Sense & Meaning Making - Positive Psychology & Storytelling - Module 11

 

Video : https://youtu.be/LLtW6SxwnR0 (Links to an external site.)

 

 

 

Story 11 : The Elephant and the bird - a short fable

Story Reflection Task :

What does the story mean to you?
How do you make sense of the size of the animals that have been chosen? What meaning does it bring to the story
~
 
Knowing Meaning Making :

  1. In Psychology Meaning making is the way people make sense and understand life events, relationships and self.

     According to Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (whose book Man in Search of Meaning is a must read); Meaning making is the way in which we interpret our inner world in context of the external world. He said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

    Robert Kegan in his book Evolving  Self ( 1982) states that "meaning making is a life long process". It is a process of evolution, especially concentrating on the internal process of experience and growth. 

    Crystal.L Park from the University of Connecticut proposed a the Meaning Making Model (2010) where she identifies two kinds of meaning making.:

    Global – which refers to a person’s general orienting system

    Situational – which refers to the meaning made of a specific situation.

    Global meaning making is influenced by our beliefs, goals and subjective sense of purpose,

    while Situational meaning making is influenced by our attributional (appraisal) style and the resources we have.

    Eg: We may know death is inevitable ( global meaning) but when we lose someone dear to us, we tend to make situational meaning of this loss, stating it is unfair and questioning why it had to happen to our loved one. Etc

    Studies done by Dr. Crystal Park, show that Global meaning making; all three of its aspects ( Beliefs, Goals and Subjective sense of Purpose have an effect on health and well being.

    The second point from this study is that when people show less disconnect between their Global meaning and Situational meaning, they are better adjusted psychologically and able to move towards well being. All of this suggests there is a strong connection between health and meaning making of individuals. 

    Global Meaning Making = Situational Meaning making = Greater Well being

    The VIA institute websites states that the character strengths closely associated with Meaning making (also put forth earlier by Dr.Viktor Frankl in his research) are

    Bravery / Courage – a simple act of everyday courage- pushing ourselves to do things we did not do before

    Appreciating Beauty, love – looking and finding meaning in the beauty around us

    Creativity and Kindness – showing kindness in words and action. 

     We also have two pathways to gaining meaning:

    Meaningful Relationships and Meaningful Occupation, out of which meaningful relationships have a greater impact our  well being.

     Ways in which we can bring meaning into our lives:

  • Engage in a social project that benefits others. 
  • Write your life story as a Hero’s journey – of having lived meaningful moments.
  • Use reminiscence or nostalgia to connect with meaningful events , people or places from the past.
  • Elders can capture their memories (also used in a therapeutic model called Reminiscence Therapy), by reflecting on objects they own or past memories.

 

Highlights of this Module:

  •  Humans have an innate need for making meaning.
  • Meaning making is the way we make sense of relationships, self and others
  • Two kinds of Meaning Making - Global and Situational
  • Two pathways that impact well being - Meaningful Relationships and Meaningful Occupation

~

Topic Reflection Task :

  1. What has been your most meaningful friendship? ( Post it on Discussion page)
  2. What has been your most meaningful work? Choose one that has given you purpose in life.
    eg: The most meaningful work that I feel I have done is raising two children ( this may be cliched, but on introspection - all the other work I have done , as storyteller/ psychologist has not given me as much meaning as doing the work of a parent)

~

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning-making

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2015.10.016 0167-2681/©2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/).138 N. Chater, G. Loewenstein / Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 126 (2016) 1

Meaning Making Model : Crystal L Parks - Vol 15 No 2 (2013) : This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear Narrative Practices - a love letter

  Dear Narrative Practices and Ideas, How are you? Have you found all the people you need to find? My hopes and dreams for you is that you reach every storyteller-soul and re-author their thinking and ways of being! The song “Rekhe iddara sake” from kannada movie Chinnari mutha has the following words: Listen to the song here  Are mere wings enough? Birds need the sky to fly high. Are mere legs enough? Deer need speed to jump high. Are mere flowers enough? It needs the wind to spread the scent. Mere water is not enough A river needs the valley to make a river. Mere clouds are not enough Isn't Earth required for rain to pour upon? Are mere eyes enough? Do we not need objects to see? Is mere voice enough? Do we not need a song to sing together?!   This song reminds me that a person does not exist in isolation or in small confined relationships. We are more than that one relationship; we are all that we seek in our landscape. We are agent...
Read more

The Land tells me .... ( a poem) - Versespace 16

Image
  The land offers me a memory, intangible as it can be, A memory of royal, benevolent Rajas. I wonder who his Rani was and then I slip into the memory again. Land is granted, temples built, and priests brought in from faraway lands. I wonder if the Raja and his escorts come back today to witness what they bestowed, Will they know it or even recognise it?   Lord Ganesha is the guardian of this temple, He is still worshiped in his own little shrine, placed at the entrance. Yet the main deity lies forgotten somewhere in the nether regions of the temple, While their replacement is feted in the sanctum-sanctorum.   Human memory is so fragile and ephemeral. Old is lost and abandoned, While New is painted and polished. We forget stories of the old and wish to reinvent every wheel again.   It is time to Remember the past and acknowledge it. And let go our greed for new and nearer things. It is time to Reclaim all that we already have...
Read more

625 Moons and counting! - Externalising the story of my past, present and future through the landscape metaphor!

Like all stories, mine is a nested story.  Stories within stories. Yet it starts at the very beginning - a very good place to start. When you sing we begin with DO RE ME , when we read we begin with ABC, when we tell a story we begin with One upon a time.... there lived a person who knew a huge big tree! Let me open the door to the landscape of my birth and growing up. It was a Forest of Adventure! We had a huge tree near our lunch ground in school and the moment bell rang we would call dibs on who would get to climb the tree and eat while sitting on it. Life was full of adventure. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton was my favorite book growing up and climbing trees was my favorite thing to do. Every day was an adventure. I eagerly looked forward to the new day – not for the studying part, but for the newness that awaited me at school and dance and sometimes music class! Dance class was in a community hall with place to play in front and even huge gulmohur trees! My dance teach...
Read more