How Is Your Vision?

How many times have we misdiagnosed a situation? How many times do we continue down a path, not knowing that our assumptions have taken us off the original course?

It’s like Happy Gilmore playing golf. In the beginning, he only knew how to use a single club and used it in every situation. Sometimes we continue to move forward with limited tools. Perhaps we cannot see the entire picture because we’re looking through the zoom lens instead of a wide-angle view.

We have all been responsible for doing this at one time or another. We do it when we blindly follow someone else’s opinion without considering other options.

Our brains are hardwired to reuse the information we collected in past experiences. When introduced to something new, our mind automatically searches through all of the stored files and tries to compare it to something we already know.

The final picture is an optical illusion that we created ourselves. It’s full of preconceived bias opinions based on things that we assume to know. We peer through a pair of glasses that focus our vision on what is familiar, or things we want to see, even if they aren’t real. If we concentrate on the fact that we have a hammer, we then begin to look for opportunities relating to the hammer, and pretty soon, everything in front of us suddenly becomes a nail.    

That becomes a big problem! It’s problematic because this does not work.

It’s amazing at how easily we fall into familiar patterns because we are comfortable with accepting what we see as truth. Even as it happened before our eyes, we chose to see it differently because it seemed utterly logical to do so. We accepted our version of the truth, so we can have the closure that our minds crave.

It makes us comfortable to put things into a familiar, convenient classification. We place happenings in a box the same way a librarian codes books for easy access. Ah! That goes in the family box. That’s rude behavior, and that’s filed under unacceptable in public, and so on.

This form of coding seems essential because it helps us get through life quickly.

We like labels. We walk around with an internal label machine and use it every second of every day. Why do we want to say we are this type of person or that type of person? We feel a need to limit ourselves out of fear of the unknown. We continuously sell ourselves short.

A carpenter who works with only a hammer in his toolbox is limited to what they can make. How restricted to only have a hammer in the toolbox? Your brain is set to repeat in the same way a hammer repeatedly pounds. How do you find your passion if your response is always the same?

We need to train our brains to rise to the challenges of society even if the same reasoning doesn’t fit.

Perhaps this is why we like to categorize situations and people. We want to find the easy button. We avoid the inconvenience of working hard.

Standing out is often hard. Being yourself is hard because we don’t want to stand out. We avoid putting to use our unique and extraordinary abilities to blend in with the ordinary.

Success is scary. What if we succeed? What if our ideas take off and launch to new heights? Sometimes the idea is unfathomable, and so we choose to cling to the familiar.

It’s easier than having to admit that with the talent, we may have to do something with our lives. We don’t want to find out who we are or the spectacular things we are capable of accomplishing.

I am just now at the age of forty, attempting to use my unique talents. I am looking to fulfill a need and be fulfilled by the word of God. I have found my source of renewable energy in God’s word and am releasing it with purpose and passion. I encourage you to do the same.

Find out what suffocates the release of your passion and purpose? What stops you from behaving naturally? Where is your energy being drained?

The ugly truth is that fear keeps us placing people and situations into categories and stops us from letting go of the past. It prevents us from moving forward and becoming leaders.

Maslow wrote, “A musician must make music, and artists must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be”.

What about you? Who are you meant to be?