The Meanings We Create For Life

Do you have a partner that never seems happy no matter what happens, or do you feel that maybe there is more to life than what you are currently getting? If so then this is critically important for you.

Meanings and emotions are massive drivers for how we experience the world so understanding how they work is of course critical if we want to be happy in it.

Many people feel the world first through their emotions and then try to make sense of what they feel inside. Many don’t question what they feel, because this is just who they are. They are so used to consistently reacting in a certain way, to them it’s totally normal, or feels like home.

This is called living in reaction and although it will feel normal it can feel quite scary too, because living this way never feels, successful or fulfilling. If the individual accepts that this is who they are, low quality living is also accepted, this can lead to a negative outlook on life, or depression, even a desire to end it all.

Living in reaction becomes very difficult to manage for both the person and those around them, because to cope with the world and stay safe many rules have to be put in place to protect them from harm. This can create major challenges in day-to-day life and especially in personal relationships. To make life more challenging the person who has created the rules, is not aware that they have done this, so the rules themselves can be destructive and outdated if the rules were created years before.

We all have rules for they way we live, most of us never really think about it.

A person can create many rules for living in emotional safety and not know what they are themselves, and so they can never tell those around them what the rules are. Those around them then break the rules without knowing causing upset, anger, frustration, shut down and many more coping strategies that don’t feel good.

If we can understand how our emotions happen then we can take steps to making them work in our favor and create safe and fulfilling lives.

So the question is what creates our emotions?

How do we get our emotions? Emotions are created at lightening speed in reaction to the world, so you can be forgiven if you don’t notice how those emotions happen.

Emotions are created from our state in the moment, our values, personal history and experiences, our beliefs, needs and other critical internal filters, from all this we create meanings and from those meanings we create emotions.

For some, they feel their meanings come first and from those meanings they create their emotions, for others the emotional response feels automatic and they then try to put a meaning to the feelings.

Whichever way you feel these emotions happen for you, either consciously, or automatically the meanings are the creators of the emotions.

The big question is how can we be sure that the meaning is true.

You see what if your mind is making up meanings so fast that you never get to really know what they are, so you can never know if your emotional responses are supporting your future happiness or not.

So if the meanings are automatic how do we get to them to understanding them and know if they are supporting us or not.

Our meanings to the world we live in are created at a subconscious level through our living experiences up to today.

Of course if your history has been distorted in some way through poor parenting, traumatic events then of course your automatic responses will reflect that and cause you trouble both now and in your future.

A persons values and the way they are meeting their values today are very reflective of both their life today and past events. In my sessions with all my clients at some point the individuals, values are understood and challenged. What we usually discover is the way they are living is unwinnable.

Just understanding what has been going on within them without them knowing is usually shock enough to change their behaviours FAST, as they start to see how life was never going to be happy and so the cost of not changing now becomes far too high.

I have CEO’s come to me who command corporations making millions/billions of pounds driving 1000’s of people and can’t work out why they can’t make themselves or their wife happy.
I see house wives who never believe they are enough as a mother or a wife.
I see people that have been raped, bullied, abused all discover the affect their past is having on them today.
Maybe you are doing all you can to please everyone in your life, you discover you don’t please anyone and especially you.