Psychology, it’s been a lifelong love of mine. I’ve always been fascinated by trying to understand why we humans do the things that we do. My fascination with psychology was first sparked when I was in Primary School.
Attending a very small school, we didn’t have the budgets of larger schools. So for our school, to buy any kind of equipment was a pretty big deal. On this particular occasion, our school had become the proud new owner of a new vacuum cleaner.
By chance, I happened to be walking past the staff room during lunch time and overheard the teachers talking as they unpacked their new toy. One comment really caught my attention. One teacher asked, “How should we let the kids use this, should it be a punishment or a reward?”
That one remark really stuck in my mind and started my interest in psychology. I was intrigued, the exact same thing, using the vacuum cleaner, could be seen as either a punishment or reward. How could doing the exact same thing have 2 opposite meanings.
From that young age, I got an understanding that it’s not what happens in life that counts, but the meaning we give it. Tony Robbins says that one of the keys to success is communication. The only meaning that events in our lives have is the meaning that we give them. If we choose to see something as negative, we will perceive it as a negative thing. If we communicate it to ourselves with a positive meaning, we will perceive it as being a positive situation. Even though, like the vacuum cleaner in my primary school, it was the exact same circumstance.
This may sound familiar to you. You may have heard of people talking about being a “glass half-full” or “glass half-empty” kind of person. What I’m talking about here though is slightly different to that. When you see the glass as half-empty, you see a particular circumstance in a negative light. When you see the glass-full you see the same circumstance in a more positive light.
What I’m talking about is taking this notion to the next level where you no longer merely see something as being good or bad, positive or negative, but rather, the way you communicate what is happening will actually change the very nature of what you are perceiving.
Let me give you an example, say you got fired from your job.
2 Options…
Option 1
You could choose to see this event as being either a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of event. If you see it as being glass half-empty, you’ll perceive it as being a negative experience. If you see it as being glass half-full, you’ll tell yourself that being fired was actually a good thing.
Option 2
Let’s say you change the way you communicate what is happening. This will in turn, change the very nature of what you are perceiving. In this scenario, you don’t actually see yourself as even being “fired” because instead of looking at things as being either glass half-full or glass half-empty, you simply look at what is happening in your world in a very matter of fact fashion.
You will then ask yourself the question, what is happening in my world at the moment? So you do an inventory of all the things that have happened to you lately. You realise that you have recently experienced a marked increase in the amount of free time available to you. If health is important to you, then you now have a lot more time to focus on your health. If money is important to you, then you now have a lot more time to focus on finding ways of bringing in more money. If family is important to you, then you now have a lot more time to spend with your family.
So What Is the Net Result?
Well, if you take Option 1, you will say that I was recently fired and I can choose to think of this event as being either a good thing or a bad thing. If you take Option 2, then you will say that I recently experienced a massive increase in the amount of available time that I have to spend with my family, focus on my health, and explore new ways of creating income to empower me to have a massively fulfilling life!
Did you notice the change there? In Option 1, you got fired. In option 2, you experienced a marked increase in free time. Exact same circumstance but depending on how you communicate that to yourself, there are 2 completely different meanings.
Can you see that we’ve gone far beyond merely putting a positive spin on what is, we’ve actually changed what is.
Now it’s your turn. I want you to use this exercise to change the meaning that you have been giving yourself about what is happening in your life. Your homework is to think of an area of your life that you’re not particularly happy with at the moment. Ask yourself this question, how have I been communicating this to myself, which has given me this meaning that I currently associate with it? Now ask yourself, what would be the meaning that I would give to this thing if it were to be a truly empowering experience in my life?
Leave your answers in the comments section below…