  This is your power to invent a semantic framework
that will keep you healthily invested in living your life to the full.
After all, that's what a set-back knocks out of us-our meanings.  By
definition, that's what a set-back is-your hopes, dreams, and richest
meanings as manifested in your relationships, career, home, possessions,
family, etc. suffer a loss.  What is set back is your journey to fulfill
your highest intentions and meanings.

Whatever that is for you-that's the  content of what you have lost.  Yet
above and beyond that, you have not lost your ability to create meaning.
But many people, maybe most people, act as if they have lost that when they
suffer a set-back or a knock-down.  They act as if they cannot re-construct
their intentions and meanings.  They act as if they cannot re-invent
themselves and the meaning of their life.  Yet that process, the very
ability to construct meaning, is your greatest innate power for creating and
sustaining your resilience.

To support this claim, look again at the people that we quickly look to and
think about when we think about highly resilient people-people who do not
let a major set-back stop them.  What do they all have in common?  They have
the flexibility to quickly begin re-constructing the meaning of life.
Viktor Frankl did this.  Christopher Reeves did this.  Sentenced to a
Concentration Camp for years and suffering severe privations and suffering a
major health crisis (becoming a quadriplegic) represents some pretty major
set-backs.  Yet both Frankl and Reeves shared something.  They used their
meaning-making power to reinvent themselves, to give their lives renewed
meanings.

When you know that the meaning you live is the experience that you will
live, then you will be in a position to flexibly use your meaning-making
powers.  That realization will put you in a position where you can truly
choose your response to the challenges before you.  That's because the
option of choosing your response similarly comes from your ability to choose
your meanings and to set them as your semantic framework for responding. 

If you know this power, how is your skill in using this power?  Do you know
how to put a positive spin on things so that you can stay positive?  That
short statement summarizes reframing.  You take something and put a new
frame on it so that it can be interpreted in a different way.  You take the
content of something and say "It does not mean X, it means Y."

Recently during some of our Group and Team Coach Training, we ran an
experiment wherein we gave people a set of complaints to reframe.  Group
members were given complaints to make in the group and the coach was to take
the complaint and give it a positive spin and put it to good use.   Some of
the complaints where normal kind of complaints, some where exaggerated and
really stupid ones.  The amazing thing is how difficult most people, even
well-trained people, have in taking something and giving it new and better
meanings.  It sounds easy, but like so many things, it is much more
difficult to do (implement) than to understand.

While it may be challenging, even difficult, the ability to frame and
reframe is one of the most unique and distinguishing human powers- namely,
the ability to assign meaning and interpret things in a way that brings out
your best.  Whatever meanings you set determine your focus, your response,
your emotions, your state, and the way you thereafter live your life.

It has been said that anyone can explain things when everything is going
your way.  In fact, any fool can do that.  But it takes a creative and
flexible mind to explain things when life falls apart.  It requires true
creativity to be able to find and set a great meaning for a set-back that
then induces a state of resilience, determination, vision, and optimism.
And while it may not be easy, it is certainly highly desirable.

The truth is that at every moment of your life, you are in the process of
creating meanings.  The question is not whether you are a meaning-maker and
that you invent meanings, you do.  The question is about the kind and
quality of meanings you create.  The question is whether those meanings are
supportive and empowering for you as a person or whether they are limiting
and diminishing.

What happens to you in your life is not always under your control.  Things
happen.  Natural disasters occur.  People do hurtful things that affect you.
But the meaning that you give to those things is under your control.  And
the meaning you give will be the experience you live.  Knowing this, how
will you choose to use your innate semantic-construction powers?  Do you
need to learn more about those powers and develop your skills in using them
to your well being?  

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

               Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

               Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

    ISNS new logo

What is Neuro-Semantic NLP?

Neurons:  Get your free subscription to the weekly International \Post on
Neuro-Semantics by Dr. L. Michael Hall. Subscribe at:
wwww.neurosemantics.com 

    Solutions:  Sign up for the Neuro-Semantic Newsletter ---

 wwww. <http://neurosemantics.com/newsletter> neurosemantics.com/newsletter.

 This is a monthly newsletter for anyone new to Neuro-Semantics.  Femke
Stuut, Editor.

Coaching: For world-class Coach Training - The Meta-Coaching System:
<http://www.meta-coaching.org> www.meta-coaching.org and \
<http://www.metacoachfo/hich/a/hich/af31506/dbch/af31505/loch/f31506%20f3150
6/dbch/af31505/loch/f31506%20undation.org/hich/af31506/dbch/af31505/loch/f31
506/hich/af31506/dbch/af31505/loch/f31506> www.metacoachfoundation.org.
Meta-Coach Reflections sent every Wednesday to the group of Licensed
Meta-Coaches.

Self-Actualization: Neuro-Semantics launched the New Human Potential
Movement in 2007, for information about this, see
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org  

NSP --- Neuro-Semantic Publications: Order books from Neuro-Semantic
website,  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com  click on
Products and Services and then the Catalogue of books.  Order via paypal.  

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20160612/4713487c/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 10627 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20160612/4713487c/attachment-0001.jpg>