You May Be Shaping Meaning Without Realizing It

11 minutes ago

6 min read

How everyday interactions can influence what people come to believe about themselves, others, and what is possible

This is the fourth article in a series based on my upcoming book: THRIVE: The Meaningful Purpose Guide. A Developmental Guide to Seeing More Clearly, Living More Wisely, and Helping Others Thrive.

A manager responds calmly when an employee admits making a mistake. A parent puts down the phone and listens carefully when a child says, “Can I talk to you?” A teacher tells a struggling student, “You haven't learned it yet. Let's keep working on it.” A friend says, “I disagree with you, but I want to understand why you see it that way.” These may seem like ordinary moments. But what if they are doing more than we realize?

What if our everyday interactions become part of the experiences from which other people develop meanings about themselves, relationships, trust, failure, disagreement, and what may be possible? That possibility leads us to the final question in this four-part series on human flourishing:

What kind of meaning environment am I helping create?

We Do Not Construct Meaning Alone

Throughout this series, we have explored a puzzle at the heart of Meaningful Purpose Psychology, scientifically known as Logoteleology. Humanity already possesses extraordinary knowledge about what helps people flourish. Yet knowing what is good, true, or healthy does not guarantee that we will consistently live by it. We explored the possibility that part of the missing link is meaning—the ways we understand ourselves, other people, and the situations we encounter.

Some meanings gradually acquire greater influence than others. They begin to affect what we notice, what we trust, how we respond, and the directions we pursue.

But where do these meanings come from?

We do not construct them in isolation. From childhood onward, our experiences with parents, teachers, friends, leaders, communities, cultures, successes, failures, encouragement, rejection, love, disappointment, and countless other influences become part of the environment in which our meanings develop. Meaningful Purpose Psychology calls influences that may contribute to the development of meaning: Meaning Antecedents.

Consider the employee whose manager responds constructively to an honest mistake. The manager does not determine what the employee will think. But that experience might contribute to meanings such as:

I can admit a mistake without being humiliated.

Learning matters more here than pretending to be perfect.

My supervisor wants me to succeed.

Now imagine a different manager responding with ridicule. That experience could contribute to very different meanings:

It isn't safe to admit mistakes here.

Protect yourself.

Hide problems before someone blames you.

The manager does not directly construct either set of meanings. But the manager helps create part of the environment from which meanings may develop.

From Being Influenced to Becoming an Influence

All of us began life largely on the receiving end of influence. Then something gradually changed. The child became a parent. The student became a teacher. The employee became a supervisor. The person who once needed encouragement became someone capable of offering it. We never stop being influenced by others. But as our lives develop, we increasingly become influences ourselves.

Our words matter. So does our silence. Our reactions matter. So do the expectations we communicate. How we respond when someone succeeds, fails, disagrees, struggles, speaks honestly, or asks for help may become part of that person's experience with us.

That gives Meaning Lucidity—our growing capacity to recognize, examine, and understand meanings and discern which deserve our trust and influence—another important question to ask.

Not only: What meanings are influencing me?

But also: What kinds of Meaning Antecedents might I be providing for others?

Influence Is Not Control

This distinction is important. Meaning Antecedents do not mean we control another person's meanings. We don't. Two people can experience the same conversation and interpret it differently. Each person brings a unique history, personality, culture, relationships, knowledge, expectations, and existing meanings to an experience.

Nor should we assume that because someone developed an unhealthy meaning, another person must have caused it. Human meaning development is far more complex than that. Our responsibility is both more modest and more realistic:

We cannot decide what another person will make of an experience. But we can become more intentional about the experience our presence provides.

That is an important difference. It moves us away from trying to control people and toward becoming more responsible for ourselves.

Influence Begins With Responsibility

Ethical boundaries must also be clear. The more influence we have in another person's life, the greater our responsibility to examine the meanings through which we exercise that influence. This becomes especially important for parents, leaders, teachers, coaches, counselors, consultants, clergy, and others whose roles may give them considerable influence.

THRIVE™ can be practiced by anyone as a way of governing their own behavior toward others. We can learn to treat people with greater dignity, help create safer relationships, contribute to well-being and development, genuinely value and appreciate others, and encourage meaningful engagement. But practicing THRIVE in our own lives is different from attempting to examine or change another person's meaning system. Meaning-Centered intervention with others requires additional competence, ethical preparation, and professional formation.

Good intentions alone are not enough.

A person may sincerely want to help while unknowingly bringing personal assumptions, biases, fears, expectations, or unexamined meanings into the relationship. That is why Meaningful Purpose Psychology begins closer to home. Before we presume to examine the meanings governing others, we must remain willing to examine the meanings governing us.

Begin With Your Own Meanings

Suppose an employee challenges your decision. Your first thought might be: Why is this person being so difficult?

Meaning Lucidity invites another possibility. Before analyzing the employee, examine yourself. What am I assuming about this person's motives? Why does this disagreement feel threatening to me? Am I trying to understand the concern—or defend my authority? What meaning is governing how I respond?

That is very different from asking: What is wrong with this person's meaning?

The first person whose meaning system we are responsible for examining is our own. This principle is simple enough to remember:

Use Meaning Lucidity first to govern yourself before presuming to use it to examine others.

This does not make us less capable of helping people. It can make our help more responsible. Those wishing to move beyond personal THRIVE practice into professional Meaning-Centered work with others should receive appropriate preparation and ethical formation before doing so.

What Might Your Presence Be Communicating?

You don't need to become a professional practitioner, however, to begin noticing your everyday influence. Consider your ordinary relationships. When someone makes a mistake in your presence, what might they learn about whether mistakes can be acknowledged honestly? When someone disagrees with you, what might they learn about whether disagreement threatens a relationship? When someone succeeds, what might your response communicate about generosity and appreciation? When someone struggles, do your actions communicate:

“You are helpless without me.”?

Or perhaps:

“I believe you are capable, and I am willing to support you?”

These are not formulas. We cannot know exactly what another person will construct from an interaction. The purpose is not to become anxious about every word we say. It is to become increasingly aware that our presence contributes something to the environments we share.

Human Flourishing Happens Between Us

Human flourishing is personal, but it is never entirely private. We develop within families, friendships, workplaces, schools, communities, and cultures. We are continually encountering the meanings and behaviors of other people while contributing our own. This is why Meaningful Purpose Psychology ultimately moves beyond asking only: How can I flourish?

It also asks: How can the person I am becoming contribute to others' flourishing?

THRIVE offers one practical answer: treat people with dignity, help them feel safe, raise well-being, improve human flourishing, value and appreciate, and encourage meaningful engagement. But THRIVE is not simply a list of good behaviors to perform. As healthier meanings increasingly govern us, those behaviors can increasingly become expressions of the people we are becoming. And our presence becomes part of the world other people encounter.

One Final Question

This series began with a puzzle. If humanity already possesses so much knowledge about living well, why do we continue struggling to live according to what we know? That question led us from knowledge to meaning, from meaning to development, and finally from our own development to the influence our lives may have on others.

None of us will get this perfectly right. We will misunderstand people. We will occasionally react poorly. We will discover meanings within ourselves that do not deserve the influence we have given them. Meaning Lucidity does not require perfection. It requires our continuing willingness to see more clearly, examine what governs us, remain teachable, and make wiser choices about how we live.

We may never know all the meanings another person constructs from their encounters with us. Those meanings belong to them, not to us. But we can become more thoughtful about what we contribute to those encounters. Perhaps that is another way human flourishing spreads—not only through the truths we discover, but through the kinds of experiences we increasingly create for one another.

So, as this series comes to an end, I leave you with one final question:

What kind of meaning environment are you helping create?

Want to Learn More?

If these ideas have prompted you to think differently about the meanings shaping your life and your influence on others, we invite you to keep the conversation going.

Schedule a free consultation with the Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose to learn more about how Meaningful Purpose Psychology can help you see yourself, others, and reality more clearly—the first step toward becoming a

Walking Solution.

Schedule Your Free Consultation