Nothing means anything unless we assign it meaning. That seems obvious. Let me explain.
Letting Go or Holding On
A friend of mine is dealing with the passing of a loved one. She keeps kicking herself that she didn’t take more possessions when she had the chance. The fact is there are no more things to be had. They are gone. Given away, sold, whatever. Gone. But she can’t get past that. It still bothers her.
What’s really causing her discomfort is that she has assigned meaning to those possessions. They are something her loved one touched, cherished, told a story about. It’s a lovely sentiment. But, to continually beat herself up for not taking more isn’t helping. It’s pounding her with more regrets. It’s keeping her stuck in her grief. It’s making it harder for her to move on.
To help her go forward, I suggested that one way to look at it is to see the items as just stuff. That’s re-assigning their meaning. To see it as just stuff takes the sting out of her loss. Right now, though, she’s still too attached to the meaning she has assigned to them. They are valuable to her. Perhaps not monetarily but sentimentally. To see them as just stuff seems demeaning to her, almost an insult. I get it.
However, I was faced with a similar situation. When my best friend passed away five years ago her sister, whom I also knew, promised me a certain item of hers. It’s been several years and I have never received it. At this rate, I never will.
Would I have liked this item? A trinket of hers? Something that meant something to her? Yes, I would. But it isn’t coming my way so I had to remind myself that it’s “just stuff.” We can’t take stuff to our grave. When it’s our time to go, someone else has to deal with all that stuff we collected so in my opinion, it’s best to accumulate less. And not get so attached to what we have.
Most importantly, I have something no one can ever take away from me – memories of my friend. The same is true of my friend and her loved one. She has many memories. To go along with her memories, she has many photos of these special occasions. Those are both invaluable.
Meaning Shapes Our Reality
We assign meaning all the time to things and events, shaping our experiences. This can apply to anything. So much so that those meanings play a significant role in our lives and we often don’t even realize it or the impact of it. If we didn’t assign a certain meaning we may not feel that way about that person or thing. The meaning we assign influences our perspective, how we see things and people.
Say for example you meet someone and think they’re obnoxious. Seeing them as obnoxious is assigning meaning to them. It’s causing you to feel negative about this person so you would probably avoid them in the future.
Later you meet them again in a different situation. Now they don’t seem so obnoxious to you. You gave your first impression meaning. Now that you don’t see them like that, a new meaning can be assigned. Even though we always say first impressions count, sometimes they aren’t a good indicator. What’s your second impression of this person?
First Impressions Aren’t Always Accurate
How many stories have you heard of people who met whether as friends or lovers and didn’t like each other at first? I’ve heard lots of those. Many people didn’t make a good first impression but they ended up married later. They needed a re-frame or to assign new meaning to the way they looked at the person. Things changed for the better all because they gave new meaning to how they saw this person. They re-defined them in their minds.
Apply that to your new boss who seems like a real jerk. After working with him a while you can see that maybe he’s not really such a jerk, he was just stressed out with his new responsibilities. So, you change your mind about him. You give him new meaning. He’s an ok guy.
We change the way we think about people and things all the time. It’s when it’s a really big situation like losing a loved one or important like a new boss that it’s harder to change our perspective. We are too attached to the meaning.
As for my friend lamenting her sparsity of possessions, she can either live with the regret or move on. She can soften the blow by keeping her meaning of the items because clearly they are special to her, just drop the regret. Instead, tell herself things like, “I’m happy to get what I got.” Or “I like the things I got knowing she cherished them.” Maybe she didn’t get more, but there were no more to be had. Develop a sense of gratitude instead of regret. Gratitude always negates negative thoughts. It’s hard to be truly grateful and regretful at the same time.
Go with the Re-frame
The meaning that we choose impacts our reality because how we look at things shapes our world and influences our mood. Doesn’t it feel better to view someone as just stressed out vs a jerk? Or making peace with something that you will never get vs living with regret or longing?
We don’t know if animals really think or what they think because we can’t have a conversation with them. They seem to operate off of instinct. Humans, however, assign meaning. We might smell a nice, juicy steak cooking on the grill and start thinking about how good it will taste or what we will eat with it. Dogs smell the steak and instinctually want to eat it. They probably don’t give much thought to the steak, they just eat it. Therefore, they aren’t assigning meaning to it other than it’s food. “Smell food, eat” is probably how their brains work.
Since humans are capable of higher thought, we complicate things by giving things meaning. Meaning isn’t a bad thing, only if it keeps us stuck. Re-assigning meaning is like a re-frame. It forces us to look at things differently. If something is causing you pain, then re-framing it or assigning it new meaning can help us get out of the pain. Check out my previous post on re-framing for more information.
Try it sometime. It just might help you. It’s certainly helped me.
If you feel like maybe it would help you to re-assign meaning, ask your best friend, your INTUITION!
If you want to learn how to listen to your intuition, how to talk to it and how to trust it by CLICKING
HERE.
Once you start listening to your intuition, you’ll be amazed how much your life clicks into place. Then you can truly start enjoying yourself. CLICK HERE to find out more!
