How You Process Your Life Experiences

We process our experiences in different ways in different phases of our lives. All our thoughts associated with these experiences are indelibly etched in our subconscious minds, and inevitably creating our different feelings, both positive and negative ones, in different phases in our lives, and they are all instrumental in creating our own attachments over the long haul.

The Development Phase

Throughout the early phase of growth and development, young children are exposed to the world around them through their five senses. Their minds begin to process whatever they perceive, generalize, and then apply them whenever and wherever they may think appropriate—they become the foundation of their experiences and perceptions, which subsequently create the expectations in their adult lives. For example, when properly taught, they begin to show appreciation, as demonstrated by their saying their first “thank you.”

During this critical first phase, their mental input is automatic and passive because their immature minds are unable to filter their mental input; their thoughts are merely a micro reflection of the minds of their parents.

As they grow up, however, they begin to learn how to refuse processing any unpleasant experience, or interpret it in the way they choose according to its relevance to their lives. Their selectivity then begins to alter how they process their life experiences in the future.

In this learning phase, children and young adults are learning incessantly, trying to understand and make sense out of the complex world they are living in. In this intensive learning phase, they begin to discern their respective roles they are going to play, always looking for inspiration and direction from their parents or people around them.

The Transitional Phase

Even though every phase of a person’s life is important, none is more critical than the transitional phase from adolescence to adulthood. As young adults, the world around them becomes more complex and complicated. In addition, everything around them also becomes increasingly exciting as experienced by the five senses, such as music and sex. But their self-delusions created by the way they process their own experiences may make them see more of the excitement and less of the reality of their world.

This is a critical phase for most of them because it defines not only who they are but also what they value; it sets the foundation for the way that the rest of their lives is likely to turn out because their thoughts are a preview of what their future lives would be like.

The Consolidation Phase

As they turn into full-grown adults, they begin to think more than just about themselves: they may begin to focus more on people around them. They may have their own life callings: career, health, love, or family; in other words, what they are meant to do with their lives. With passion and bliss, they may begin to define who they are. Being strong physically and mentally, they are in the most productive phase in their lives. During this phase, they merely respond and react, either positively or negatively, to their experiences presented to them in the form of career, marriage, and parenting.

This is a phase in which they consolidate their past experiences, and continue to build their future lives on that foundation. If they avail themselves of the opportunity to accept others as they are, and to become appreciative of what life has to offer, they may then develop the quality of acceptance and appreciation in the form of love and forgiveness, compassion and empathy—they will then have their lasting effects on their future life experiences.

The Letting-Go Phase

With advancement in age, and as age begins to take its toll on the body and the mind, most of the life habits that control how they should live have become well established. Their thoughts, based on decades of their past experiences, now dominate their thinking, and hence control how they live the rest of their lives. At this point, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to alter the way they process their experiences and perceptions—just as the saying goes: “It is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.”

In this final phase in their lives, unfortunately, they have to learn letting go, whether they like it or not. Everything begins to slip away from their lives: their youth, their health, and inevitably their minds too.

All in all, how the mind processes experiences and perceptions determines the type of person you are and will become. The happenings in your life are real, but the way you process and perceive them may positively or negatively affect your life because they are stored in your subconscious mind, which may either give you valuable life lessons, or create delusions and self-deceptions that may not only confuse you but also lead you astray. True human wisdom, therefore, plays a pivotal role in how the thinking mind processes all life experiences and their respective expectations.

Get the wisdom to let go.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau