Choose our definitions, choose our life. Okay... what does that mean?

As the calendar flips, and the clock arrow continues it's way around the face, I am left considering a question I often find myself asking. What is it I am going to make out of this year? At the end of the year, what will I look back and see?

It's a question I believe most of us could do with asking ourselves more often. Absolutely, I have personal and professional goals. Healthier, wealthier, all the good things. As I'm sure you reading this have your own aims and ambitions for this year.

I know I will do many things. As you will too. We will be busy, we will make progress, we will have new experiences. New lessons to learn, new challenges to face, and new exciting prospects to explore. There will be things we prefer, and there will be things that we don't.

The truth is, we can't fully control or know what lies ahead of us this year. That's all part of the adventure of being alive.

With that in mind, I wanted to share an idea that has supported me in having a positive, constructive, rewarding experience of life, no matter what happens.

That simple idea is this:

What we are not taught, and are too little conscious of, is that our experience is generated within ourselves.

How is it that people can face the greatest challenges, more difficult than we could imagine, and emerge out the other side as happy, contented people, living a beautiful quality of life?

The answer lies in the influence we have over our own experience, no matter the circumstances.

How do we generate our own experience?

Our experience is made up of sense perception, thought, and emotion. We sense things (sight, sound, touch...), we think things, and we feel things. We experience these things within ourselves. This is our first clue. Everything we experience, is actually happening within us.

There's a whole neuro-physiological, psychological, & spiritual rabbit-hole here, that we're going to skip past for today.

Key takeaway: We have profoundly more conscious control over our internal experience than many people understand.

That said, we cannot control things which are outside of ourselves. We cannot control what others think or do. We cannot control the weather, and we cannot control the tides of our societies.

What we can control is how we choose to perceive these things internally. We choose what someone's behaviours mean to us, we choose how to respond to changes in our environment, we choose what we think about the weather. This is another way of saying that:

How we define our experiences, creates the nature of the experience itself.

We cannot have an experience, without first defining it in some way.

Something happens and we experience it, it means something to us. The thing is, we're the ones that provide the meaning. How we do this, is by defining the experience. We do this primarily subconsciously, but that's another rabbit hole for another day. Working with what we are conscious of, is often more than good enough.

Getting fired from our job, for example, can be the worst thing that has ever happened to us, or the best thing that has ever happened to us, depending upon the definition we give to it. If we define this as the end of our reputation and career, it's going to be a devastating experience.

If we define it as the beginning of a new chapter, it will be an experience full of hope and excitement. Exact same experience (externally), different definition, completely different experience (internally).

A simpler way to understand definitions is that they are "the stories we tell ourselves about things".

Are you telling yourself horror stories about the state of the world and your own life? Or is your life a hero's journey, where you're on the road toward everything you could ever need?

The answer to that question changes everything. The perception is reality rule applies heavily here.

If we choose to perceive a circumstance as wonderfully optimistic, how will we approach that situation?

We'll feel good about the circumstance, we'll act in a way that supports a positive outcome, and that will greatly affect our chances of success. Whatever that may mean for us.

If we create a negative definition about the circumstance, and experience it negatively.. you get the point.

There are no right or wrong answers. How we choose to experience the circumstances of our life is up to each of us, we all have the right to think and feel whatever we want.

But if you're reading this, and you recognise you've been telling yourself some stories about things which aren't necessarily helping, I would suggest you to check in with how you're defining that particular situation.

What if that joke that landed badly didn't mean you were unworthy of taking another breath?

What if today, you defined failures and mistakes as all a part of success? Wouldn't that completely transform your experience of life? If making a mistake really, honestly felt like a natural part of the learning and growth process.. because you defined it that way. Think of the power of that one definition. And we can do that with everything in our lives.

The power to own our definitions exists within each of us, no one can take that from us.

Our definitions govern our experience of the world. If we can alter how we define the circumstance, it will alter how we experience it. And we can create definitions that support an empowering, beautiful quality of life, no matter what we experience.

It will take time, energy and dedication to live in new definitions.

Our definitions carry emotional inertia, and we must practice what we desire to live.

But, the phrase 'old habits die hard', is just a definition. You choose if that's real for you.

Ready to choose another way?

Limitless-Living/build-a-life-you-love

Visit my website for more information on how you can build a life you love.