As human beings, we make meaning of what is happening to us as it is part of our human nature. Meaning-making refers to our personal way of interpreting situations, based on our prior experience, values and beliefs.
Our personal meaning-making system shapes our capacity to embrace the world in its complexity, leading us to prioritize some forms of data over others or preventing us from accessing the data available to us. Most of the time, it is sufficient to orient ourselves based on our thinking and being habits. However, sometimes, new situations appear that are more difficult for us to address – our current meaning-making system is too limited. This is more likely to happen when the situation is evolving fast, intertwined with other events, or when the data more intangible or diverse. Often we can naturally adjust, but sometimes, we get stuck, our usual way of adapting does not work, we feel overwhelmed.
Involved in a quest to leverage our capacity for complexity, I carried out a research with my partner Karen Ellis to develop an instrument which allows us to assess a set of possible meaning-making capacities, The instrument, validated psychometrically, allows an individual to get a reading on the ‘shape’ of their current meaning-making system and select developmental practices and inquiries to grow them when needed.
Our intention is to share the results of our research, i.e to outline the capacities, hypothesize how they might evolve, make the links with the stages theory or the AQAL model, and offer the possibility to reflect on yourself.
Self-relating: How easily can you pay attention to your own unique emotional and relational patterns and how they affect you, either in the moment or after the event?
Perspective-Shifting: How easily can you shift perspective on a given situation to understand different world views, observe your own assumptions or biases, or notice your own shifting views over time?
Opposable thinking: How easily can you construct new and different ways to think about a given problem or situation?
