Hello,
How are we doing? Stumbling our way to Christmas, avoiding our bank statements and the family WhatsApp, or packing for Bali while you pick the winter party sparkle off your nose? Maybe, like me, you’re somewhere in between. I look at my diary at this time of year and I’ve started to really notice the things that make me half wince and the things that light me up a little. Those are always the moments I know I’ll find meaning in. It’s not so much the ‘what I’m doing’ but the ‘who with’ and the quality of the presence I’m able to bring to it. And of course, it’s about the shade that’s come before that allows me to feel the light when it does shine in.
We are so accustomed to believing that this time of year should be all grace, goodwill, love and light – that it’s often hard to see past all the stereotypes, which can have us feeling utterly rubbish in comparison to the reality of our lives.
I honestly believe the best we can and should hope for is a baseline contentment and some banging moments of hope and meaning. These might mean nothing to anyone watching, photographing, or reflecting the winter ads, but to you, your heart cracks open a little and the light rushes in.
This is how I interpret ‘filling your cup’. A decent meaningful moment can power you up properly for days, even weeks. But having a date in the diary doesn’t necessarily equate to meaning, and not everything in your life needs to feel meaningful. In fact, the lack of meaning in the void enhances the moments that are full. So, how do you create meaning for yourself? How do you make more moments that matter?
Meaning-making.
Meaning-making is a psychological concept and refers to the meaning we create for ourselves from certain events, often traumatic, in our lives. It shows how emotionally and psychologically secure we are, and often the work of therapy is this: to search for the meaning in what’s happened and where you’ve been. Meaning-making goes as far back as our early life as babies.
If you imagine, as a baby, you have no concept of another, only yourself. You believe you provide your own food, your own love, you provide for yourself what you need—you have no concept of other people until later. Because of this, if the world around you lets you down, even inadvertently over a prolonged period of time—doesn’t feed you when you’re hungry, isn’t able to meet your needs, is emotionally mistrusted more often than attuned—you might have an early experience that you are not good enough, believing you have let yourself down. This is a crude interpretation, but it’s enough for here.
In meaning-making, which we’ve been doing since infancy, when we start to see others and the world as separate from us, we begin to understand the value of the environment. We make meaning out of what’s happening around us as separate from us; something happens outside, and we feel it inside ourselves. We begin to associate our feelings with both the outside and the inside. We associate ‘good’ feelings when the environment is safe, consistent, and reassuring, and less good ones when it’s not (but still meaningful!).
This is why you might have more meaningful experiences when you are deeply connected and trusting of yourself and those around you. This is why being seen and heard matters so much to our experiences of feeling meaningful feelings. They connect the inside and the outside world profoundly.
Moments that touch our souls.
From years of sitting with others in therapy and my own personal journey, one thing I’m certain of is that we are all in search of more meaningful moments. Moments that touch our souls. We need and deserve them. They become more readily available to us when we’ve been emotional archaeologists of our own lives. When we’ve been able to uncover and sit with the feelings and experiences of the darkest nature, it allows us to be humble, to be open, to be vulnerable. And in that softening and becoming, we are able to more often feel the magic, the beauty, and the delight in our lives.
Meaning is to be felt, not thought, touched, held, breathed, smelt or seen.
It doesn’t live on the tiny screen on our phones or in the purchasing of an expensive festival ticket. It lives in the experience of the thing, the meaning to you: the recognition of the joy on someone else’s face, the warmth of someone else saying, ‘Yes, I know you like a Twix,’ or handing you a hot coffee because they see the struggle of folding the washing again.
Meaning is the time you look at yourself in the mirror and know that, as an adult, the environment around you, the people, and the moments in it are your making. The relationships you find meaning in—you co-create that. This life isn’t happening to you; you are happening to it.
Meaningful moments I’ve found this month:
- Taking Elvis (my son) to the theatre: The show was lovely, but more was his hand in mine when we got lost on the way (I’ve been to the Old Vic a hundred times, but maybe we needed to be lost for a minute)
- Softness allows the light in and allows meaningful moments to arise
- IRL team meetings—can’t beat being in a room with a group of people with a shared mission
- Lovely friends toasting my birthday
- The team bought me these lush flowers—it’s the first time, and it’s because of ‘Dan,’ our new COO, who’s showing us all how it’s done (this has meant me having to let go of a bit of my control over the business. That hard edge has brought with it so much meaning)
- Biba and I sat in the outside sauna, which wasn’t actually hot—I had a moment of just feeling so very lucky to have her as a daughter
- Excited for our Xmas campaign—bringing meaning to life for others feels really important to me
- Teddy reminds me often to just stop and be grateful
- Got a coffee before a flight to see a friend in Valencia—airports used to fill me with a weird sort of loneliness. I don’t have that anymore. I just feel lucky for the space and time of waiting
- Grace and I shared a lust for vintage china (mostly 80’s dogs!)
Journaling Ideas for Yourself Around the Theme of Meaning:
- What feels really and truly meaningful to you?
- What happens in your body when you experience moments that matter?
- What meaningful moments do you remember from childhood?
- Which people are you around, environments are you in, or what headspace are you in when you experience meaningful moments?
- What can you do to strive for more of these?
- Let us be with you in creating and experiencing more moments that matter. We have an evening for just this. (Link to supper for the soul)
- Want to create more meaningful moments in your life, at home, out for dinner? (CTA to buy supper for the soul D & M cards)
- You don’t have to emotionally dig on your own—come on, we’ve got you! (CTA to book a session)
- It’s all there for us. It’s about how we live, the quality we choose to create in our lives that help us experience more moments that matter. We need to sit in the dark for a while to feel the light when it comes. Remind yourself of this when those moments come
Jodie x