The past month I was challenged by various scenarios for different reasons, and the one thing that remained the same was me. Often, we find ourselves in a whirlwind where everything seems to be going against us, be it traffic, misunderstood, forgetfulness, a group of people, or time. We wonder what is wrong with them until we get to the question, what's wrong with me?
A lot was going for me in September, the Spiripreneurship Summit, friendships, the weather, and I'm sure a few more things. Of course, we are masters at focusing on what's not going so well. Asking the question, what's wrong with me? I noticed that it had nothing to do with me as a person. What happened is I was getting caught up in what I thought I wanted, expected, and hoped for in connection to the outside world.
In those moments of self-doubt, our focus goes to the place of unfulfillment, disappointment, and unworthiness. While reading the book How Our Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett, I began to understand better how we function in this world and expand on my last post, "Complexity Being Human," what we see and hear isn't always what we think it is.
Everything we do can only be seen from a self-absorbed experience, and only because it is reflected on self doesn't mean it's a bad thing. And here we are exactly. The words that we speak and hear are related to how we experience life. Through our childhood, teenage years, as a student, with our parents, and friends. Everything is interrelated, and our brain doesn't easily separate the different situations from each other. It's all stored in one place, our brain.
We focus on other people and their responses and what we forget is what we know, what we went through, and the knowledge we acquired. When we step out and look from a distance, we notice that we react from our perception, from what we learned and grew up with. Even the language and environment that we are raised in. There might even be some trauma we aren't aware of that makes us feel lonely, illiterate, and unaccepted.
Of course, this post is only the beginning of how language influences our every being and all the encounters we come across throughout the day. After reading this, notice how certain words cause certain emotions in you as you go through your day. Can you pinpoint where they come from and what they mean? Is it possible that our interpretation is misconstrued with the variety of experiences we go through in life and the years we lived? Is it possible that the person saying the words has a different connection to that word and might not know your relationship to it?
To conclude, all I am saying is that we make the meaning of the words spoken. They have many stories implemented into them. When we become more aware of how our sensations, emotions, and reactions come out towards ourselves and other people around us, we can become more humble and compassionate with ourselves and the journeys others are going through, even when we haven't experienced them yet.
I'd love to hear from you how and where in your life you have misunderstood a situation only because it was related to what you've been through.