Paying Attention to Meaning.

‘A man’s life is not made up of the things that happened, but by his memory of them and the way in which he remembers.’ (From Where My Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks)

This is important because our interpretation of memory informs our outlook and behaviours – constantly impacting ourselves and the significant people around us.

Events happen / change occurs. Constantly.
We cannot control them / it.
We put meaning on them / it.
The meanings determine the quality, satisfaction and effectiveness of our work, our lives, our relationships.
Since we can always change or correct our meanings, we can change our feelings, behaviour, action and results.
Our Responses are based on the Meaning we create not on the Event that occurred. To put it another way, ‘everything is meaningless other than the meaning you give it’.

Successful, powerful, happy people CHOOSE meanings that empower themselves and others.

It’s all about choice – is your response that of a hero or a victim – does it empower or dis-empower you? A straight choice.

Or as my Coach used to say: “Paul, for f@cks sake, if you are going to make up a meaning about a situation, at least choose one that empowers you, not cripples you”

She has proved herself wise too many times to count.

PS Clearly this is simple but not necessarily easy. If it were easy, everybody would be really happy and clear they were accountable for choosing their state of mind.

It takes work to cultivate great mental health habits.