Making choices with who we want to be in mind rather that who we are
10th March 2022
Our minds are great at telling us what’s going on. They’re like an obstinate uncle that has an opinion about everything. The only issue is that our minds make predictions based on what’s already happened to us, what have we’ve been taught so far and what we think is possible.
Seeing the world in this way, and using old patterns to make future predictions is not a very accurate tool if we want to change things. Acting in the way we’ve always acted is likely to get us similar results to what we’ve always got.
This leaves a lot of new information out of our grasp. Information which may be right in front of us, but that we’re blind to, because we make choices on what to pay attention to, based on what we already know. Operating at this level makes real change very tricky.
So how can we become better at getting over our blind spots? What can we do to make changes to who we are? One good way is to find someone else that we admire and try and emulate how they do things, how they see the world, how they act, how they react against challenges and ask ourselves what they would do at any given moment. This allows us to use creativity and to think outside our own box.
Another good way could be to take time, every day, to sit and find a better way of being. To decide beforehand the kind of person we want to be that day. To be more mindful about how we operate in the world, rather than being buffeted about by the waves of habitual thoughts and emotions that rule our everyday lives.
In a nutshell is important to remind ourselves that our minds tend to keep us in a behavioural prison in which real change is very difficult. However, change is possible if we pay attention at how we are making choices. Choosing good role models that we can look up to, so we can model our future behaviours on, is also very helpful, that way we’ll be able to make choices based on where we’re trying to go rather than where we are.