You Create Your Beliefs From The Meaning You Give Events - Ep. 138
06/18/15 • 17 min
Events don’t have meaning - We give the events meaning
The meaning of events exists only in our mind. Outside of our mind, the events have no meaning at all.
Our emotional response to events comes from the meaning we give them and the way we FEEL about that meaning. So, given the fact that our emotions are based on our reaction to the meaning of an event and we create the meaning of the event, then we control our emotions.
Peace doesn’t come when we have peace around us, but when we have peace within us.
See, we give events meaning in our minds. Our emotional response to events is based on the meaning they have. So when we have peace within, it doesn’t matter what happens outside of us, we will have peace. Peace is independent of what is happening around us.
Let’s look at how one may react to a particular situation given our internal state.
Saturday morning, you open up your weather app and you see that it’s supposed to be 95 degrees with nothing but sunshine. How do you react to that?
If you were planning on going to the beach and spending some time in the water with your family, that’s a fantastic event. This means the water is going to feel great and the sun will help us get a tan.
If you were planning on pulling out some old tree stumps in the yard, that’s a horrible forecast. It’s going to be hot and the sun is provably going to burn you.
The event is the exact same thing... a weather forecast. The meaning of the event is determined internally.
If you just planted some grass seed and it starts raining, you react with happiness. This will help.
If your lawn needs to be mowed and it starts raining, you react disappointed, as you won’t be able to cut it until tomorrow.
There’s a verse in the the book of Matthew that says the rain falls on those who are good and those who are bad. The rain has no meaning. One sees the rain as good and the other bad. Tomorrow it could be reversed. The rain has no meaning.
Here’s a Personal Example - My View of Myself as Not Good Enough.
I’m in my late 40’s and my entire life, I’ve had a limiting belief that I was inferior to others. I wasn’t as good as my brothers and pretty much anyone else who I worked or lived life with.
I’ve shared this with you before, I’m the youngest in my family and honestly, I don’t have a lot of memories of my parents telling me I wasn’t good enough, but I do have a LOT of memories of that being associated with my older brothers. They’re about a year apart in age. This means, they did a lot of things at the same time. Tying shoes, riding a bike, hitting a baseball and learning to throw a football.
I was 4 and 5 years younger than them which isn’t a big deal at age 47, or even 27, but when you’re 7 and they’re 11 and 12, that’s a lifetime of difference, almost literally twice my age. They had learned twice as much as I had and they were at least twice as good as I was.
Because kids that age were able to go further from the house, our street would often have teenagers playing football or baseball with kids from several streets over. There never were that many kids on my street that were my age. So I was trying to fit in and play with kids who ere almost twice my age.
You can imagine how this made me feel. The one thing everyone valued, throwing or catching a football, or throwing, hitting and catching a baseball, I sucked at. This made me feel like I wasn’t good enough.
My brothers, like a LOT of older siblings, were pretty much forced to watch their little brother if they wanted to go do something. Mom and dad would say keep an eye on your little brother.”
But I wasn’t bad at everything, only the thing that this group was really good at, sports. As I got older, even in middle school, I never wanted to play team sports. I always opted to run laps around the baseball field instead of actually playing baseball. In high school, I didn’t try out for football or baseball, but instead, I joined the track team where I could compete on my own. I was good at running.
I was also good at being goofy and entertaining people. But that wasn’t really valued when you’re trying to beat the kids from the next block over. In fact, it was seen as a negative. “Come on, be serious, focus!”
Focus? I was the "King of Imagination.: I could take my GI Joe Command RV center and play for hours on end in my room. I remember having a rock fireplace and I would take my little army men and have them mount massive battles that would last two or three hours. Focus? That means turning off my imagination.
Imagine if we had a street full of kids all doing a talent show, with magic, juggling, ventriloquism and puppets. How much of an expert would that jock feel like? They can throw a ball, big deal, that doesn’t win you much in a talent show. All of a sudden they would have thoughts like “I’m not goo...
Events don’t have meaning - We give the events meaning
The meaning of events exists only in our mind. Outside of our mind, the events have no meaning at all.
Our emotional response to events comes from the meaning we give them and the way we FEEL about that meaning. So, given the fact that our emotions are based on our reaction to the meaning of an event and we create the meaning of the event, then we control our emotions.
Peace doesn’t come when we have peace around us, but when we have peace within us.
See, we give events meaning in our minds. Our emotional response to events is based on the meaning they have. So when we have peace within, it doesn’t matter what happens outside of us, we will have peace. Peace is independent of what is happening around us.
Let’s look at how one may react to a particular situation given our internal state.
Saturday morning, you open up your weather app and you see that it’s supposed to be 95 degrees with nothing but sunshine. How do you react to that?
If you were planning on going to the beach and spending some time in the water with your family, that’s a fantastic event. This means the water is going to feel great and the sun will help us get a tan.
If you were planning on pulling out some old tree stumps in the yard, that’s a horrible forecast. It’s going to be hot and the sun is provably going to burn you.
The event is the exact same thing... a weather forecast. The meaning of the event is determined internally.
If you just planted some grass seed and it starts raining, you react with happiness. This will help.
If your lawn needs to be mowed and it starts raining, you react disappointed, as you won’t be able to cut it until tomorrow.
There’s a verse in the the book of Matthew that says the rain falls on those who are good and those who are bad. The rain has no meaning. One sees the rain as good and the other bad. Tomorrow it could be reversed. The rain has no meaning.
Here’s a Personal Example - My View of Myself as Not Good Enough.
I’m in my late 40’s and my entire life, I’ve had a limiting belief that I was inferior to others. I wasn’t as good as my brothers and pretty much anyone else who I worked or lived life with.
I’ve shared this with you before, I’m the youngest in my family and honestly, I don’t have a lot of memories of my parents telling me I wasn’t good enough, but I do have a LOT of memories of that being associated with my older brothers. They’re about a year apart in age. This means, they did a lot of things at the same time. Tying shoes, riding a bike, hitting a baseball and learning to throw a football.
I was 4 and 5 years younger than them which isn’t a big deal at age 47, or even 27, but when you’re 7 and they’re 11 and 12, that’s a lifetime of difference, almost literally twice my age. They had learned twice as much as I had and they were at least twice as good as I was.
Because kids that age were able to go further from the house, our street would often have teenagers playing football or baseball with kids from several streets over. There never were that many kids on my street that were my age. So I was trying to fit in and play with kids who ere almost twice my age.
You can imagine how this made me feel. The one thing everyone valued, throwing or catching a football, or throwing, hitting and catching a baseball, I sucked at. This made me feel like I wasn’t good enough.
My brothers, like a LOT of older siblings, were pretty much forced to watch their little brother if they wanted to go do something. Mom and dad would say keep an eye on your little brother.”
But I wasn’t bad at everything, only the thing that this group was really good at, sports. As I got older, even in middle school, I never wanted to play team sports. I always opted to run laps around the baseball field instead of actually playing baseball. In high school, I didn’t try out for football or baseball, but instead, I joined the track team where I could compete on my own. I was good at running.
I was also good at being goofy and entertaining people. But that wasn’t really valued when you’re trying to beat the kids from the next block over. In fact, it was seen as a negative. “Come on, be serious, focus!”
Focus? I was the "King of Imagination.: I could take my GI Joe Command RV center and play for hours on end in my room. I remember having a rock fireplace and I would take my little army men and have them mount massive battles that would last two or three hours. Focus? That means turning off my imagination.
Imagine if we had a street full of kids all doing a talent show, with magic, juggling, ventriloquism and puppets. How much of an expert would that jock feel like? They can throw a ball, big deal, that doesn’t win you much in a talent show. All of a sudden they would have thoughts like “I’m not goo...
Previous Episode
Define the HABITS You Need To Reach Your Goals - Ep. 137
Truth is, you’re incredibly unlikely to reach any goal you set if you don’t have the habits needed to make it happen. If it’s going to be grueling work the entire time, you’re increasing your chances for failure several times over.
Last Wednesday we talked about how we can lose our willpower and self-discipline when it’s needed in numerous areas at the same time.
Discover Where You’ll Need Will Power
Let’s say you set a goal of “fitting into your old prom dress before your class reunion in 9 months."
If that’s your goal, you’re immediately going to start doing some things that probably aren’t habits for you at this point. Thinks like:
- Eating less calories each day
- Increasing the amount of water you drink
- Decreasing the number of carbs in your diet
- Running or biking several times a week
- Incorporating some resistance training and
- Getting enough sleep.
If you try to do ALL of those things at the exact same time, you’re probably going to fail. Your willpower and self-discipline is going to be so incredibly fatigued that you will probably fail.
But, most of us don’t really sit down and think about those things when we set the goal of “Fit into my old prom dress before the class reunion in 9 months."
Break Down The Goal Into The Needed Habits
Look at any one of your biggest goals, maybe launching a podcast, or starting an online business, or maybe learning to play the guitar. Look at that goal and write down the habits you’d need to have in order to support that goal.
Honestly evaluate whether each one of those items is already a habit of yours.
Make the Habit The Goal First
Once you have the list of habits, decide if any of them will support or help learning additional habits. For example, if reading 15 minutes a day is a habit, that might be a good one to focus on first, because it can help support your habit of writing every day. But don’t do them both at the same time. Make reading a habit then work on making writing a habit.
Spend your willpower energy on one habit at a time until the energy it takes is so small, you can easily start the next habit. Some say it’s 21 days and others say it’s over 60, on average. Some things may take even longer.
As you do this, you’ll find that the goal you had set will start to take care of itself.
The pieces will all fall together and it will seem that you’re barreling towards your bigger goal at a speed you never imagined and it’s seeming like it’s taking no effort at all.
One desired habit until it’s developed, then go on to the next one. This means you may have to project out a bit further when it comes to the ultimate goal, but it’s well worth it when you realize your chances for success have increased dramatically.
Habits Cross-Over and Benefit Future Goals
That’s more good news in this, the more you develop habits to support your goals, the more habits you’ll have for future goals.
There are some habits that will cross over into other areas. In the future you won’t have to develop those ones as they’re already there for you.
This is why it seems successful people can be successful at so many things in life. I mean the really truly successful, not just the ones making a lot of money. Remember, money doesn’t define success.
This is how some people are said to have “the Midas Touch” which means “everything they touch turns to gold.” It’s because they’ve got the core habits already in place.
Call to Action
Look at your biggest goal up ahead.
Write done the habits you’ll need to accomplish the goal
Focus on the one habit which will have the greatest impact on the other habits and the eventual goal.
Next Episode
A Tool to Help You Stickk To Your Goals - Ep. 139
If you listened to this past Tuesday’s episode, I shared with you some ways you can help yourself become more productive, as I do every Tuesday.
One of those ways I suggested was to create deadlines with very real consequences. The kind of consequences you’re going to do whatever you can to avoid.
Today I’m sharing with you and app that will help you do exactly that.
Stickk -
This is an app that comes out of Yale University. It’s legit. It’s got a lot of science behind it and it works!
Professor Dean Karlan teaches Economics and Professor Ian Ayers teaches law, both at Yale University. They partnered with one of their students, Jordan Goldberg, to create a tool they knew would help people achieve their goals, and it works. Here’s why...
Stickk gives you a platform where you can create what the founders call Commitment Contracts.
This is a contract you create with YOURSELF, but... there’s more to it than that. We’ve all tried that and seen it fail time and time again.
A Commitment Contract involves accountability and the power of “loss aversion."
You know what accountability is, but what about LOSS AVERSION?
You can figure out from the name, it’s about avoiding loss. But why? Why not just be motivated by gain?
Scientific studies suggest people are TWICE as motivated by avoiding loss than achieving a gain. People who lose $100 will be emotionally impacted more than someone who gains $100.
It’s because we don’t value what we don’t have. The potential to gain $100 will not motivate you as much as the real potential to lose $100. That’s the science, in a nutshell, of “Loss Aversion."
Here’s how it works:
Stickk has some predefined goals which you can use or even customize them to meet your needs. If those don’t work, you have the ability to build your own goal from scratch.
So, you start by creating a goal and then laying out the parameters of that goal. What will it take to achieve that goal and what are the specific things you have to do to get there?
Now, here’s where Stickk kicks in with some very real and powerful features.
Losing Money and Having an Honest Referee.
The creators of Stickk state that their data shows, people who have a referee to whom they’re accountable, are TWICE as likely to reach their goal. People who have something financially significant at stake are up to THREE times as likely to achieve their goal.
Put the power of both of those items together and you have Stickk.
When you sign in, you’ll have the opportunity to create a Commitment Contract where you can put something financial on the line. They don’t charge you ANYTHING unless you tell them you want to make the financial commitment and then only after you don’t achieve your goal.
So, what keeps us from cheating and just saying we did it? A referee who will look at your Commitment Journal to determine if you’re reaching your goal.
This journal is where you can post screenshots or pictures of you doing what you said you would do.
Now, it’s not just about having someone lord over you, it’s also about support. You can add in supporters who can see your commitment and progress and then cheer you along. It’s the perfect combination to getting where you want to be in life.
Your referee can be anybody you’d like.
Each time you take action toward your goal, you submit that information to Stickk and your referee will get an email saying you submitted something to your Stickk account. If they’d like, they can ask you for additional proof that you did what you said you did, or be satisfied with what you submitted.
You’re really empowering your referee. So, choose someone you trust but also make sure it’s someone you know will hold you accountable.
Here’s how you miss a goal:
You admit you missed it.
Your referee reports that you missed it
You don’t submit a commitment report in the time window you specified.
When you miss, if you have a financial stake included, your credit or debit card will be charged for the amount you set at the beginning.
As of this podcast, there is $21 million on the line for commitments.
There are just under 300,000 commitments.
That’s an average of about $72 on the line for each commitment. Make sure you choose an amount that’s going to HURT if you lose it.
Where does the money go?
You decide that. You can have it go to someone you want, or even have it go to a charity. Stickk holds the money for the charities and sends them all the stake money at one time at the end of the year. Some of the organizations they support are:
- Feed the Children
- Doctors without Borders
- United Way
and several others.
Here’s a fun twist. You can create...
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