Peter Szabo (speaker) teaches a simple cognitive-reframing question—"What else could this mean?"—as a practical tool to change how you feel and improve daily emotional quality. He explains that humans automatically assign meanings to events based on identity and past experience, gives an illustrative concert anecdote showing multiple interpretations of one event, and encourages choosing empowering narratives (when facts are unknown) to protect self-worth and emotional well-being.
Chapters
This one simple question can immediately change how you feel, how you look at things, and if you make it a practice, even your whole life, the quality of your life. Hey, my name is Peter Szabo. And really, the quality of your life is the quality of the emotions that you experience day to day, like how you feel, right? If you feel quite bad most of the day, you're not going to be quite happy, or quality of life is not going to be too high. Or on the other hand, if you feel gratitude, joy, excitement, looking forward to stuff throughout the day, you will feel much better, right? So I learned this one simple question that can immediately shift how you feel, what you focus on, and really with it, the quality of your life. The question is, what else could this mean? You know, we humans, we are meaning making machines. It's something that we do automatically. It's. It's an unconscious process, right? Something happens, and we immediately assign it a meaning. Now, it is assigned based on our own identities, the memories and experiences that we've been through. So we kind of project onto the world what we think it means based on who we are, right? It's that whole idea that the world is subjective to each and every participant, right? That's why a certain event can happen. Say, you know, you went to this concert, right? And then you discovered that there was an argument between the artist and the manager and they canceled the show, right? And many, many different people go there, and many, many people have different experiences, right? They were interviewed, and one. One person says, wow, I can't believe he treats his fans this bad, this guy, right? Another guy's like, wow, I can't. Can't imagine what he went through, what kind of fight he had with the manager, like something went wrong. Hope he's okay. Third guy, you know, maybe he's like, oh, man, I wasted so much money, so much time coming out here. Maybe the fourth guy is trying to out of it. Well, whatever, this event's gone, but let's try to find another one that's still going on in the city so we can have a good night, right? So it's the same event, except four different people had four completely different experiences. They focused on different things, they gave things different meanings, and ultimately they felt a different emotion. Now, I'll let you in on a secret. We humans have this deep, innate fear within us that we are not enough. And ultimately, if we're not enough, we're not going to be loved. So a lot of people automatically jump to conclusions and these meanings about events that it's telling something about themselves and how they're inadequate. It's a very fascinating phenomenon, and this has affected me for many years as well. So I can talk about this from experience, but something would happen. Maybe someone looks at you a certain way, and immediately, you know, the meaning in my mind would jump to something like, oh, I'm not good enough, or maybe didn't look good, or they're judging me, they're talking behind my back, blah, blah, blah. But you don't really know. You really don't know, right? You don't have any valid data to back it up. So that's when you can use this magical question, what else could this mean? And I can immediately shift that for you, right? You just ask yourself that, and immediately you may realize, well, maybe it's not about me. Maybe they had a bad day. Maybe they just had a fight with their spouse. Maybe this and this happened, but it doesn't have to mean anything about me. And if we live in this world, this fantasy called life anyway, and we do not know the truth, we do not know what factually happened or why they're being rude, why they're acting this way, we might as well choose the meaning that's most empowering to us, right? So if you can choose the meaning that, oh, I'm not good enough, or the meaning like, hey, maybe they had a bad day has nothing to do with me as long as we don't know the truth, might as well choose the meaning, choose the fantasy, choose the story to believe in that empowers you and gives you power instead of takes it away, right? If you love yourself and you want to feel good and you want to feel better, might as well choose the narrative that serves you more. Not necessarily as an excuse, not something like, to, you know, make things easier when they shouldn't be, right? Sometimes it's appropriate to feel the pain, to feel the push, to push you forward. But if you keep beating yourself up, if you keep, you know, talking down to yourself and just not being nice to yourself all the freaking time, then give yourself a break. Ask these different questions, come up with a different narrative, and I promise you, you will feel better. You will feel different. All right? Hope this helps. This is Peter Sabo.
