[Neurons] 2023 Neurons #4 THE ART OF DEVELOPING MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2023 Neurons #4

January 23, 2023

Experience Series #3

 

              THE ART OF DEVELOPING

MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES

 

Given that experiences do not come with built-in meanings, and given that it
is up to each of us to attribute meanings, and given that there are many,
many meanings that you could give to any experience-the challenge in life is
to learn the art of developing meaningful experiences.  How are you at this
challenge?  Do you have the required skills for this?  Fail to do this, and
you could very will become the victim of an experience.  Then the experience
(and the un-owned interpretations that you let it have) will control you.

 

This is a challenge.  And it is a challenge that many people fail to master
in life.  They experience an event and in doing so, they seem to give up any
and all of their power in determining its meaning.  They default to cultural
meanings, to the meanings of people around them, to the easiest and most
hurtful ideas that pop into their minds.  If someone criticized them, they
default to assuming that words are real enough to hurt them, and so they
feel bad.  They don't even pause for a moment to realize that at some level,
they are accepting the words as given.  In them there is not enough of a
pause to wonder about the source of the words, where the person is coming
from and what he may be trying to achieve.

 

The challenge is even more intense for every single human being who has not
learned to do critical thinking.  That's because without the ability to
question things and to produce clear and precise communications, you will
inevitably use childish thinking patterns.  You will automatically use the
cognitive distortions that characterize how a little child thinks-
generalizing, exaggerating, personalizing, emotionalizing, awfulizing, and
so on.  Yet if you do use those ways of thinking, the conclusions you will
draw inevitably creates misery and falsehoods.

 

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.

 

Where there is an experience, whether it is an experience that most people
consider negative, but also for those that would commonly be considered
positive, the experience itself does not determine what you will experience.
Paradoxical, isn't it?  What determines the quality of an experience is the
meaning you give to it.  Your power to construct meaning and to attribute
meaning is that powerful.

 

For instance, you can take a positive experience and turn it into a trauma.
You could succeed at work, produce something that leads to recognition and
bonus pay, but if you compare it to a colleague who did more and got more,
you could feel really bad.  Jealousy could eat at you; envious thinking
could ruin the recognition.  You could feel one-down and mistreated and
"never given the breaks that others get."  You could go to a party with
friends who care about you and find that the party makes you feel miserable.
To do that, you only need to use a strategy of focusing entirely on what is
not there or who is not there, and not what and who is there.  Focus on the
divorce you experience three years ago and how your ex- is not there and
everybody else has partners, and then notice just how lonely, rejected, and
hopeless you feel.

 

Conversely, the art of developing meaningful experiences starts with owning
your powers of meaning-making.  Once you do that then you can focus your
attention on what is meaningful to you-what you value, what you care about,
what you are grateful for, what is a blessing.  This is not a shallow
"positive thinking" message.  The truth is that you can hold both positive
and negative meanings in your mind at the same time.  Yet a negative meaning
does not have to overwhelm and obliterate the positive meanings.

"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 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
extraordinare.  Because this is central in Neuro-Semantics, you might want
to consider some Neuro-Semantic training or coaching this year.

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

132607 NeuroSemantics Executive Learning Front Cover

 

 

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