No, not your sign. Your SOI. It's the new pickup line, coming soon to a bar near you. Or it should be. What is this SOI, and how dare it replace that old standby?!
Structure Of Interpretation.
Yes, you read correctly. Structure Of Interpretation. I know you're still wondering, WHAT is that? Structure Of Interpretation is fancy coaching language for how you think about things. In other words:
- Your lens of perception (another fancy coaching term)
- How you understand yourself, others, and the world.
- Your thoughts and beliefs about life in general, and the experiences you have, in particular.
- What something means to you.
- Your judgment of a situation.
See, everyone has their own way of interpreting what they experience, whether it's an interaction with another, a thought in your own head, or something that just happens. We all have opinions about the way we think things are and the way we think things should be. There's nothing wrong with an opinion, nor is there with a judgment.
Where we get into muddy water is when attachment enters the picture. Some people get so attached to the notion that their way is THE way that it hinders their relationships, work, communication skills, and more. Others take it to a different extreme, so adamant that their perception of reality is right that it is the only one they end up seeing and paying attention to.
You may think this applies only to extremists. I assure you, it does not. This can show up in one area of your life, or many areas, depending on your willingness to consider other points of view and how tightly you hold on to your SOI.
Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate the point.
- A friend of mine interpreted my lag time in returning her phone calls somehow meant that I am avoiding her, didn't care about her, was disrespecting her, and not valuing her friendship. In my mind, I just didn't feel like talking. Most of my friends understand this about me, and know it's nothing personal. This friend had a different structure of interpretation that didn't match with what was actually behind my behavior of not returning calls. Because of her attachment to that SOI, it had a negative impact on our friendship, or rather, let's say brought up a lot of conversation.
- A client I once worked with spent most of our sessions rehashing out various dramas at work, home, and school, convinced that people were out to get her (not the point of coaching, by the way). She was so attached to that SOI that virtually every experience she had, she would search for a way to prove that someone was out to get her. The truth was, no one was out to get her. But that SOI was so firmly in place, it colored all of her experiences.
Ever had a thought about something that made you feel horrible yet somehow you kept repeating it to yourself like a broken record? SOI. Ever notice that some people have it easy in certain areas of their life - money, work, love - while others don't? SOI. Your structure of interpretation influences what you think, say, feel, and do. The results you experience in life are very clear indications of what your SOI is.
So what can you do about this? Let brainstorming be your saving grace. Write down all the possible ways that you could think about the same situation that's currently making you feel bad. If you get stuck, ask your friends for ideas. Once you let yourself see another way of interpreting something, you gain freedom.
Let's go back to the bar scene.
Do you need to know someone's SOI about everything before you exchange phone numbers? No. What I would recommend before any astrology signs are shared though, is to find out how open they are to different perspectives. As in, can you talk with them freely?
Relationships of any kind - friends, co-workers, marriage - thrive on compromise, the willingness to listen, and an openness to considering another way of doing things. Can you imagine what drama it might save if you understood where the other person was coming from at the beginning of the relationship rather than the end?
A large part of the power of coaching lies in the ability of a coach to offer different perspectives that a client can incorporate into their SOI. This is one of the main reasons I love coaching: I watch people get liberated from themselves, and then their life truly begins to bloom. That is a gift.
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