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When I first heard at a personal development seminar that context was everything I had no idea what that meant. To be honest I didn’t even know the difference between content and context.

Context – a set of circumstances or events that surround a particular situation or event.

It helped me to think of context and content as a bowl holding apples. The content is the apples whereas the context is the bowl. So if we are looking at green apples through a clear bowl we see green apples. I know this isn’t rocket science. However what colour are the green apples if the bowl is red? Okay maybe that’s a bit techy but the green apples no longer appear green. The colour of the bowl influences the colour of the apples.

Context is everything because if you always had a red bowl you would never know that apples could be green.

In a similar way if the context of your life is set a certain way then everything you see will be influenced by that context.

Here’s a real world example….

I love my Mum but we always used to argue like crazy. Maybe some of you know how that feels? She was always telling me what to do and I was left wondering why she didn’t trust me to do things. My context was that my Mum didn’t trust me to do things right without her help. My Mum loves me and has a lot more experience than I do and so she liked to point out things that could go wrong before they happened. It wasn’t a matter of trust at all – she just didn’t want me making the mistakes that she did. Most parents operate like that. When we sat down and talked about it we saw each others point of view and the arguments stopped. She leaves me to make some mistakes (that’s a part of growing up) and I understand that any advice is because she loves me and not because she doesn’t trust me.

So many issues arise because situations are only seen from one context.

Another example is a guy I met at a property investor taster evening. Adrian and I used to run them for a property investment seminar company in the UK and often afterwards we would have a cup of tea and answer questions. This particular guy was convinced that the course wouldn’t work for him even though it worked for loads of others and there was a money back guarantee. As we got to talking he thought this about all areas of his life! Things that worked for other people simply wouldn’t work for him. I asked him what if he and a friend placed similar bets on a horse that won. Surely both of them would win? He said no because something would be found wrong with his ticket so he would still lose. I was amazed. He was living his life in the context of everything would go wrong and of course he was usually right. We kept in touch for a while because I knew that personal development courses could help him transform his beliefs, if he wanted to transform them. The course I was thinking of in particular was the Landmark Forum run by Landmark Education. It was the first time that it really hit home that context is everything.

So what context is running your life right now?

Think objectively about how you react in situations, or even how you are thinking about a situation before it’s even happened. It may surprise you about certain assumptions you are making BEFORE the event has even happened.

You have the power to transform your context and so transform your life.