How you can assign new meaning to bad situations

If you’re into self-improvement, you might know the concept that our thoughts drive our feelings, which drive our actions. If you work on changing your thoughts, the other stuff will follow. Your thoughts become your reality.

Now, I believe that we have repeated awakenings in our lives where we realize things we thought were true — that we thought were facts — are not. They’re a point of view we inherited from our family, our friends, our culture. It’s a choice we didn’t realize we were making.

Our brains are really good at making connections. We give things meaning. This is a lovely concept — we see meaning in symbols, in stories, and in gestures. A glass half-full is just a container of liquid before we assign metaphorical meaning to it. But we assign meaning to nearly everything. If someone speeds past you on the highway, they’re a jerk. If they send us flowers, they’re sweet — or creepy, depending on the context, on the meaning we assign. To some people, $100 is a lot, to others it’s a little. It’s all about the stories we tell ourselves about these things.

This is how our brains work — in associations — but sometimes we pick up associations that are harmful.

A few years ago, I got rejected from a job I thought I was a great fit for. I bawled my eyes out and spent the rest of the day in bed, telling myself what a failure I was. Last week, I got rejected from another job that I thought I would be a great fit for. While I was disappointed, after about twenty minutes, the sinking feeling in my stomach was gone and I was kind of relieved (I haven’t been sure I even wanted a job right now).

What was different? I applied for a job, I got rejected — that was the same. They were both cool jobs that would’ve been good experience, but I was in school and hadn’t needed a job either time. The difference was me, and the meaning I attached to people I didn’t know choosing someone else’s sheet of paper over mine.

The first time around, I told myself not being picked meant I wasn’t good enough. I was a failure, people didn’t like me, I was never going to get a job that I wanted. Around and around I went, using it as proof of my shortcomings and proof that the world was against me.

This time, things are a little different. This time, I decided not being picked meant this wasn’t the right thing for me, or it wasn’t the right time. I thought about how many applicants they probably had, and how hard it would be to pick based on a few sheets of paper. It certainly wasn’t personal. It wasn’t that the other people who applied were better than me, they were simply different and fit in better with one, or a few people’s vision for this job. A few people not choosing me was not going to make or break my self-esteem.

You’ll notice those instances were a few years apart. This was by no means a quick switch, and I still felt crappy for a bit about it. But over time, I started noticing what I was making things mean, when they didn’t have to mean anything. Was it really true that those people didn’t like me? If it was, did it really mean I could never get a job like that one?

Over time, I started applying more of this thought-work to it. I still had that gut reaction, but I was able to come out of it faster by questioning the thoughts I had around it. I started practising new thoughts — like that rejection was a detour, not a roadblock. I believe now that things happen exactly how they are supposed to. It’s a lot more peaceful than believing things could have and should have gone differently.

So I encourage you to become more aware of the meaning you assign to things. Is that person deliberately trying to make your life hard, or are they just having a bad day? Are you really a failure, or are you just trying things and learning about what doesn’t work for you? Be kind, to yourself and others.

Things are rarely as personal as we make them.