Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 312 of the wildly Successful Lifestyle Podcast! Welcome if you’re new, welcome back if you’re my consistent hanging buddies. How’s it going? Do you guys ever create an entire scenario in your head about something or someone that your brain convinces you is true only to find out you were very wrong? We create things from our point of reference. In every situation, we bring meaning to what’s happening. For instance.
If I told you to think of a leaf. You would all picture a leaf. If you lived in the south you might think of a magnolia leaf if you lived in California you may think of a palm leaf. Both of you would be perfectly correct. Same question, totally different answer, but both correct. Your brain uses your point of reference to come to an idea of a leaf.
That’s what we do with everything. We use our point of reference to attach meaning to anything going on around us.
We bring meaning to things based on what’s going on in our world. If I asked 5 people to describe a leaf I would get 5 totally different answers even if two of those people were from the south, one might not have a magnolia tree in their yard, so that’s not their immediate point of reference, they might only have oak trees, so they think of an oak leaf. The point is we attach meaning to things based on what we know, or what we’ve experienced usually most recently.
Things that we think are amazing other people might find horrifying. Fireworks for example. There are a lot of people in America that love the 4th of July, all of the beautiful fireworks and the excitement of the boom that comes with the biggest ones. That might bring up some really fond memories for a lot of us. It does for me. But for someone else 4th of July is really hard to get through, for them, the first sound of a firework and they hit the ground and curl up in a ball. We had a family friend growing up who was in Vietnam. He was in the middle of the worst of war. Whenever he would hear a loud bang like a car backfiring or loud fireworks, he would literally hit the ground like he was sheltering himself from attack. His experience in life told him big bangs were really really bad. We are shaped by our life experience. We make decisions based on our life experiences. We make things mean whatever our life experience tells us it means. In fact it’s so wired into our brain, we see things as we want to see them. That’s what they mean when they say that we create our own reality. We literally do.
A story I’ve told before but it made such a big impact on the way I think that I’ll keep using it because it’s a good example. So back when Covid was at it’s frenzy and the vaccine was being rolled out and there was a lot of debate about it. Jairek Robbins posted on his story that he supported mandatory vaccinations to which he got immediate and huge backlash and then, his next story said go back and read my story again, after a few tries, I realized he actually wrote I support mandatory vacations. I read and I saw without a doubt the word vaccination because that was what all of social media and media and government was talking about and so my mind was ready to pounce on that. Not a proud moment but one that I can say Im happy happened because I learned a very valuable lesson. I think Im pretty astute at the difference between reality and my perception of reality when all along they’re the same. My perception actually is my reality.
What we think about most, what we read about, what we watch, what we talk to our friends about, these are the things that shape our perception. None of us have the same reality.
That’s why communication has to be so clear. What you say to your friend or your partner or your mom even, may have a completely different meaning to them.
They are more than likely not thinking the same thing you’re thinking. Even with something as simple as a leaf. So a complex situation is even worse. You’re making it mean something from your point of reference and they’re gonna do the same.
We tend to think everyone thinks like we do. So of course if someone says “Think of a leaf”. We think well it’s probably going to be green, maybe but maybe not. If you want to understand, it might be helpful to ask “ how are you thinking about this leaf?” Is it yellow? Is it red? Is it green? Big? Small? Oak? So many options and that’s just a little ole leaf. Imagine more complex things like life and relationships. Technology gets us in trouble more than we probably know it.
Think about all the ways someone could read into a text you send that just simply says “OK”. There’s so many different things that I could make that mean off the top of my head, it could mean “whatever”, it could mean “suit yourself”, it could literally mean “no problem, that’s fine” it could even mean “let me think about it”. Unless you get clarification, you don’t know.
Let’s say someone doesn’t respond to a text you send. What could that mean? Again, lots of things. It could mean they never got the text. It could mean their phone is dead. It could mean I need to think about that, I’ll answer later and then they forgot. It could mean I refuse to even dignify that text with a response. You don’t know, but I bet it’s happened and I bet you’ve created lots of meanings when it did, only to find out they simply wrote the response and forgot to send it. I know I have.
So what’s the answer? The answer is communication and clarification. The answer is never assuming ANYTHING. The answer is to start thinking of positive reasons instead of negative reasons. When you start to create the things up in your head, create something that has you feeling good rather than feeling bad. I mean you’re making it up anyway so why not make up something good? They didn’t return your text? They will, once they see it. Or you could laugh it off and say “I bet they typed the text and forgot to hit send” Ive done that, more than once.
We are programmed to think the worst, that’s why it comes so naturally. That’s the easy thing to do. The hard thing is to think the best. To think of good things that could come from it. I was talking to a friend about going to the chiropractor for the first time for her pain. She had only heard weird stories about chiropractors and was a bit scared of that option. she said what if it doesn’t work and I looked at her and said “what if it does?” Which woke her up a bit and she thought about it and said “yeah, true”. Her point of reference was to dismiss chiropractors because of someones story she heard 25 years ago.
Our lived experiences, what we listen to and read, who we hang out with, all shape our response to anything we do.
My challenge to you this week is to notice the thoughts you have in your head when you have a conversation with someone, or maybe someone doesn’t respond immediately or ever to a text or maybe they simply respond by saying OK. Notice if your go to is to think something is wrong, or to wonder if they are mad at you, do you automatically create something in your head that makes you feel bad. That’s the knee jerk response. That’s the primitive brain jumping to conclusions. Call in the intelligent brain by doing the hard thing and intentionally thinking about it. flip it around..maybe you say “they said OK, awesome! Perfect.” Or if they don’t respond, neutralize it and let go by saying “they’’ll respond when they see it” and if someone says something you don’t understand just ask for clarification. There’s no harm in saying “Are you meaning this?”
And look, Im doing this right along side you because this is something I work on every day. Share this episode with 3 people today…Its part of the work of living a Wildly Successful Lifestyle.
I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
