Welcome to Episode #162 of NLP Around You
🧠 Thoughtful Thought
“The meaning you create is the magic you live.” — Dr Mehernosh J Randeria
For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.
💬 NLP Quote Corner
“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin
⏳ One Minute NLP – Meaning is Made, Not Given
Here’s something NLP teaches early and keeps teaching. Meaning doesn’t arrive with the event. It arrives with the interpreter.
Two people can sit in the same meeting, hear the same feedback, and walk out with two entirely different lives. One replays it as attack. The other replays it as investment. The words were identical. The meanings weren’t.
In NLP, we say the map is not the territory. The event is the territory. The meaning is your map. And you are the cartographer.
Try this today. The next time something stings, an email, a comment, a delay, pause before you decide what it means. Ask yourself, “What story am I writing with this?” And then the more honest question, “What other story could I write with the exact same facts?”
You are not denying reality. You are simply remembering that you are the one holding the pen.
Meaning is not received.
Meaning is authored.
🔮 Meta Magic – Coaching Chronicles
The Words Didn’t Change. The Meaning Did.
He sat across from me with his phone on the table, face up.
Which was already a tell.
“Ten minutes before this session,” he said, “I received an email from my client. I can’t stop re-reading it. I feel sick in my stomach.”
I asked him to read it aloud.
Slowly.
His voice was clipped. The sentences came out like small accusations, not because the email accused him, but because he had decided that it did.
The email itself was firm.
Direct.
Not warm, but not unkind either.
I paused.
Let the silence do its work.
“Read it to me one more time,” I said.
“But this time, read it in the voice of someone who respects you enough to be honest with you.”
He blinked.
Then, slowly, began again.
Same words.
Same punctuation.
Different weather.
Halfway through, he stopped.
Looked up.
“It sounds… almost helpful.”
I smiled.
“What changed?”
“Nothing.”
A pause.
“Except what I decided it meant.”
There it was.
The email hadn’t shifted a single letter.
His state had.
And once his state shifted, the meaning rearranged itself to match.
This is the thing we rarely notice.
Before we react to an event, we react to the meaning we gave it.
And that meaning wasn’t in the email.
It was in the reader.
He sat quietly for a moment.
Not uncomfortable silence.
Settled silence.
“So all this time,” he said, “I was fighting my own interpretation.”
I nodded.
“Most of us are. We just call it the situation.”
So let me ask you…
The email you’re carrying.
The comment that stung.
The silence you’ve been reading as rejection.
Are you reacting to what was said?
Or to what you decided it meant?
Because the words didn’t change.
You did.
📖 Hook from the Book
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” — Joan Didion, The White Album
🎬 Movie Motivation
“Aisi kahaani sunao jo tumhari ho.” Translated to “Tell me a story that is yours.”
This dialogue from the movie Tamasha reminds us that the meaning we give our experiences is the story we end up living.
🏆 Winning Post of the Week
Have you booked your seat at the Table for Three?
📢 Announcement of the Week
Table for Three is finally here.
Launched on 19th April, on the auspicious morning of Akshaya Tritiya.
100 copies sold already, and the first-edition pre-signed copies are going fast.
If you’d like your copy to carry a handwritten inscription, the pre-signed copies offer closes on 30th April.
Order yours before the window shuts:
Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/
Thoughtfully Yours,
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