Unpacking Your Baggage: Interpretations

The Big 4 energy blocks you lug with you may be hidden in the suitcase you drag around from date to date and relationship to relationship, but ultimately those unconscious thoughts, feelings and beliefs keep you from attracting men and women who are relationship-minded.

We’ve already explored limiting beliefs and assumptions. This week let’s look at the third energy block, Interpretations. At Dating With Dignity we define an Interpretation as an opinion you create about an event, situation or experience. In essence, you use your imagination to create an explanation for someone’s behaviors and words, and then you look for evidence to support its validity. When you make an interpretation you don’t even see that other explanations exist. In actuality, though, an interpretation often represents only one viewpoint among the many that are possible.

Your interpretations hold a strong energetic charge that affects your emotions and actions. If you believe your viewpoint of a particular situation is the only explanation, you might not be aware of another point of view. You may end up wasting a lot of time and resources marching off in the wrong direction. Because you don’t see that other possibilities exist, you remain stuck in your story and feel like you have no control over the outcome.

So let’s say you come home one day and your partner barely nods hello, then goes into his office and closes the door. If you think your partner acted that way because he is angry with you, you might spend the evening wondering what you did to get him mad. You might also be hesitant to approach him with the great idea you’d come up with on the way home from work.

As with assumptions, interpretations are personal and are somewhat difficult to let go of and challenge. Holding onto them may seem like the easy way out, as facing them may move you into uncharted territory. However, challenging your interpretations opens you up to a world of possibilities—literally!

Typical interpretations may sound like this:

• He doesn’t like me.
• She thinks I’m incompetent.
• He thinks I’m too bossy.
• My partner is not interested in what I have to say.

Interpretations can be directly challenged by asking, “What’s another way to look at that?” Just realizing there are other ways to look at something lessens the power of your interpretation. One way to do this is to imagine what someone else might tell you when you explain the situation. Often, an objective perspective can be revealing. Asking for someone else’s point of view on a difficult situation (even if he is not directly involved) can break existing paradigms and open pathways for more successful solutions. Challenging yourself or others to argue the point of view directly opposite your interpretation also works remarkably well to arrive at new information, new angles and new paths to success.

In the example above, perhaps the reason why he barely acknowledged you was that he just received a disturbing phone call on the way home regarding a client, or perhaps he had a deadline that had to be met. Maybe he realized his monthly bonus wasn’t going to be what he expected. There are many possible explanations. What an opportunity you might miss if you decide not to present your great idea based on your false interpretation!

This week, before you “jump to conclusions” and believe the first story that comes to mind, consider other possibilities that could lead you to new, empowering choices and actions.