This line from the movie, A Boy Called Christmas made me stop and think. It seems to me that there is more truth in this beautiful line than meets the eye.

Some versions of the Bible start with the words:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”

But some versions start with:

“In the beginning, there was the word”

This implies that God spoke the universe into existence. I think this might be the truer version as I am hoping to explore here.

The world, as a material place with subject and object and unbreakable laws of physics, seems fairly simple to understand. If we all saw it objectively in the same way, I think there may be a lot less conflict. But, alas, we all see the world through our own lenses and tell ourselves unique stories about it.

Nothing has any significance except for that which we give to it.

We start wars over ideals, not reality. Our whole motivation for living, fighting and dying is to realize the meaning we have inserted behind everything. We wonder what the meaning of life is, yet we are constantly immersed in meaning. We assemble models of the world that are completely held together with meaning.

We love and hate and have preferences. We are happy or sad depending on our interpretation of our circumstances. It is not really the actual circumstances of our current “state” that we respond to, as the objective world is complex and has many layers. But overall we interpret our state of being through the lens of meaning. We feel we need to be at a certain financial state or a certain health and beauty state. We compare our states to others. We compare our states to our own inner models. We compare our states to what they were yesterday, last week, or ten years ago.

The actual objective state that any of us exist in is generally not even close to our perception of it. If we have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and a significant other, we generally have everything we need. Our continued existence has a very high probability with these simple, objective needs met. If we set our standards at this basic level we potentially could be blissful 24 hours a day. But we are human- we cannot help but strive for more. We get bored, we get jealous and we tend to have a need for growth. Happiness depends on the conscious pursuit of our purpose. We require a purpose to be motivated to do anything.

Purpose

Purpose and meaning are not as differentiated from each other as you might think. We tell ourselves a story about what we have been put here on earth to accomplish , and if we are lucky, we make progress towards that. We are attaching our overall state of happiness to how far along the path towards our ultimate purpose we are.

We built our entire world on meaning. We tell stories about what stuff means and then we react to it. We bump into someone in a crowded bar. Some people tell themselves the story

“That guy is trying to start a fight with me”

Others just say

“Excuse me”

and move on.

Some people tell themselves,

“ I need to fight this guy if I am going to appear strong and confident. It would be weak to back down”

where others might say,

“There are more important things to fight about, I am not going to indulge in this”

and walk away. This situation will play itself out depending on the stories we tell ourselves about it. We will not automatically start a fight because someone bumped into us. We will start a fight because of the meaning we attach to the event. We are prone to behave this way no matter the situation. Sadly, we tend to believe our stories as truth, even though they are often fairytales.

Meaning

We are purely driven by meaning. Unless we are telling ourselves a story, we have no reason to do anything. We can assume we have certain instinctual drives that sway our behaviour to ensure our survival, and we will do what we need to do in a moment of true danger/crisis. Our fight or flight response will kick in, but we live in a society where we generally are not in a life or death situation very often.

We make up stories to define what is important to us. We make up stories to evaluate and define the outside world. We make up stories about what good and bad are and who is accepted and who is not. We forget that our stories are just that, stories. We believe some behaviours are justified while others are purely unacceptable, depending on the stories we tell about our circumstances.

We may feel it is justified to steal food if we need to feed our family. We may feel it is justified to kill another human being if they are trying to kill us. We may feel that we are not as good as someone else because they have more success, money or physical attractiveness. Inversely, we may feel we are better than others because of our rank on the social ladder.

All of these ideas are not actually true, subjective reality. They’re just stories we tell ourselves. We are not actually better than or worse than another person. Stealing is wrong, period. Killing people is absolutely wrong in every way. This is the subjective truth. But we will tell ourselves a story and suddenly we are acting in ways that are not in line with our best selves.

We need to understand that our actual existence is defined by the stories we tell ourselves and therefore, we have control over the narrative. We just need to tell ourselves the right stories and our perception of “how we are doing” will be completely different. We have the power to change our world, by how we think and feel and act.

In the book Scarcity, they discuss how people who are in a state of financial crisis tend to make worse decisions than people who are more well-off. This is not a chicken and egg thing, this is objective reality. Because they are preoccupied with their money worries, they tend to make more short term decisions and poor long term choices because they feel the need to attack the problem with the most direct solution they have available. This type of thinking just perpetuates the cycle.

Now part of the problem here is that the financially challenged may not know of any other way to act. They might not have the tools or the perspective to make better choices. We are not born knowing how to manage money. We are not born knowing how to practice self-discipline and long-term perspective. We need to learn it and practice it. We would definitely benefit from having someone whom we admire and respect (a role-model) show us the ropes, through their words and actions. Some of the right behaviours we must adopt are not intuitive.

I also suggest that happiness is something you invest in, not something you buy. If you have a long term plan that sets you on the path to financial freedom and you are sticking to it, there is a simultaneous deposit being made to you happiness account as you execute the plan. You could buy a new toy and get a sudden rush of dopamine, but it will be short lived. You will eventually fall back into your old patterns. But if you slowly build up a foundation of financial security over time, you will be investing in a story that keeps telling you good things about yourself and your situation over and over again. You will never get tired of hearing it.

This is why I keep writing about “just get started” or “begin where you are” in my books and articles. I believe that by beginning to invest in your financial future you are not only getting ahead, you are changing your mindset by telling yourself a different story. You are reinforcing a positive narrative by consistently working your plan day after day. It will take time. But that is a good thing, as it will force you to keep repeating the new story and train your subconscious mind to believe it. Once you believe that you are financially safe and on the right track, there is a positive story to be told over and over again and a lasting happiness will be the result.

As I have implied before, we are more motivated by stories than by objective reality, so why not tell the right story? Why not act in a way that is congruent with the story you want to tell about yourself? The meaning behind your financial plan is more powerful than the actual numbers. The story that gets told and repeated will override all the objective hurdles that will be placed in your way.

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