Episode 20 - Mindsets For (and Pitfalls to) Your Success and Learning; The Chain of Meaning

Transcript

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Jason McClain: Welcome to Coaching the Life Coach.  I am your host Jason McClain and your guide in the 21st century marketplace.

“…what is worse is you will be frustrated, you will live in concern and fear where you last prospect is coming, you will be worried and generally speaking, you just won’t have the kind of freedom that can only come from financial freedom.  Besides that it is just not as much fun.

“…so let’s really unpack this.  I call it the Chain Of Meaning.  So, there is the event and then there is your interpretation of the event.  Resulting from your interpretation of the event is your emotional reaction.  The initial sensations the “urghh” or the “ahhhh” or the “ooohh” or whatever it maybe…”

Last week, we started a series on mindsets and we spoke about how you are a sales person first and how that is the single most important organizing principle that you can have, provided of course that you are competent and you are certain that you can provide some value.  Obviously, sales skills are no replacement for competence.  I don’t mean to suggest that.  But what I mean to suggest is that you can be the most competent person in the world and if you haven’t accepted, then you must learn the tools of skills and influence.  Then you will be destined to a life of never breaking 6 figures.  What is worse is you will be frustrated, you will live in concern and fear where you last prospect is coming, you will be worried and generally speaking, you just won’t have the kind of freedom that can only come from financial freedom.  Besides that it is just not as much fun.

Today is the last with the single most important organizing principle as I said is that you are a sales person first.  Now you might have had some initial emotional reaction to that and I expect at least half of you did.  And that is perfect because it gives us an access point to today’s mindset and the mindset for today and for this week is that you are the author and authority in your life.  You are fundamentally the creator of your emotional experience and you are 100% responsible for the results and for your experience that you are having or as I like to say, your experience of your experience because there is really the thing itself and then there is your relationship to it.

You know we could have a recession or a depression which is a certain calculus of various economic indicators and certain variables and numbers and blah…blah…blah.  And what do you make that mean, what is your relationship to it, what is your interpretation of it, how does it impact you, what is your emotional reaction when you hear that news.  What you make it mean and then what is the resulting atmosphere that you are surrounded by as a result.

So let us really unpack this, I call it the Chain Of Meaning.  So there is the event and there is your interpretation of the event.  Resulting from your interpretation of the event is your emotional reaction, The initial sensations the “urghh” or the “ahhhh” or the “ooohh” or whatever it maybe and then particularly if it is negative, there is something suppressive or oppressive about the atmosphere, there is what you made it mean about you personally.  As a result of what you made it mean personally, there is your atmospheric condition or your emotional experience, not just reaction but experience.

Let’s unpack this, let us use something that most of you are probably doing, which is a phone call.  Let us say you are making a bunch of phone calls and you are just not producing the results you want to produce.  You are not getting the kind of responses you are looking to get.  And you just have a horrible day statistically on the phone and you go home and maybe you feel reluctant to pick up the phone for the rest of the afternoon.

There are all sorts of ways in which you could respond and you end up with an atmosphere around you of just despair or hopelessness or frustration or annoyance or fear about some impending financial obligation or whatever it may be, but especially with the heavier ones, let’s say you are just hopeless about this, “Oh gosh.”  Or maybe you are really clear that you are taking it personally.  If we backup, so here is the atmosphere of despair, of hopefulness or of resignation maybe.  We back up.  Well, what are you making it mean about yourself or about your business?

And you can bet that underneath that atmosphere is something like, “Well you know, I am always going to be ineffective or I am never going to be successful at this or you know, people just don’t like me, I am a bad sales person, I am not doing this effectively or even worse, I am a bad person because I am not doing this effectively.”

Now those of you who have already chosen to discard this off saying, “Oh I never do that.”  I have had a few clients who said the same thing and underneath it all, if there is an atmosphere, some sort of suppressive atmosphere, oppressive atmosphere, hopeless atmosphere, something heavy sensationally, you are doing this; it is just the start of your awareness.  So your job is bring it into awareness.

And so you know, what are you making it mean?  What does it mean for you or about you or about your business?  And then you fill in the blank with how are you interpreting and how are you interpreting it, is it rejection?  Is that what you are calling it?  Are you characterizing it as rejection which of course wouldn’t exactly have me dance a jig, if I were to interpret it that way.

And to build in behavioral flexibility and interpreter flexibility, you have to come up with at least three alternative interpretations.  It could be rejection.  You could call it a different time of day to be more effective.  And the truth is it doesn’t mean anything about you personally and will eventually get you to train your mind to get to that place of total freedom where you realize, what does it mean that people aren’t saying?  Yes you will.  That means people aren’t saying yes to you.  That is all that it means.

How should you characterize your interpreted or you should characterize an interpreted as you have only made three contacts in 100 dials.  Not that you are getting rejected or not that no one is there or not that you are calling at the wrong time of day even, but even more neutral, even more empowering is simply then a way to interpret, 3 contacts out of 100 is that you have made 3 contacts out of 100.  You can go and troubleshoot it further, but be very careful about characterizations.

In the descriptive domain, you have got freedom.  In the characterization, in the domain of characterizations, then you are going to have judgments and far more likely to have an emotional reaction.  It doesn’t serve you.  So I am going to encourage you by the way to read the episode page and to also read a link to an article called “Emotional Freedom Techniques.”  That is on the blog both in Personal Life Media and at EvolutionaryAwareness.com.

And consider the article a companion to this podcast and reread those ideas in that article and consider this something that is happening all the time unconsciously.  There is the event, next in line comes your interpretation of the event or your characterization.  From your characterization that gives rise to your emotion reaction.  Then you may even go further and make it something personally meaningful about you, make it mean something about you.

If it is something like shame that you are feeling, then we actually know with great certainty that that means that you are making it mean something about your very value as a human being.  And the truth is nobody can take away your value as a human being except for you.  Only you can do that.  And if you are not that internally evolved, then well, we will get you there.

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I am Jason McClain, your host and your guide in the 21st century marketplace.  Once again it is a pleasure to contribute to you.  Thank you for listening.  For any questions about this podcast or any podcast in this series, you know me at [email protected].  There are two “Ls” in personallifemedia.com.  I am Jason McClain, your host and your guide in the 21st century marketplace.

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