There is No Meaning in Life, Except the Meaning We Choose to Give It.-Adam khoo

What we must understand is that all meaning is context dependant. In other words, there is no meaning in life except the meaning we choose to give it.When we look at things (an experience, an incident, an event) from one perspective, it may seem totally bad. However, when we change the way we look at the same thing (i.e. from a different perspective), the meaning completely changes. It could become totally powerful… for you.

You can also see that any experience in life carries with it multiple meanings. Anything in life has the potential to be either good/positive or bad/negative. It depends on your perspective, the frame in which you are seeing it from.The meaning we choose to attach to an experience is the meaning we create. When we interpret an experience as negative or bad, we will get into a miserable state, take lousy actions (even inaction is a form of lousy action) and produce negative results. At the same time, when we interpret an experience as positive, we get into resourceful states, take positive action, and eventually create positive results.

This can be summarized in a formula that goes

Event+Response=Outcome.

I first came across this wonderful formula in a seminar given by Jack Canfield (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul). Many people believe that it is the events around us that shape our outcomes. They believe that people who are happier and more successful just happen to experience better events in their lives.

E + R = O (Event + Response = Outcome)

You and I both know that this is totally untrue. It is not the things that happen to us, but rather, how we choose to respond to happenings and external circumstances that ultimately shape our outcomes.

Retrenchment is one of the most commonplace experiences faced by people, in the ups and downs of life. As we saw in the true-life experiences narrated earlier, how a person chooses to responds can either put him in an un-resourceful state, and ultimately create a lousy outcome for him, or he can respond in an empowering way and come out with a positive outcome.

As you well know, we cannot control every single thing that happens to us, but we can control how we choose to respond to it.

For example, if you go sailing, you cannot control where the wind is going to blow. You can complain and blame the wind all you want but it is not going to be of any use. However, you can control how you maneuver the sails, and that will control the outcome of your boat’s direction.

People who succeed and live fulfilling and enriching lives don’t experience better events, they just represent things and respond in a much more powerful way.

We have heard so many stories of people who were born with all kinds of handicaps and despite all the odds stacked against them, they managed to create a life most others can only dream about.


At the same time we know people who, despite being born with all the money, advantages, resources and opportunities chose to make nothing of themselves. In fact, many of them end up destroying their lives.

Continued in next blog Reframing: The Art of Changing Meaning