Seeing How Life Should Be

Its a bit unsettling when you think about just how many people view their world through dark glasses. People are constantly telling me that new opportunities for doing business have vanished into thin air as the world economy has nose-dived. And, from time to time, some people actually tell me that theyve never stumbled upon a good opportunity ever! Of course, this kind of attitude shouldnt be unsettling because years of research in the field of psychology confirms that the normal person never sees reality and all just their version of it. And, if you take into consideration that the subconscious mind prefers to accentuate the negative, its hardly surprising that opportunity is so rarely spotted.

And, as you might imagine, dark-glasses disease comes in a variety of different sizes and shapes - from the guy or girl who is just going through a bad patch struggling with their business, their job or their relationship to the seriously delusional people who trot out nonsense like "nobody loves me" or "I hate my life". But these different perspectives are all symptoms of a normal everyday disease that all of us normal everyday people suffer from. The disease is called reality blindness.

The normal adult mind sleepwalks through life with their eye firmly shut. We think that we're looking at reality but it is a psychological fact that we are looking at the world through our own misconceptions about it. We learned those misconceptions about life in general and ourselves in particular during our formative years. All these 'truths' that we hold dear are what psychologists call our 'stored knowledge'. Let's take a look at the role that our stored knowledge plays in creating our reality.

You encounter a total stranger in an airport - you are both waiting for a delayed flight. Whether or not you talk to this stranger will, first of all, depend on your mood. That mood of yours, which is often as variable as the Irish weather, is automatically determined by your subconscious - you have little control over it. If you're the kind of person who freaks out over being delayed, then that's what you are - and you pretty much have always been this way. But let's say you're in the mood to talk to this stranger. You will not see the stranger, you will see who you think the stranger is. Your eyes perceive a set of images of which your mind has to make sense - this process is called cognition. To make sense of them, your mind adds your stored knowledge. Now, this has got nothing to do with the person that you've just met - it's all down to who your subconscious mind thinks they remind you of. Psychologists describe this process as re-cognition - the rest of us simply refer to it as recognition without really understanding its significance. In other words, you'll re-cognize the stranger as someone you can get on with or someone you might dislike. This process takes only a few seconds and you've no idea that it's going on.

Now, let me ask you a couple of vital questions. Is it true that the most important people in your life today were once complete strangers? How would you have the first clue that you might be talking or not talking to the next really important stranger who could transform your life? The answer to the first question is, obviously, 'yes'. The answer to the second question is 'you haven't got a clue' - unless you open your eyes and see reality for what it is. To do this you've got to break the link between cognition and recognition - you've got to learn to stop relying on your stored knowledge to make up your mind for you.

Now, don't get me wrong - some of our stored knowledge is useful. The point that I'm making is that you've got to stop being a slave to it. And there's really only one way to do this - you've got to train yourself in the art of observation. In other words, stop your mind jumping to its misplaced conclusions -they have to be misplaced because your stored knowledge is decades out of date. The fine art of observing without adding any personal spin can only be developed and honed in an environment in which you don't actually need it - so that you're good at it when you do! What I mean is that you need to set quiet time aside to practice this art far from the cut and thrust of your daily life. Five or ten minutes a day will transform the rest of your day because, once you start actually noticing what's really going on in those few minutes, you will be far more attuned to reality for the rest of the day.

Find yourself a park bench, a seat in a pavement cafe or even just your normal train seat on the morning commute. Take the earphones out and turn off your mobile 'phone. Fold up your newspaper, put down your book. Lose your thoughts, drop your baggage, forget your worries and start simply observing. Watch what's happening. Don't start trying to figure out what might be going on. Don't start putting your own interpretation on what your watching. Don't start second-guessing what's actually in front of your eyes. Just observe and you'll notice that the scene before your eyes is changing moment to moment as, in reality, our whole universe is changing moment to moment.

Developing your ability to observe will disconnect the disability that you have for jumping to the wrong conclusion. Observation will give you a fresh set of eyes. And, armed with a fresh set of eyes, you'll suddenly discover a totally different perspective on what you previously thought of as life. Who knows, you might even be able to notice the opportunities that have been staring you in the face all of the time.


Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton