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Hey my friends. So every once in a while I'll get in a funk or wallow in this "I don't matter" pity party and feel all depressed. I spend a week, maybe two, like that recently. And as I was doing this wallowing, at one point I realized that not mattering isn't real. I can't matter or not matter because those are made up things. They don't actually exist. They're not tangible things. They're made up constructs of the mind. And if I can make them up, I can also unmake them up. So it was really pointless to mentally chew on this "why don't I matter" mental chewing gum. It was just a waste of time and energy. It was like wondering why I don't have a bloohah on my sassanasselow, like literal made up nonsense. So I let it go. It's not real. Not a real thing. Definitely not worth suffering over imaginary nonsense. But I think we humans do this a lot, or at least I do. I spent years spinning out once over like this pathological need to have like an equation to determine what my worth was so that I could know this. I was convinced that there had to be one. But there isn't. I've looked. There isn't. But the idea of trying to determine what the value of one life is, is a weird thing. Like it's like trying to determine the value of a blade of grass. Like how would you determine that? Like what makes one blade of grass more valuable than another? It's silly nonsense is what it is. It's a very capitalistic mindset and view of the world that tries to determine the value of every little thing and never stops to consider that perhaps the entire concept of value is made up and isn't even real. There are a lot of things like that. We have so many things that we treat as if they are real things when they aren't. You would have to make them up. You'd have to make up what they are right now. And everyone wouldn't make them up the same. Like if I asked you what made something good versus bad, you would have to make up a criteria for that right now. There isn't a real observable concrete good and bad that we could all point to and agree on. It's made up by each individual. And sometimes groups of individuals agree, but not all individuals agree. And even when people think they agree with each other, in each of their heads exists their own nuances. Because it's not real, it's made up. It's not worth spending time worrying about or feeling bad about. I do this with clients a lot because it's a lot easier to see when someone else is treating something not real as real than it is to see when you yourself doing it. I'll have a client present something to me, as if it is you know a fact, and I'll just sit there and poke at it until they see that it is something that they made up in their head. The cage they are in is usually self built. And as soon as they see that, they can be free. In nihilism, there is a concept that there is no inherent meaning in anything. You have to give something meaning for it to have meaning. Some people think that this is a depressing outlook. But I strongly disagree. I think this is actually the best news ever. If there is no inherent meaning in anything, and you get to decide what everything means, then that means that's when you are truly free. I'll have someone tell me something like I've been divorced three times as if it should mean something to me. It doesn't mean anything. There is only what they are making it mean. Or I'll have someone tell me that they haven't been in the dating pool for over 20 years. As if that means something. As if there is some information I should get from that. It doesn't mean anything inherently. They are making it mean something, but it doesn't have to be stuck with one meaning. Or because someone told you what they think it means doesn't mean you have to also adopt that meaning. You get to make your own meaning for these things. And that is so powerful and so freeing. So my challenge for you this week is to think of something that causes you distress. How much of it is real and how much of it is the made up meaning you are giving it? You don't have to change what you're making it mean, but just try to start to recognize when it is that you are assigning meaning to something. And the more that you start noticing this, the more choice you will start to have in how you think about things. And the more choice you have in how you think about things, the less you will end up suffering. We talked a lot about this in the fact versus story episode. That in in all things there are the straight, hard observable, measurable facts and then there's your interpretation of those facts. And all of our power resides in that interpretation-- in the meaning that we give things. Because we can't always change our circumstances or change the things that are existing in the world. But we always always get to choose how we think about it. And the meaning that we give it. If you find that you're having difficulty finding where or if you're giving something meaning, You can use the link in the show notes and book a session with me and we can figure it out together. Alright my friends until next time, be well.
