Explore Yesterday’s Meaning to Create Tomorrow’s Riches

Life by Design

Hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson talk about meaning in today’s episode. Why does the same situation or item have a different meaning for one person than it does for another? The same apple may be delicious and coveted by one person and viewed as gross and undesirable by another. Jessilyn and Brian explore how we form meanings and how we can change those meanings to reach different understandings of situations.

One of the key examples of something that almost everyone in the world places meaning on is money. Money means many different things to many different people and can cause a lot of conflict in relationships. Jessilyn shares how she came from a poverty mindset growing up, rather than an abundance mindset, because her family did not have money. But even when she and Brian started achieving financial success, she maintained her poverty mindset until she explored where that meaning came from and could learn to change it. Jessilyn and Brian discuss how to discover where our meanings originated, why those meanings get stronger the more we experience a situation, and how a meaning that is held today can be changed tomorrow.

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Transcript

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:09] Welcome to the Life by Design podcast with your hosts, Jessilyn and Brian Persson. We help couples create the wealth they desire by sharing our stories and how we broke through the barriers to create our wealth.

Brian Persson: [00:00:20] We are the creators of the Discover Define Design framework, which supports you in resolving conflict and communicating better. More recently, due to high demand, we decided to create the relationships, riches, and real estate segment of our teaching. After all, who does not want to be wealthy, right?

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:37] Yeah. So our topic this week is meaning. So what meaning we put on things. For example, why does the same situation have a different meaning for you or for I? I'm going to use a real simple example here, like eating an apple. When you're eating an apple, that is what it is. You're just eating the apple. But someone might say, this apple is delicious. I love apples, crisp and juicy and they make me happy. Then there can be someone on the other side who hates apples, and so they put a meaning onto it that apples are gross, they're disgusting. So it's a different meaning for a different person depending on who it is and what they put on that simple situation of eating an apple.

Brian Persson: [00:01:19] Yeah, the exact same action, two different like feelings and outcomes to that exact same action. Another super important thing that pretty well the whole world puts on a whole lot of meaning on is money. And that happens a lot in relationships. You have two different people inside that relationship, and they have two very different ways of viewing money. Some view it as bad, some view it as good, some view it as they don't understand it, some view it as I got this like, let's go make a bunch of money. And that can cause a lot of conflict in relationships, even though a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. And there's really no difference between the physical form of money.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:06] Right. So meaning kind of comes down to our interpretation or our intention of whatever it is we're looking at.

Brian Persson: [00:02:14] Yeah. It's literally what you've laid on top of whatever the situation or object is, like in the case of money, you've put something on top of it, which it really is not.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:26] Right. So the first thing we really want to discuss is how meaning came from a situation a long time ago that you probably don't even remember.

Brian Persson: [00:02:36] Nope. Most people, I would say, don't have any idea why they've come up with the meaning for just about anything. Like why they like a thing, why they don't like a thing. Why did you start liking apples in the first place? Right? Why did you not like apples in the first place? Why did you come up with your opinions on money in the first place? Like do you, can you really recall the moment where you went, as a 3 or a 4 or 5 year old maybe, aha, like, this is what I think about money. My parents said this and this is my opinion. And all of a sudden the whole next 20, 30, 40, 50 years of your life is defined by that one moment that you can't even recall.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:22] So true. You know, I look, money is a great topic for me because, I mean, we came from two different backgrounds when it comes to money, and I was raised without much money, obviously, as I think I've shared several times, and we worked really hard on the farm to make ends meet, and we didn't have a lot of money. And I watched my mom, who came from a lot less money than even what we had, and she saved every penny. She would hide it, she would store it, and I get it, right? And so that's what I grew up watching and learning. And so as an adult, I started hoarding money as well, thinking like, I never know when that rainy day is going to come and if I'm going to need it. And I never put much thought past. Why I do that? Is that the right thing to do? Should I be looking at it differently? Until later in life when we really started exploring money.

Brian Persson: [00:04:19] Yeah. Later in life, both of us started to really, like, analyze and get retrospective and go deep into some of the reasons why we came to be the people we are today. And then all of a sudden you realize, like, hey, you know what? Like this wasn't really created by me. This was created by my five year old self or my ten year old self. And it's really not who I am today, but I'm still living into it. Like your mom, for example. Still to this day saves money like crazy.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:51] Oh yeah.

Brian Persson: [00:04:53] We're trying to help your parents out, and we're finding all kinds of stuff that she's, like, squirreled away. Literally like a squirrel.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:05:01] Yeah. More bank accounts than I can count on both hands. And I'm like, why? Why? But it's interesting because, I mean, obviously I can't remember what age, definitely mid probably to late 30s where we went and did it was called a money clinic at the time, and that was the first time I had to really delve in to what money meant to me and where I dug up that meaning. And that's when my first aha came was like, oh man, like definitely stems from my mom. I picked up my mom's genetics when it comes to the money, and I say that because my dad's very different with how he deals with money, as is my older sister, she's more like my dad. But to dig into it and go, man, this is my mom. And that's, is that who I want to be when it comes to money management and my thoughts around money? And it was a real eye opener for me to ...