The Bi-Weekly Personal Development Ezine from Gurdy.Net

FRESH EYES... FRESH OPPORTUNITIES

I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who see their lives through dark glasses, by the number of people who tell me that opportunities have dried up for them as a result of the economic difficulties of the last few years or by people who have never come across an opportunity in their lives at all!   I shouldn’t be amazed, of course, because psychology tells is that, in fact, normal people never actually see reality – they only see their version of it.   And on the basis that the normal subconscious is predisposed to focus on the negative, it’s hardly surprising that most people are blinded by their own lack of vision.

Of course, dark glasses syndrome comes in all shapes and sizes – 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.  Your mood is set by your subconscious mind – 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’ve been like that forever.   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.  This is unrelated to the stranger, it’s based on who the stranger reminds you of.  This process is called re-cognition.   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 do you know when you’re talking to or ignoring the next important stranger in 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 the only way that you can do that is to train your mind to observe and notice.   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 art of observation without judgement can only be practiced when you don’t 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.   Turn off your iPod and your cell ‘phone.   Fold up your newspaper, put down your book.   Drop your thoughts, cares and worries and simply observe.  Watch what’s happening.  Don’t get hung up on what might be going on, don’t start judging what you’re seeing or second-guessing some apparent scenario.  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 with a fresh set of eyes you will have a completely new perspective of life.   Who knows, you might even be able to notice the opportunities that have been staring you in the face all of the time.

FOCUSING ON NOW