Reinventing Our Perceptions: What Do You See?
Often times we can get caught up in the daily rituals of our lives. Eventually, these rituals become habits, and fogs our vision to enable us to see past paths that have etched themselves into our existence. However, the book "The Art of Possibility" written by Benjamin and Rosalund Zander are teaching us to see past these habits that we have formed. Many times dreams and goals get put to the wayside because the path to achieve these becomes clouded. This cloud that forms is based on our perceptions of the world around us. In this book, Benjamin and Roz (Rosalund) teach us that if we re-create our thinking and our perceptions, good things can happen. They challenge us to take new paths, and see things in a new light, regardless of how it may feel the first time out. These new ways of viewing things might feel illogical or counterintuitive, but the only way to get out of an existing rut is to create a new path. We must transform ourselves into who we want to be.
This all may sound great, but you are probably asking yourself, as I was, "How do we do this?" According to Ben and Roz, this is not done by self improvement, nor by changing the way we do things, but by looking at things in a new light. By having totally new perceptions, beliefs, and thought processes.
To do this, Ben and Roz have set up a few practices for us to memorize and use. The one that I am going to address in this blog is the catchphrase, "It's all invented." All our stories and experiences are invented from our own perceptions and pre-conceived notions, causing us to find many dead ends in life. However, when encountering problems or road blocks, if we stop and view them in a different light, we will begin to see new solutions and new opportunities will appear.
According to Ben and Roz, when we encounter different situations in our life, we should ask ourselves the following questions:
What assumptions am I making,
that I am not aware I am making,
that gives me what I see?
Secondly:
What might I invent,
that I haven't yet invented,
that would give me other choices?
Practice asking yourself things questions whenever you can. Remember, it really is all invented. So, start thinking out of the box, put in a fresh light bulb, or reinvent your view, and tell me what do you see?!
Great observations. Actions become rituals become habits become the way the real world works. I guess if one want to change things one of the better ways is to follow the course that got one in the situation and follow it back to the beginning where it was all about the possibilities. Granted, there is a large segment of the world who believe that how they see the world, their point-of-view, is the only true reality.
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