The Accidental Maze of Meaning
“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”
I've written before about the importance of writing down your goals and periodically checking in on them so you can stay focused and adjust appropriately as conditions change. One of the most important reasons for this need is that the mind is constantly busy interpreting the events of your life, choosing meaning to assign to them in an effort to help you make sense of your world an keep yourself safe by learning from your experiences. However, this doesn't happen in a vacuum—it happens through the filters of all the previous choices it has made, both consciously and unconsciously, about the meaning of past events, and the stories it has evolved using all that assigned meaning using the data available to it. The interpretation is assigned so quickly, and beliefs based on it spring up so seamlessly, that we're generally not even aware that any of this is happening. We don't often feel a sense of involvement in the process, or the power to understand and change any of this, unless we're specifically working at being conscious of it. We certainly don't receive much instruction on it in the course of a standard education. And yet, intervening in this process for our own good is not outside the realm of our power, and in my experience, it's one of the most empowering things we can learn to do.
There are various techniques we can use to become more aware of our beliefs, as well as the interpretations from which they spring. Meditation, for instance, is an effective tool for becoming aware of many areas of your experience once you've built some basic proficiency with it, and decided where to point it. Talking to a friend with great listening skills, or a cognitive therapist if you need a professional, can help you to gain perspective on your beliefs. A skilled hypnotherapist can be a great help in this. Even just deciding that you want to become aware of this stuff and giving yourself some quiet time every day to jot down any realizations that come to mind can accomplish a great deal. My personal favorite method for increasing self-awareness is the use of Tapping techniques/EFT. I love it because it's a relatively simple self-help technique you can use anytime, and it facilitates the rise of understanding that would be slower to acquire through other methods; because it is a somatic technique (meaning it involves the body), it facilitates access to connections that techniques led solely by the mind never can.
When we use EFT, the mechanics of how we've assigned meaning to past events can quickly become clear in startling but cathartic ways. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself, or heard clients saying something like, "Now it all makes sense!" Realizations arise is organic ways we cannot plan, ways that are in appropriate timing for the current capacities of the person doing the Tapping. It's rare that in an hour-long session some doesn't include one of these illuminating moments. From here, we can look at the effects of previous choices and whether or not they currently serve us. We can keep the wisdom that resulted from past events, but make new decisions about what they mean, and what is possible, as well as how me will behave, in the future.
It is entirely possible, and sometimes even necessary, to realize or choose new meaning for a past event in order to move forward with your goals. Some beliefs are so foundational that holding them means you will not be able to get "there" from "here" because you believe you can't or that it's not safe to do so. While the conscious and unconscious self-sabotage that results when this is the case is often incredibly frustrating, it happens because the most primitive parts of the self are so strongly focused on self-preservation, and will use all means necessary to help us stay alive and safe. This is a worthy goal, obviously, but sometimes unconscious attempts at achieving it are misguided and rooted in outdated information.
If you are not regularly reviewing the state of your goals and of yourself in relation to them, how will you notice when you're stuck in a rut of past (many times unconscious) decisions about what's true and what's possible? Life is always changing all around us. There are sometimes conditions that seem to refuse, unnaturally, to change for an extended period of time, but how will you know when they finally do if you're not looking? How will you notice and leverage emerging opportunities if you're assuming the present will always be just like the past? (Hint: You won't!) When you do engage in this process, you notice when you keep coming up against barriers to progress in a specific area. With this awareness, the problem solving can begin, and we can keep track of whether our efforts are working as we continue to check in on progress regularly. While none of this is glamorous, nothing gets done in the long term without some version of this process being in use. The more you commit to doing it regularly and on purpose, the faster and more streamlined your progress can be. If you haven't already, write down some goals, and decide how often and when you will review your progress toward them. You may feel like you don't know what you're doing, but that's ok. You learn as you go, and you're not alone. In today's world, there are so many resources available to help you whenever you get stuck, but you have to start by admitting what you want and being willing to take some action and keep adjusting course to get there.