Making sense of Mental Nutrition a model of sensemaking

We are all engaging in a process of making sense of what is going on.

Based on our life experience, we build up a view of how we think the world works. This view draws on our history, beliefs, values, opinions, stories, metaphors, myths, assumptions, expectations, concerns, and more. When something happens, we interpret the event and give it a meaning, based on this collection of life's experience.

For example, when someone moves in ahead of us in a queue, we may respond to this event as a mild inconvenience or a gross breach of our rights, depending on our point of view. When we see someone place old items of furniture beside a Salvos bin, we may not even notice, we may consider this a generous gesture, we may regard it as outrageous rubbish dumping. All possible interpretations, depending on our perspective.

We are unlikely to notice the steps we went through to arrive at these meanings. The process is mostly automatic and unconscious. We don't spend much time thinking about what is going on in our mental pantry. Nor do we give much thought to our responses� our feelings, our words and our actions. These too are largely automatic and unconscious.

We can become highly skilled at connecting, communicating and influencing people by adopting the three practices of Mental Nutrition:

• Mindfulness
  Managing meaning
  Feeding the mind.

These are the three ingredients of my model of sensemaking. The model is based on an acceptance that sense is a social construction and that the greatest problem between people is the uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. (Langer 1992a).

Communicating is about meanings. One person creates a meaning, displays this meaning to another person who then interprets the displayed meaning to create their own meaning. Herein lies the source of most of our so-called communication problems My meanings are not identical to yours.

When we accept that constructing meaning is problematic we have the seed for growing greater elegance, confidence, and flexibility.

The model draws on a range of disciplines and subjects including: anthropology, semiotics, linguistics, neuro linguistic programming, positive psychology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, communication studies.

Business applications of Mental Nutrition:

• Making a difference shaping our future
  Influencing and persuading
  The language of leading
  Portraits of courage
  Confidence building

(Langer, E. J. 1992a, Interpersonal mindlessness and language. Communication Monographs, 59, 324-327

Bottom line results: So how do you benefit from Mental Nutrition

Understanding the sense-making process and making fruitful choices means you can:

• Win more business because you know how to make sense of details, information, experiences for clients, win their understanding and help them to make decisions in your favour.
• Lead organisational changes more smoothly by using more sophisticated meaning management behaviours.
• Reduce business costs by reducing misunderstandings between people.
• Gain a sense of greater control over your life because you know how to make sense of events and respond to them in appropriate, useful ways.
• Build teams that are more cooperative and productive because their understanding of each other is more profound, particularly where values and performance behaviours are critical.
• Gain more confidence to deal with the people hiccups with colleagues, staff and clients.
• Experience a more fruitful life by replacing self-sabotaging mental frameworks with ones that support your goals.
  

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