What Meaning Do You Give? Reality Transurfing®
Article Summary:
Kathie takes a quote from the book Transurfing in Your Pocket and we discuss it for Transurfing on Tuesday. Today we discuss the meaning we give to things and how it affects your reality.
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“Every time you attach a meaning to something ... it becomes important .... and therefore a pitfall ... and so, watch the meaning you attach to things.... because when you change 'the meaning', you also do change 'the story' .... it is really entirely up to you ...”
-Vadim Zeland Transurfing in your Pocket
Story
I have a stepson with my ex-husband. And when Nick was about 12 years old we attended his football game. After the game, my ex asked Nick if he wanted to come to spend the night with us.
Nick’s response hurt my ex to no end. Nick said, “I need to go ask my parents.”
My ex seriously cried. And I could count the number of times I saw my ex cry on one hand and I spent 10 years with the man and have known him for over 30 years today.
After we divorced in 2000 my ex quickly married his mistress who was his secretary while we were married. She could have my husband, hell I’d tie a bow on him and give him to her. It is what she did with my kids that hurt to the core!
My boys were only 4 and 2 when we divorced. They were easily influenced and easily brainwashed. Their stepmom forced them to call me Kathie and call her mom. This was horrible and only the beginning of the stepmom’s narcissistic tendencies to control her little world.
I had to reframe my attachments as a mom to protect my kids. Obviously, my children are important. And as Vadim states in the quote when you attach meaning to something it becomes important.
I learned that I was attaching meaning to my life as a mom. Of course, I was, we all do this as parents. But I learned to let go of that attachment.
Because well, first of all, it protected my children from the drama. And second of all, it changed the story I was telling myself.
This gave me my power!
I didn’t cry every time my kids said, “Let me ask my mom.” And trust me that happened often.
Meaning is everything.
Is this the end of something wonderful or the beginning of something unpleasant? Are you feeling unsure about yourself as a parent because your kids are being brainwashed? Are you being punished for your failure or rewarded for your success?
The minute you decide to focus on something, you assign it meaning and infuse it with feeling.
How you define an event produces emotion and determines your inner feeling state going forward. The meaning you assign to any event, interaction or outcome defines the emotional tone of your experience and the feelings you generate throughout your life.
The meaning you give your experiences will always change how you feel — and the emotion you feel always becomes the quality of your life.
Our memories are actually anchors to feeling states, images, sounds and sensations — all of these aspects rely on the meaning we give to them.
Meaning and Triggers
I am a survivor of C-PTSD. I spent many years in therapy. I can distinctly remember the feeling I would have after a session when I reframed my situation. This experience happened many times and it left a profound impact on me.
The colors in my world would appear more vivid and things just became more clear. I had gotten my power back.
My therapist has a wonderful theory of psychology. She talks about the victim-victimizer cycle. We especially enter this cycle with ourselves. And I’ll never forget Shary telling me that to get out of that cycle we must get into victor.
Read more victim-victimizer posts here:
Let go of attachments
Victor sees things as they are. There are no attachments in victor. I would get out victim mentality by having a talk with myself. I would find the positives. They would look like this:
I am the mom, this is God’s gift to me. No one can take that away from me. “What God has joined together let no man put asunder” Mark 10:9
I feel compassion for my victimizer (aka the step-mom and my ex) she really has to go through a lot to try to control her world like that.
I would also feel compassion for the stepmom being married to my ex. He was abusive. And that tiger never loses his stripes.
I know the lifestyle they live and I know what I am NOT missing.
Reframing
So it all starts now, with your decision to become conscious of the meanings you are constantly creating. This technique is called “reframing.” This is something that Shary taught me endlessly. And it’s one of the most powerful tools you can use to improve your mindset and even your entire life.
Reframing isn’t about pretending a situation is great when it may not be. Rather, it’s about discovering what could be great, what you could learn by consequence, or how you can use the situation to create a better outcome.
Perspective is a powerful thing. When you can reframe a particular experience or interaction, you can often change what happens as a result.
Human beings tend to attach certain meanings to experiences. We say, “This happened, so it must mean ______.” In actuality, there may be an infinite number of ways to interpret any experience.
We frame the events in our life based on the ways we’ve decided to perceive similar experiences in the past, forming habitual patterns we repeat throughout our entire lives.
Are your patterns helping or harming you? It’s vital to remember that our perceptions are creative in nature — if we define something as negative, that’s the message our brain receives and responds to by creating an emotional state to reinforce that reality.
Reframing is the difference between being constantly disappointed and being consistently satisfied. By stacking positive interpretations, one after the other, you become the author of the success story of your own life. You leave victim mentality and enter into what Shary calls victor.
How would you feel at bedtime if every day turned out to be “ideal,” “interesting” or even “amazing?” It’s closer than you think.
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Conclusion
Start harnessing your innate ability to supercharge your emotions, empower your decisions and elevate your life today — through the power of meaning.
Ya know sometimes being a mom isn’t all about a title. It’s about who you are and what meaning you attach to it that matters. And like Vadim says, “it’s entirely up to you.”
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