The KEY: The Power of Meaning

This Key is about the power of meaning. Can you remember an age when you used to wonder for hours about the meaning of things? These wonderings inspired you to discover and find out more. This was the impulse of consciousness awakening and it propelled you to search for meaning and ask even more questions.

Later this impulse was re-directed to achieving, finding success, and getting ahead. The importance of “why” was re-focused into “how” to achieve your aspirations. What does meaning mean for you today? Did you know there is a risk in cutting off meaning in your life? How do you use the power of meaning in your endeavors and pursuits?

Mount Tabor Race
Have you noticed what impacts your stamina, endurance and ability to cope and stay focused? Why are you able to find great focus and endurance in certain situations and not in other ones? Here is a story about how stamina, endurance and focus grow because of meaning.

At age 13 my sole focus was to win the national cross country long distance running championship in Israel. I had been competing for a couple of years and felt strongly this was my year. I won a few races but the most prestigious competition, the Mount Tabor race, was the championship I had been dreaming about. It was a challenging 4K meter race and there were hundreds of us storming the starting line. In order to move forward when we got to the steep climb, I had to survive the first 300 meters in a good position. I knew the talent of the other runners and decided which one was going to be my hardest competitor. We were in similar physical condition and were both capable of winning, so the race had to be won based on strategy, determination, will power and focus.

Back then (1972), the mind-body connection was not main-stream knowledge as it is today, but I knew deep inside me that the race was to take place and be decided in our minds. The mind that was the more focused and determined would lead one of us to win.

Now here is the question that this key poses: What focuses the mind most? What determines whether your mind is focused or not on what you do? It is not the outcome; it is the meaning of the outcome for you. Click here to find out what happened in the race and how you can use this key.

© Aviv Shahar