Whatever happens to us—well—happens. We may feel we have caused some of these happenings or some of them have simply happened to us without much of our influence. In both cases, they happen and the single most important question we can ask at that point, many of us miss: "How will we choose to respond to what happens? What story will we choose to tell about what has happened?" Whatever we choose, we become that story to ourselves and to others. Thinking about it a little, we can probably see that how we see and tell the story about our past will influence if not determine how we experience the present and the future. If we listen to and see through our limited and limiting meaning perspectives from the past, our choice is made, and the present and future become determined by that past. If we can choose our response freely, we choose what we make out of our past, will do with our present in the present, and that choice can make for a very different future.
Meaning perspectives can seamlessly become the determinant factor in how we tell our story. That happens because meaning perspectives show a powerful influence over the way we see an experience and then, later, tell a story about something that has happened that justifies the meaning perspective. How do I respond when I trip, look awkward, but not fall and or do myself or anything else harm? If I hold no meaning perspective about my physical conduct, I might say "Oops" or not say anything and just get on with what I was about. I could also look at what happened, without any sense of blame, to see how I would avoid it happening again, and then get on with what I was about. That would be my choice. In the face of the same happening, and I do hold a meaning perspective about my physical conduct, "I am a clumsy person, a slob," I will choose to do and say many other things determined by that meaning perspective. I would apologize, sometime over and over again, to those who saw me. They may not have noticed the first time, but they can see it now that I complain about myself and my constant clumsiness. Then I might choose to berate myself, "Why am I always so clumsy? Every time I get a chance, I screw things up. What a klutz. What a jerk. What a slob." Indeed, I would speak to myself using completely condemnatory language, language I would never use on anyone else, not even people I didn't like.
That's the story I tell about myself at the time. When I get home, I may well to choose to tell the story of the clumsy klutz to further justify my meaning perspective to myself and those closest to me. Then I know, and they know, and anyone else who comes into earshot knows my story—I am a clumsy fool. I have heard people tell that sort of story in an interview when asked what weaknesses they found in themselves. It did little good to themselves personally or professionally.
That meaning perspective and the story it produces limits the speaker, the believer of "I am clumsy" in the same way as the meaning perspective "I am dumb" limits some other believer. The limitations may vary in scope and degree, but they still limit the believer, the holder of the meaning perspective. No meaning perspective, in that way, is superficial. The very idea of the meaning perspective tends to live in the deepest and most unquestioned part of us, our core belief in what is real and what is not—our belief in who we are.