Events Have No Meaning, Only The Meaning You Give!

Events have no meaning, only the meaning you give!
Relax and gather information first.

I am a lucky guy because I know Larry Bilotta. Larry, for a living, is a communication expert. He has invented powerful tools to help people understand each other. He focuses his expertise in the area of putting broken marriages back on track. Since I have met him I look at the world differently and I am better because of it.

You see, he taught me that events have no meaning, only the meaning we give them. The meaning we give things can be either positive or negative. If we have no past experience of an event, our brains cannot find anything to draw upon to give an event meaning, they only openly accept it as a new experience with no prejudgments. For example, if I were to say, “plane crash”. What pops in your brain? Probably something bad; however, if I say, “Bin Laden’s plane crashed,” you would immediately think… that’s good!

I’m thankful I understand this now because when I walked into work last Friday there were some issues going on. When I walked in the first thing I experienced was a Prophiteer running up to me saying, “Our client had a fire!” Because I now know events have no meaning, I proceeded to ask questions: Was it a bonfire with boy scouts? Was a trash can on fire? Did anyone get injured? What are the facts here?

Once I discovered it was under control and we simply needed to get a press release out to the media about what we knew, this event was calmly resolved. How many times do you overreact to situations? Our brains, really badly, want to connect a past event to a current event. You must fight that. You see, you must fight it because our brains try to tie events together automatically. It’s how we’re wired.

My life is better now that I’m practicing to eliminate my negative feelings about events and situations, because Larry’s right. Events, in and of themselves, have no meaning, only the meaning we give them.

Joe Kiedinger

ACTION PLAN: When you find yourself getting emotional over an event, say STOP! Evaluate the true meaning and stay calm. You will be amazed at how you feel